Science does not Make Predictions: a Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel:  What do you think about science?  Do you believe in it?

David:  I don't believe in science.  There is no philosophical justification for science.  Science is based on inductive reasoning, which is unjustifiable.  Science is also based on memory, that is, science assumes that our memories are a reliable record of the past.  Philosophically speaking, however, there's no justification for believing our memories.  The accepted theories of the scientific community are based on countless numbers of experiments, but how do we know that those experiments actually happened?

Daniel:  In other words, science makes predictions about the future based on the past, but you don't believe in the future or the past, and therefore you don't believe in science.

David:  Cute, but crude.

Daniel:  But maybe that's only according to the conventional interpretation of science.  Maybe science can be reinterpreted so that you wouldn't object it to it.

David:  Really?  I'd be surprised.  Well, let's hear it.

Daniel:  What if you understand science as being descriptive, not predictive.  In other words, interpret science as being a description of the past, with nothing to say about the future.

David:  Well, if you say that science is about the past, then you still have the memory problem.

Daniel:  What if you understand science as not being about the actual past, but the apparent past?  In other words, what appears to have happened may not be the same as what actually happened, but science is about what appears to have happened.

David:  I hadn't thought of that.

Daniel pulls a tennis ball out of his backpack.

Daniel:  Will you hold this for a minute?

David:  What is this, some kind of philosophy experiment?

Daniel:  You know me too well.  Throw it up in the air.

David throws the ball up in the air and it drops on the ground.  Daniel picks it up and gives it back to David.

Daniel:  No, no, throw it up in the air and catch it.

David: OK...

Daniel:  Do it ten times.

David:  OK, this better be good...

Daniel:  Thank you.  Well done, well done.  Now.  Did you just throw the ball and catch it 11 times?

David:  I don't know.  How should I know?

Daniel:  But you remember throwing it and catching it.

David:  Certainly I remember it, but I don't know if it actually happened.

Daniel:  According to your memories, though, did it come down every time?  Did it ever continue into the sky, or stop and hover in midair?

David:  Sure, according to my memories, it did come down every time.

Daniel:  So you would never say, "What goes up must come down."  But you might say, "What goes up seems to have come down."

David:  Crude, but cute.

Daniel:  So every time a scientist says something like, "What goes up must come down," you just need to interpret it as "What goes up seems to have come down."  When a scientist says something like "F = (Gm1m2)/r", you just need to interpret it as "In the past, F apparently = (Gm1m2)/r".

David:  Cute.  So this is a skeptical interpretation of science?

Daniel:  Yes and no.  I'd call it a conservative interpretation, not a skeptical interpretation in particular.  It's an interpretation that even a skeptic can love.  But even a hard-core realist like your friend John can accept this interpretation.  This interpretation simply frees science from its dependency on induction and memory.  These questions become orthogonal.  Everyone can accept my interpretation of science.  If you happen to believe in induction, for some reason, so much the better, you can then take science and apply it to the future.

David:  Everyone can accept your interpretation, you say.

Daniel:  IMAO.

David:  Cute, Daniel, very cute.  I'll have to sleep on it.