A purely Scientific Endeavor is one in which impartial observation, data, and rigorous rational logic are applied to the attempt to understand a thing without regard to preference for a particular outcome. For this reason, it stands apart from purely faith based endeavors, or intention based endeavors, or politically based endeavors. Now it turns out that no endeavor proceeds without a certain mixture of faith, intention, politics, or impartial observation. Thus, no scientific endeavor is devoid of faith or intention influenced biases, for example. Since we do not, and can't, know everything about a matter at any one time, not even science can proceed without a certain amount of faith.

What sets a legitimate scientific endeavor apart, however, is that good scientists recognize that their assumptions are just that, assumptions. They may not be proven. And thus they are open to the possibility that one or more of their assumptions (faiths, biases, etc.,) may prove false, or incomplete. As inconvenient or embarrassing or troubling as that might be.

This is the essence of skepticism. Skepticism is embraced by all GOOD and uncorrupted scientists because it leads to the uncovering of Truths that are often masked both by the limitations of our perceptive abilities and our own favored biases and assumptions. Skeptics find Truth to be most precious. In the end, understanding and sharing a more complete truth ranks as among the more thrilling, and satisfying experiences a scientist can have.

Not all (in fact, probably, not most) people derive thrill from scientific endeavors. They find their happiness elsewhere. And that is all well and good. Usually. The complications arise when someone thinking non-scientifically insists that they are thinking scientifically, or that a non-scientific approach has equal validity to a scientific one. Without getting too far into labels and semantics, two different approaches may both have value, but they often will not tell you the same thing. They may tell you two different sides of the same thing, but not the same thing. And easy example would be to consider viewing an object from the bottom or the top. Both views may have value, and thus what they are telling us may be valid, but the view from the top tells us very little about the bottom, and vise versa.

Other resources weigh in:

• A dictionary definition of skepticism
• Wiki on Skepticism
• Wikipedia on The Scientific Method

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