> It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific theories, we are not really all that concerned with truth.
Isn't truth the only thing science cares about?
Of course truth alone doesn't mean much and we usually conduct science not just for the sake of it, but those are downstream concerns.
> Are Newton's laws "true"? Well, they work reliably given certain constraints and they are definitely more simple than other theories, so it would be stupid not to use them.
Science doesn't necessitate any "reliability" on the theories/premises it uses. You set up your premise apply your theory to it and reach a conclusion.
It's up to others (i.e. engineers) to worry about how valid the premises are.
Deciding to use or not use some other theory as a premise isn't about being or not being "stupid" but rather about being able to prove something that others (be it scientists or engineers) will be interested in reading.
You can't get to the truth from science. You can only build a model of reality.
The degree with which that model corresponds with reality is a measure of truth, for some definitions of truth. But it's still always a map, a projection from reality according to some set of rules. It never actually is reality.
The thing that science cares about is building a better model of reality. Better models mean better predictions and better storytelling. The former is highly useful. The latter, I'm not so sure. Convincing storytelling can elevate a model higher than it's worth. There's a lot of storytelling in macroeconomics, and similarly in evolutionary biology's just-so stories.
I wonder if viewing science through the lens of "true" stories about reality, rather than as a ratchet for generating more precise predictive models, encourages overweighted stories too much.
Not really. Truth is what math cares about. In science, there is no truth, there is just what is measurable, but that's just a proxy for reality, not the objective truth. Then you work with whatever measurements you have and try to predict more measurements.
Isn't truth the only thing science cares about?
Of course truth alone doesn't mean much and we usually conduct science not just for the sake of it, but those are downstream concerns.
> Are Newton's laws "true"? Well, they work reliably given certain constraints and they are definitely more simple than other theories, so it would be stupid not to use them.
Science doesn't necessitate any "reliability" on the theories/premises it uses. You set up your premise apply your theory to it and reach a conclusion.
It's up to others (i.e. engineers) to worry about how valid the premises are.
Deciding to use or not use some other theory as a premise isn't about being or not being "stupid" but rather about being able to prove something that others (be it scientists or engineers) will be interested in reading.