Q&A: How can one learn to read science critically and aim as much as possible at the truth?
How can one learn to read science critically and aim as much as possible at the truth?
Question
Hello, I was hoping you might be able to advise me how to navigate my way through research books, especially the kind that isn’t exact science but mixes empirical science with the humanities, like history. I feel that the big problem in these fields is that you have no idea how history gets written from the dry findings all the way to the finished book, and then usually if the researcher is religious the picture will lean more in a religious direction, and if the researcher is secular it will lean more in an anti-religious direction. You see this a lot in the difference between what comes out of Bar-Ilan and what comes out of Tel Aviv University. After that, it becomes hard not to arrive at a postmodern view that truth is subjective according to the researcher’s worldview. How can I tell, in books like these, what is actually proven and what is just the researcher’s theories?
Answer
Everyone agrees that there is a multiplicity of views and biases. The postmodern mistake is to infer from that that there is a multiplicity of truths—that is, that everyone is right, or that nobody is right.
You want an easy life, but there isn’t one. If the book is well-argued, you can try to examine its arguments for yourself. If not—there’s no easy way. My mother used to say that the way to do market research on a washing machine is to ask every salesperson or manufacturer about the drawbacks of the others. In many cases, common sense (yours. ??) gives you a feeling.