Can science REALLY explain Reality?

[Julia_Mae]

Transcendence is absolute rubbish -

If we are going to try and have this discussion without the thread getting locked, perhaps we could leave off the insults to others’ beliefs and just address the topic?

we operate entirely within nature, and we cannot do that which is impossible according to physical laws.

But we have done this continually through history, because “physical laws” are written by us and they change as we learn more. In highschool, we were shown a paper written at the time the steam engine was invented that proved scientifically that if a human traveled faster than 30mph, he would explode. Or implode, I can’t recall.

Dinosaurs lived in water because physics proved that they could not support their bodyweight on land.

Padre Pio and others bilocated and healings with tissue growth that science says is impossible to achieve in the time observed have been thoroughly documented. Physical laws do not define or limit reality, they just attempt to define, explain and predict.

Cold fusion, anyone? Only consider our utterly imperfect ability to predict the weather, for example, and our absolute lack of ability to control it - if we were actually transcendent over nature, rather than supremely talented manipulators of nature, wouldn’t we have figured out how to do these things by now?

That we predict imperfectly, doesn’t mean we don’t do it exceptionally well relative to how well we did it 100 years ago. Jesus could control the weather, some Saints have shown the ability in limited ways, but, look what they had to do in order to achieve the knowledge necessary.

Also, “by now” indicates you think we have come a long way in terms of science. Science, the way we define it now, has only been defined that way for about the last 100 years. We are infants. And the last thing we need to be able to do is control the weather - what a global disaster that would be.

We already knew how to NOT pollute the oceans and air so badly we are threatening our own existence and that of an untold numbers of creatures, but we did it, anyway. Humanity simply cannot be trusted with too much information. A point on which I think you and I agree.

 

[Sair]

If we are going to try and have this discussion without the thread getting locked, perhaps we could leave off the insults to others’ beliefs and just address the topic?

Uh, actually, the entire thread is an insult to those who believe science is our best avenue for examining and ultimately understanding reality. The only problem with my statement about the supposition of human transcendence of nature being completely and utterly erroneous and misguided is that it disagrees with some people’s cherished supernaturalist beliefs.

But we have done this continually through history, because “physical laws” are written by us and they change as we learn more. In highschool, we were shown a paper written at the time the steam engine was invented that proved scientifically that if a human traveled faster than 30mph, he would explode. Or implode, I can’t recall.

Dinosaurs lived in water because physics proved that they could not support their bodyweight on land.

Padre Pio and others bilocated and healings with tissue growth that science says is impossible to achieve in the time observed have been thoroughly documented. Physical laws do not define or limit reality, they just attempt to define, explain and predict.

That we predict imperfectly, doesn’t mean we don’t do it exceptionally well relative to how well we did it 100 years ago. Jesus could control the weather, some Saints have shown the ability in limited ways, but, look what they had to do in order to achieve the knowledge necessary.

Also, “by now” indicates you think we have come a long way in terms of science. Science, the way we define it now, has only been defined that way for about the last 100 years. We are infants. And the last thing we need to be able to do is control the weather - what a global disaster that would be.

None of this demonstrates that we operate outside any natural laws - just that our understanding of them has been, and may be even now, quite imperfect. We operate entirely within natural laws - we have no ability to dictate or subvert them. That we have been wrong in the past is not an indication that physical laws change - it is our comprehension of them that has changed. How did these changes in comprehension come about? By empirical observation of the fact that some hypotheses are untenable. People thought, for example, in the middle ages, that the plague was caused by miasma. Strangely enough, efforts to keep out “bad air” didn’t work in terms of preventing infection by the Yersinia pestis bacteria, but the only way of discovering this was empirical observation. Eventually our observations and our development of technology that extended our observational powers allowed us to uncover the truth about what causes the plague and what can cure it.

Science advances by testing hypotheses and ruling out false conclusions. How, if one posits a fundamentally untestable hypothesis about the nature of reality (which pretty much all supernatural claims are) could any advancement of knowledge actually occur? How could any supernatural claim be demonstrated to be false? And if you were to attempt to replace one supernatural claim with an alternative, what sort of argument or evidence could you possibly use to justify such replacement?

We already knew how to NOT pollute the oceans and air so badly we are threatening our own existence and that of an untold numbers of creatures, but we did it, anyway. Humanity simply cannot be trusted with too much information. A point on which I think you and I agree.

Actually, I think it’s fairer to say that we cannot be trusted with too little information. Most of the pollution and environmental destruction for which humans are responsible has been the result of ignorance and carelessness, not deliberate attempts to destroy the environment and the other species that depend upon it. We have now got to the stage where it is only the progress of scientific knowledge that will allow us to prevent another mass extinction, and to overcome the effects of our excessive reliance upon fossil fuels for energy. Even now, there are those who short-sightedly complain about measures such as the carbon tax that is coming into law in Australia - it will undoubtedly interfere with our freedom to exploit such resources as coal-fired electricity, but it seems rather insane to assume that the only time to start coming up with viable long-term alternatives is when we’ve already exhausted all the available energy sources.

 

[sw85]

If we agree that science is good at describing the natural universe, the question then must be asked - what else is there to describe? What is there that can be demonstrated to be “beyond” nature and thus beyond the theoretical scope of scientific investigation? Logic, after all, can be used to “prove” any claim, no matter how absurd - it all depends upon the premises.

Is this a joke? I mean obviously you don’t believe this last sentence. Science produces false conclusions under bogus presuppositions, as well; it doesn’t follow we ought to abandon science. If you follow scientific journals at all you’ll routinely see letters suggesting a revision to the way another author interpreted his findings, follow-up analyses attacking the spin others attach to their findings, etc. That part of it – qualitative analysis of statistical results, the part of it that matters most – is ludicrously subjective, yet literally no one anywhere thinks science is, as a result, worthless.

The solution is not to abandon philosophy or science but not to have bogus presuppositions. Which is easy, since bogus presuppositions are usually either stupid on their face (nominalism) or produce stupid conclusions (actually, again nominalism).

It’s all very well to claim that there are philosophical ‘levels’ above and beyond science, but what is the content, then, of such philosophy?

This gets it all backwards. It’s not that there are levels of philosophy “above” or “beyond” science, as if there’s science and then also philosophy. Science is a specific application of a specific philosophy. Science is epistemology and epistemology is philosophy. It cannot discredit philosophical inquiry in principle because it is itself a field of philosophical inquiry.

What is the scope of any philosophy that does not take empirical findings into account?

Who’s talking about doing this? What “empirical finding” has discredited, say, teleological realism? It’s an absurd thing even to suggest. Science can’t discredit teleological realism because it’s dependent on it. A thing cannot discredit its own presupposition.

Philosophy may come to profound conclusions about the nature of reality, but does it contain, within itself, the explanation of why humans are so constituted as to engage in philosophical pursuits?

Some systems of thought do, which is evidence that they are, in fact, correct. Others don’t, which is evidence that they aren’t.

 

[tonyrey]

1. The very fact that you are thinking about and discussing nature implies that you are not a natural object in every respect.

How do you demonstrate that thinking is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence that biochemical reactions have insight of any description.

2. The outstanding success of science is evidence for man’s ability to control nature.

It is nothing of the kind. That we can understand and harness natural processes to achieve ends we consider desirable is perfectly natural, and is entirely bound by the possibilities presented by nature.

How do you demonstrate that the power to understand and control natural processes is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence whatsoeve that biochemical reactions have any understanding whatsoever.

It is only in understanding how nature works - not in imagining we are beyond it - that we have succeeded in achieving our relative mastery of the world.

Ay, there’s the rub - for the materialist. Matter is supposed to have magically acquired the power to understand and control itself!

If we were still doing rain dances and sacrificing animals (and each other) to imaginary supernatural entities, we would never have made any kind of progress.

Irrelevant. You have obviously not bothered to read anything by Stanley Jaki or anything opposed to your views.

3. There are no internal control mechanisms or patterns in nature comparable to the transcendent control of nature by human beings.

Transcendence is absolute rubbish - we operate entirely within nature, and we cannot do that which is impossible according to physical laws.

An unsupported dogmatic assertion which is obviously false. We control ourselves as well as our environment.

Cold fusion, anyone? Only consider our utterly imperfect ability to predict the weather, for example, and our absolute lack of ability to control it - if we were actually transcendent over nature, rather than supremely talented manipulators of nature, wouldn’t we have figured out how to do these things by now?

Non sequitur. It doesn’t follow from our limitations that we have no insight or control at all.

4. There is no evidence that any natural force has transformed nature both positively and negatively to anywhere near the extent that human beings have done.

By whose value system are you judging “positive” and “negative” here? Are you ignoring, for example, the transformation of Earth’s atmosphere brought about by the evolution of photosynthesising plants, and how it allowed oxygen-dependent organisms to migrate from the sea to the land once the atmosphere was favourable to their survival?

You are assuming the development of living organisms (and rational beings into the bargain) has been produced by purposeless events.

And let’s not forget that it’s looking very probable that humans, by our exploitation and abuse of natural resources, are bringing about the latest mass extinction of species, on a comparable scale to the Permian and Cretacious extinction events… And you are assuming, without support, that we are not a natural force.

The very fact that we have such amazing knowledge that the universe exists and the amazing power to destroy all life on this planet is a formidable objection to your assumption that we are merely insignificant cogs in a vast machine which just happens to exist for no reason whatsoever.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

I had an exchange with an atheist online once over this. Actually he issued a standing challenge to theists everywhere to debate him on the question of whether or not God exists, on the condition that it be conducted without what he called “philosophical bulls***.” It had to be conducted on the grounds of “science and empiricism” alone.

Now I pointed out that whether or not science and empiricism were the best descriptors of reality was precisely what is at issue here. There’s no reason to suppose they are – after all, the conclusion “science and empiricism alone describe reality in its totality” is a conclusion that science and empiricism themselves do not furnish. That only that which can be observed “counts” scientifically is an intentionally affected methodological limitation, not an ontological conclusion. In other words, he was simply begging the question in favor of his position.

His response was, hey, it’s not begging the question; science is a very good descriptor of reality – it’s proven wildly successful at describing the natural world.

OK, so… what? As Edward Feser pointed out once, metal detectors have proven wildly successful at detecting metal. It doesn’t follow that metal is all there is.

“Science is good at describing the natural world” proves that science is an epistemology suited to the description of the natural world. Which is obviously true: it was never intended to do anything but describe the natural world. Science can’t discredit philosophy because it’s a product of it. It’s based on epistemological assumptions for which it, itself, provides no basis. Science cannot prove either that (a) there is an objective reality or (b) that our senses are basically competent to discern its nature. Even if it could, we could not accept its evidence without an a priori assumption of those predicates.

Amazingly silly stuff, really, but this is the kind of nonsense you wind up believing when you refuse, in principle, to talk about that “philosophical bulls***.”

Awesome post. Great points all around.

I would also point out that 100% empiricism is an impossibility.

Yep.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

Since science can only account for the natural, and the supernatural is also part of reality, science cannot account for reality. I’m often told the flood is a myth because science does not prove it. But you see, science assumes natural mechanisms, so if a supernatural event caused water to exhaust from deep underground and then recede, science could never prove it. The resurrection is scientifically impossible but it still happened.

Indeed.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

There is no evidence (nor, if one takes supernaturalist claims seriously, any possibility of evidence) of anything “beyond” or “above” nature that does any controlling, nor is there actual support for the claim that nature has no internal control mechanisms or patterns - quite the opposite, in fact.

Is there a WILL and DESIGN behind these supposed “controls,” though?

If not, then are you saying somehow these “controls” made themselves “workable” and “feasible” RANDOMLY?

Just asking…

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

How do you demonstrate that thinking is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence that biochemical reactions have insight of any description.
How do you demonstrate that the power to understand and control natural processes is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence whatsoeve that biochemical reactions have any understanding whatsoever.

Ay, there’s the rub - for the materialist. Matter is supposed to have magically acquired the power to understand and control itself!
Irrelevant. You have obviously not bothered to read anything by Stanley Jaki or anything opposed to your views.
An unsupported dogmatic assertion which is obviously false. We control ourselves as well as our environment.
Non sequitur. It doesn’t follow from our limitations that we have no insight or control at all.

You are assuming the development of living organisms (and rational beings into the bargain) has been produced by purposeless events.
The very fact that we have such amazing knowledge that the universe exists and the amazing power to destroy all life on this planet is a formidable objection to your assumption that we are merely insignificant cogs in a vast machine which just happens to exist for no reason whatsoever.

Great post, Tony.

 

[Credo_in_Deum]

I think it’s a huge mistake to think science is the only means to gather evidence; such a standard it too rigid and closes off one’s ability to take in other evidence that exists. If someone asked me how does water boil on the stove I could reply by saying it’s because h2o molecules bounce around causing friction, heat, etc…, or I could just as easily reply by saying because someone turned on the stove, or someone wanted tea.

 

[Julia_Mae]

How do you demonstrate that thinking is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence that biochemical reactions have insight of any description.
How do you demonstrate that the power to understand and control natural processes is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence whatsoeve that biochemical reactions have any understanding whatsoever.

Ay, there’s the rub - for the materialist. Matter is supposed to have magically acquired the power to understand and control itself!
Irrelevant. You have obviously not bothered to read anything by Stanley Jaki or anything opposed to your views.
An unsupported dogmatic assertion which is obviously false. We control ourselves as well as our environment.
Non sequitur. It doesn’t follow from our limitations that we have no insight or control at all.

You are assuming the development of living organisms (and rational beings into the bargain) has been produced by purposeless events.
The very fact that we have such amazing knowledge that the universe exists and the amazing power to destroy all life on this planet is a formidable objection to your assumption that we are merely insignificant cogs in a vast machine which just happens to exist for no reason whatsoever.

I’ve been posting on forums for almost two decades. This is one of the best posts I’ve ever read on this topic.

 

[Sair]

Is there a WILL and DESIGN behind these supposed “controls,” though?

If not, then are you saying somehow these “controls” made themselves “workable” and “feasible” RANDOMLY?

Just asking…

If there is a will or a designer, how would we know? A lot of people claim they know by ‘intuition’, but I’ve seldom seen anyone unpack precisely what that means and how it doesn’t represent mere wishful thinking. ID proponents like to propose “theories” like “irreducible complexity” but that is just a way of shutting down enquiry, rather than a serious attempt to examine any evidence. Some people used to claim that eyes were irreducibly complex, but that idea has been thoroughly debunked, largely on the basis of finding examples in nature of pretty much every intermediate stage from light-sensitive cells through to highly complex eyes such as those of eagles. There’s nothing inherently problematic in hypothesising that chemical replicators (RNA and DNA) underwent gradual self-assembly, through perfectly natural processes, from simpler molecules. The point is that in order to actually understand how this might have happened, if it happened, observation and experiment are necessary. It doesn’t advance our comprehension one jot to arrive at DNA and simply say, “Well, I can’t figure out how this could have come about. Someone must have designed it.”

I will add my attempt to the many that have already been made to clear up the apparently persistent confusion between “random” and “undesigned”. Randomness - that is, the nature of events that have no directly determining cause, like the onset of decay in radioactive isotopes, or mutations and variations in recombinant DNA, or the output of a random number generator - is not the alternative to design. It plays its role in the causal chain, to be sure, but it is only a small part of the story. Natural selection is the non-random survival and replication of particular combinations of genes. It is non-random because this survival is dependent upon all those environmental conditions that come to bear upon the survival and reproduction rates of the organisms in question. I repeat, this is a non-random process, but that does not mean it requires a designer or a conscious will to guide it. As for control mechanisms, you only need to look, for example, to the delicate balance between predator and prey species in many parts of the world. For millions of years, these balances have ensured that the populations of these animals remain such that the environment can sustain them. There need not be any designer driving such a process - natural forces by themselves can bring it about perfectly well. By all means, posit a level of “reality” above and beyond all this - but while you’re at it, do explain also how any purported reality that fails to make an impression upon our senses and experience, remains inaccessible to scientific investigation, and of itself makes no discernible impact on our world, is in any way relevant to our existence.

 

[tonyrey]

*How do you demonstrate that thinking is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence that biochemical reactions have insight of any description.
How do you demonstrate that the power to understand and control natural processes is caused by natural processes? There is no evidence whatsoeve that biochemical reactions have any understanding whatsoever.

Thank you, Julia. Having specialised in the subject for more than five decades I would be extremely dim-witted if I hadn’t discovered anything!

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

If there is a will or a designer, how would we know? A lot of people claim they know by ‘intuition’, but I’ve seldom seen anyone unpack precisely what that means and how it doesn’t represent mere wishful thinking. ID proponents like to propose “theories” like “irreducible complexity” but that is just a way of shutting down enquiry, rather than a serious attempt to examine any evidence. Some people used to claim that eyes were irreducibly complex, but that idea has been thoroughly debunked, largely on the basis of finding examples in nature of pretty much every intermediate stage from light-sensitive cells through to highly complex eyes such as those of eagles. There’s nothing inherently problematic in hypothesising that chemical replicators (RNA and DNA) underwent gradual self-assembly, through perfectly natural processes, from simpler molecules. The point is that in order to actually understand how this might have happened, if it happened, observation and experiment are necessary. It doesn’t advance our comprehension one jot to arrive at DNA and simply say, “Well, I can’t figure out how this could have come about. Someone must have designed it.”

I will add my attempt to the many that have already been made to clear up the apparently persistent confusion between “random” and “undesigned”. Randomness - that is, the nature of events that have no directly determining cause, like the onset of decay in radioactive isotopes, or mutations and variations in recombinant DNA, or the output of a random number generator - is not the alternative to design. It plays its role in the causal chain, to be sure, but it is only a small part of the story. Natural selection is the non-random survival and replication of particular combinations of genes. It is non-random because this survival is dependent upon all those environmental conditions that come to bear upon the survival and reproduction rates of the organisms in question. I repeat, this is a non-random process, but that does not mean it requires a designer or a conscious will to guide it. As for control mechanisms, you only need to look, for example, to the delicate balance between predator and prey species in many parts of the world. For millions of years, these balances have ensured that the populations of these animals remain such that the environment can sustain them. There need not be any designer driving such a process - natural forces by themselves can bring it about perfectly well. By all means, posit a level of “reality” above and beyond all this - but while you’re at it, do explain also how any purported reality that fails to make an impression upon our senses and experience, remains inaccessible to scientific investigation, and of itself makes no discernible impact on our world, is in any way relevant to our existence.

I understand what you are saying------but I have to say:

I’m not a statistician (VERY far from it) but I would bet the probability of self-developing and replication occurring naturally over a long period of time is astronomical.

Just saying. Again…

 

[Sair]

I understand what you are saying------but I have to say:

I’m not a statistician (VERY far from it) but I would bet the probability of self-developing and replication occurring naturally over a long period of time is astronomical.

Just saying. Again…

I’m no statistician either, but highly improbable or not, the development of self-replicating molecules, leading to life as we know it, only had to happen once in order for us to be here considering it. Once in 13.4 billion years…sounds pretty improbable to me. Just saying…

 

[Sair]

Thank you, Julia. Having specialised in the subject for more than five decades I would be extremely dim-witted if I hadn’t discovered anything!

Your post was full of little other than flat denial of the possibility that humans are natural beings - and the insistence that if we are so, we can only be cogs in a machine. That seems like a false dichotomy to me - souls or cogs. Can’t you imagine anything in between, any alternative explanation for human abilities other than magic? In your five+ decades of study, have you found any explanation for how supernatural entities, whatever they are, can interact with natural entities?

 

[jimmy]

Science is essentially empiricicism coupled with reason. Theology purports to be reasonable. From a scientific perspective, what is its value if it doesn’t have any empirical relevance? Whys should someone believe something that has no bearing on empirical reality? Why should I believe something that has no effect on me; considering the fact that I am a phycal being?

 

[Sair]

Is this a joke? I mean obviously you don’t believe this last sentence. Science produces false conclusions under bogus presuppositions, as well; it doesn’t follow we ought to abandon science. If you follow scientific journals at all you’ll routinely see letters suggesting a revision to the way another author interpreted his findings, follow-up analyses attacking the spin others attach to their findings, etc. That part of it – qualitative analysis of statistical results, the part of it that matters most – is ludicrously subjective, yet literally no one anywhere thinks science is, as a result, worthless.

The point was to respond to the general flavour of this thread, in which many of those posting seem to hold science in very low esteem, since it is “merely” concerned with physical reality - such subjective philosophical discussions as people have regarding the interpretations and alternative relationships between various empirical findings would, I assume, be regarded as “non-physical” by those who consider science in this light.

I would suggest there are those who indeed do believe science to be worthless when it comes to considering questions of spirituality, for example, or the existence or otherwise of gods. What I would ask is that if such is the case, how exactly does one discern the content of a field of study such as spirituality or theology? What is it, exactly, that makes theology, for example, different to something like literary criticism?

Consider two possible points of view on the proposition that we are spiritual beings: one point of view - the supernaturalist point of view - takes as a fundamental premise the idea that there is some aspect of the human animal (not that they’d call us that!) that is not physical, that is, in fact, not in any way bound by laws of physics and yet is able to act to control the actions of the body it inhabits; and also able to sense the “higher” things of the universe, such as love, beauty, justice (which have an ideal existence all of their own) and connect with God, who is “pure spirit”, whilst we are adulterated by the flesh.

An alternative point of view does not adopt the premise that we are supernatural, but instead starts from the assumption that whatever we are, we are susceptible to explanation. It might then examine the question of precisely why it is that we feel like we have this ‘other’ entity within our bodies that seems to govern, at least to some extent, our choices and actions. It does not assume that love, beauty, justice and other abstract universals have an independent existence that somehow influences our behaviour because we can “sense” them at a spiritual level, but entertains the possibility that these abstract universals may in fact be our mental shorthand, so to speak, for states of affairs in the real world.

Some would see the latter approach as “reductive”, or somehow belittling to human experience - if we are not really connecting with other spiritual entities, then we don’t really have spiritual experiences at all! Well, actually we do - it’s just that these experiences might not be what we imagine them to be. That doesn’t mean that they don’t matter to us, nor does it mean we should shy away from investigating them by whatever means we have to hand, for fear of shattering our own illusions. What happens if a scientific, natural philosophy approach doesn’t tell us what we want to hear? Do we reject it and just invent, on an ad hoc basis, the content of our philosophy from then on? Do we say, “Well, that explanation didn’t satisfy me - it must be that there are some other things going on that science just can’t discern”? What does it mean, after all, to seek the truth if not to allow ourselves to be confident that our perceptions and expectations correspond to what is really going on in the world?

 

[Godmachine]

I’m sorry, but I do not think so.

Science’s domain concerns explaining the world of nature and its phenomena.

It is PHILOSOPHY (and Religion) that explain Reality, not science.

Why can science not compliment religion (philosophy)? How do you define "reality anyway?

Anybody who thinks Science=Reality is under the spell of Scientism, and that is faith-based.

Perhaps people who do not understand science think science = reality. That is NOT what science says. Those who understand science say that science provides the best explanation for observed phenomena. I happen to agree with them.

And true science is NOT faith-based in any way. It concerns studying and explaining (defined) natural phenomena. NOT reality.

Since when is natural phenomena NOT reality? Again, how are you defining “reality”?

Got this explanation from a response in another forum. Parapharsed this somewhat and added “religion” to it. Made by a scientist, as a matter fact.

Thought it wa a cool response to a question asked there.

Anybody agree/disagree with it?

So far I disagree. Please elaborate.

 

[BobCatholic]

Is the natural world not reality

Sarah x

Is the natural world ALL of reality?

Can natural science answer all questions about reality? If yes, please tell me the answers to the following questions.

1. What is the mathematical equation of Love?
2. What is its chemical formula?
3. What is the biological cell structure of love?
4. Using the scientific method, please tell me why Dr. Mengele was out of line.
5. Using the principles of calculus, please calculate the mathematical formula that will tell me exactly when I will get my next job.

Of course, I’m making an interesting type of point by asking those questions. They cannot answered because of jurisdictional issues. All the answers to those questions involve things in reality that are outside the jurisdiction of natural science.

Love does exist in reality, natural science cannot measure it. Dr. Mengele was out of line, and that was in reality, natural science cannot condemn him… My future job may be a reality (don’t know yet, nobody did the math for me yet ) - but the future, though unknown, is in reality.

I’m still trying to find out Who put the ram In the rama lama ding dong…but maybe science will answer that question too

Natural science has its jurisdiction. Supernatural science has its jurisdiction…

 

[Qoeleth]

It would seem that ‘reality’ is simply a cultural and linguistic construction, and not a meaningful one at that. To have a notion of ‘reality’ requires a notion of something ‘other than reality’- a word which is all inclusive can have no communicative value (e.g. if there was never any nightime, would we have a word for ‘day’? No. It would be a useless word.)

Now, anything ‘other-than-reality’ is, by definition, non-existent, fictional.

Since the existence of the concept ‘reality’ depends upon the idea of ‘other-than-reality’, which does not exist, it follows that ‘reality’ is a meaningless concept.

Moreover, science itself is a form of fiction. It proceeds on the assumption that their are various ‘classes’ of things (numbers, planets, trees, etc.). Now such classes, as shown by William of Ockham, are simply mental concepts or fictions. Therefore, the material of scientific hypothesis is fiction.