Abstract
Traditionally, scientific enquiry has presupposed a relatively simple relationship between our empirical evidence and the facts of reality. For example, we presume that our memories and records are approximately correct representations of the actual course of past history, and we presume that most of the events which actually occur are events made either certain or probable by underlying physical laws. Such assumptions seem to be necessary if ordinary scientific methods of formulating deterministic or probabilistic laws are ever to get off the ground. But developments in the fields of both statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics have begun to give us specific reasons to question these assumptions, since both theories explicitly undermine our beliefs about the causal links between records of the past and actual past events. In light of such considerations, questions about the reliability of memories and records cannot be relegated to philosophical scepticism, but must be taken seriously as part of contemporary science and as indicators of possible new directions for the development of science.
Emily Christine Adlam