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I had a semantic insight the other day. It makes more sense to think of scientific theories as analogies, rather than as scientific laws or truths.

For example, Newton’s theories about gravity are not true. There is no case where they are true. His theories are analogies expressed in a language called mathematics that says gravity behaves ‘like’ this. He never says gravity ‘is’ this. That’s not to imply his analogies are not useful. They predict the behavior of gravity so closely that you can fly a spaceship to the moon and back again based on them. Pretty powerful analogies indeed.

But, like all analogies, they are more relevant to some aspects of reality than to others. When contemplating the very large, like galaxies and black holes, they are less useful.

To the rescue comes Einstein with new theories. His theories provide deeper insight into the nature of space and time. But they are not true either. They are especially inaccurate when describing the very small. But his analogies were powerful enough to imply the viability of the building of the atomic bomb.

People are working on new analogies all the time. Quantum physics is particularly popular at the moment precisely because accurate analogies describing the very small are in short supply.

There are scientific theories about phenomenon, and then there is phenomenon itself. Which is – all that is. A theory can never encapsulate all that is. Theories are encapsulated by – all that is.

It may seem that I’m splitting hairs here. But remembering that scientific theories are just helpful analogies keeps us from falling into the trap of believing that they are the truth. The moment you believe it is the truth – science becomes just another religion.