I really liked this article. The author gave real substantive answers to almost all the questions. I would have liked to have more detail on his critique of t

I really liked this article. The author gave real substantive answers to almost all the questions. I would have liked to have more detail on his critique of the "guess and check" approach to science. My own opinion is that there is a very good reason why scientific progress follows the pattern he describes, of new theories being based on either new experiments, or in depth analysis of existing theories. The reason is that science relies on belief in objective reality, and yet we don't know what objective reality is. So in order to reason about what the universe really is, the best and only starting point is our current model(s) of physics. The moment we make an assumption about what reality is that isn't based in physical theory, we are liable to be wrong. For example, Newton was criticized for his theory of gravity, because people knew that reality was composed of little machine-like objects, interacting at a microscopic scale. There was no room in this worldview for Newton's "occult" force of gravity which acted at a distance.