Question

Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask: someone who claims to be an atheist and in practice thinks there is no reason for the world, while on the other hand the world is not a necessary existence but is contingent—can he be a scientist?
After all, on his view the world operates randomly. So when he asks himself why the sun has risen for two thousand years, is there any reason he can assume that the sun will indeed rise tomorrow as well? After all, there is no real reason that a random world should operate in a planned or fixed way, and so on.
Also, does the very desire to seek an explanation for natural phenomena largely assume that there is an explanation behind them? For if they were created out of nothing / are primordial in a contingent way, there is no reason there should be an explanation behind them, and so on.
That is, in summary: can the atheist be a “scientist” and a “researcher,” or can he only claim what works and nothing more? And even what works is only during the period he examined it, in the places where he examined it.