‘Trust’ in this case is that of faith and reason. There is a difference because faith can be considered believing in something that is not necessarily right. Faith is usually referred to as something which people just believe in because they can. They do not need justification because it is their belief and they are most probably not going to change just because you find reasonable doubt in their argument. Trust can be seen in many ways but in this case the phrase ‘why do we trust it so much’ is meant to mean ‘why do we put faith into science without questioning its reliability’. This is because the question is asking why we as humans do not need to question our ideals when it comes to science.
As humans, we want to know the answers to every question that we can, and in some cases, this can mean accepting falsities. Humans have the ability to question everything but in some cases have no answer to their own questions. Science has become a way for many to answer questions which can not otherwise be answered. If questions are left unanswered, people become uneasy at the fact that we do not know how to answer everything, so how can the answers that have been put forward be trusted. In many cases science has put forward a viable answer which has been accepted for hundreds of years by the population, and then later found to be false. This shows that acceptance is not hard to find when it comes to answering life’s questions. If questions were simply left open, advances in all areas of academia would simply stop, because there would be no reason to doubt anything previously put forward. This would have an effect upon itself, and shutdown science as an accepted reasoning all together. This while seeming a very extreme ending would have detrimental effects on the human race, as there would no longer be advances in science, which in many cases, means no advance in medicine or technology along with it.
On the other hand, it could be seen that science should not be trusted. Science just like every other human founding has no one hundred percent hit rate. As stated before, it has been shown that past scientific ‘proofs’ which have been considered undeniably true, have been conclusively proved totally wrong. Take for example the idea of the world being flat, this was accepted widely for hundreds of years, this phenomenon was used to explain people’s deaths at sea, they did not drown but instead disappeared off the edge of the Earth. This made logical sense and was accepted without question, but when Columbus and many others sailed the whole way around the globe and discovered that there was no ‘edge’, this was shown to be wrong. And now that humans have the ability to leave this planet, and see it from the outside, we now know 100% that the world is a sphere. Science goes by experience, it makes a statement and then justifies it, but in many cases this can be seen as a very unreliable method. If a hypothesis is put forward, then the researcher who put the idea forward is obviously going to want to prove that right, so there may be ambiguities passed over for the sake of a conclusive argument. This gives this experiment a sense of un-truthfulness because the person looking at the research does not know if the researcher was totally truthful in the output and did not try to bias the outcome or not.
Trust appears in every aspect of human and many other creatures life, trust is something that is innate in most species and is hard to tarnish. Without trust the species becomes too questioning for its own good, and then begins to question itself. Trust must be something that is followed because there is no other way to totally justify many beliefs. Science may not be right in such a way that is non-negotiable, but if it is accepted widely enough, it can be considered right in its own sense. It does not have to be the truth to be right, as long as it makes sense and fits the proper equations.
Without trust the human race in particular would not be able to function properly throughout everyday life. Trust gives humans the ability to believe in something conclusively without having to question their ideals. This is true in every aspect of life and very much so including science. For something to be trusted it is normally widely accepted as science is in our culture. Science has the ability to answer questions sufficiently enough for people to accept at the time. It comes down to the individual whether or not they trust science, many people will say they will but there are many who believe in alternate views. Their reasons are just as valid as the people who do believe that science holds the key to everything.
