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To repeat previous statements, whatever we may choose to call truth is a product of our having made connections and differentiations. Everything that we know is the product of our mind having formed a web of connections. Our brain goes blank if we cannot make connections. And In making connections we create a mental map. We gather particular information and fit it into our map of reality. We do not grasp reality whole or complete. Given the vastness of the world microscopically and out into the cosmos, none of us can draw all of the interconnections completely, or with finality.
Scientists refine what they perceive as best they can. They hypothesize, waiting for someone to make a more sophisticated approximation. Scientists entertain uncertainty as a condition they must live with. They live with the induction fallacy. For example, one might see nothing but white swans all his life and conclude that all swans are white; then his theory is destroyed: he sees a black swan.
Scientists have what they call the "uncertainty principle." It is their concern with limitations in measurement. To measure with certainty one needs to know the whole, which they consider impossible, and to discard measurement entirely would be absurd, so they measure as best they can.
There is a difference between science as method and the philosophy of science - although the scientific method has origins in philosophy. People are free to employ the scientific method who reject the philosophy of science. The science of biology can be taught in a classroom without teaching the philosophy of science. Science as method addresses empirical questions, and one can work at science separate from a belief in the supernatural.
The philosophy of science holds that people should limit their beliefs to that which is empirical, in other words exclude that which is supernatural. The philosophy of science is agnostic about matters beyond the empirical.
Some who include metaphysics in their philosophy accuse science of being weak because it is uncertain. And among them are those who accuse adherents to the philosophy of science as having run from the question of God. And some describe agnostics as well as atheists as being as metaphysical as they. They see no difference between their claims to knowing the mysteries of the whole and someone saying "I do not know."
People who say they do not believe in God have a problem of definition. What do they mean by God? Whose definition of God? God can be defined as nature as a whole - another philosophical problem. Those who adhere to the philosophy of science are compelled to avoid trying to prove metaphysics erroneous. If they are to remain true to their agnosticism they must be more modest than those who pretend that they know the whole.
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