Science: not facts, but a state of mind

Amanda Schaeffer reviews NY Times science reporter Natalie Angier's new book, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science:

... "Science is not a body of facts. Science is a state of mind," she writes, noting that researchers typically recognize the provisional nature of discoveries, revel in skepticism and are spurred by uncertainty (even as they project authority and credibility to the general public).

"Working scientists don't think of science as 'the truth,' " Darcy Kelley, a neuroscientist at Columbia, tells her. "They think of it as a way of approximating the truth."

Nobel Laureate David Baltimore adds, "As our concepts become more precise, more sophisticated, the absolutes become less absolute."

(Extra paragraphing added.)

Theologians, take note.