Here is perhaps the most important fact about scientific method that anybody can ever learn: the optimal course of a scientific investigation is to
provide probability assignments for propositions about the universe, and when scientific method deviates from this optimum path, it is valid only to the
extent that it successfully approximates this ideal. There is a simple reason
for this:
We would love to be able
to say that we are 100% certain about X, that Y is guaranteed to be true, or
that fact Z about the universe has somehow entered my head and impressed infallible knowledge of its necessary truth on my mind, but of course, except for the most
trivial propositions, none of these is possible.
Secondly, and far more
fundamentally, calibration of any instrument requires certain symmetries of
physical law to be hypothesized. Here's what I mean:
