Comment Re:He didn't say that (Score 1) 142
Well, I would strike the word "true" from the Socrates statement.
The problem with this is that all knowledge should be seen as tentative because we cannot separate the model we build from our understanding of what we are modelling. Every scientific theory is a model, and every scientific theory will probably be superceded by a different one at some point. So what we mean by truth in science is about predictive value, not about ontological value.
So for example, Newtonian gravity is true. It has predictive value. A very different understanding of gravity found in relativity theory is slightly more true, in the sense that it has slightly better predictive value. Sometime we will probably have an even more true, and yet similarly ontologically incompatible understanding of gravity.
As Heisenberg put it, E=mc^2 is nothing more than a quantified version of Heraclitus's statement that fire is the prima materia.....