The point I want to emphasize is that science is about physical and biological mechanisms, about discovering how things work, about engineering, about theories that describe and can predict observations that we experience entirely through our senses or their extension through instruments. It is the instruments of science that supply us with the indirect evidence of things not seen. It is like Plato’s allegory of the ave, in which reality can only be experienced as shadows on the cave wall. An experimental physicist says that he measures the “spin” of an electron, but in actuality, he records certain effects on a screen and uses the theory (his faith) to calculate its meaning as a measurement.
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