Peter asked:

I have been doing some reading in scientific thought. I would greatly appreciate some direction and or
thoughts on the following two points:

*If a science such as physics tries to base its conclusions on the "truths" of the universe, even though
scientists try hold to the ideal that their conclusions are not a naive view of what is really true by not
depending directly on their perceptions via the senses, are not all of their theories derived at some
point and founded on the percepts derived from the very senses from which they do not trust?

*Since science operates empirically on induction is it not much more than a leap of faith that even a
million experiments is too small a sample to conclude within a reasonable confidence limit, since all
the possible experiments that could be done far exceeds those that ever will be done...so much so
that those that are done add up to a number approaching zero as those that could be done approach
infinity?

1. Your first question reminded me of Bertrand Russell. A quick internet search unearthed the
   following famous, or infamous quote:

Physics assures us that the occurrences which we call "perceiving" objects, are not likely to resemble
the objects except, at best, in certain very abstract ways. We all start from "naive realism", i.e., the
doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that the grass is green, that stones are hard, that
the snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the
coldness of snow, are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own
experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a
stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of a stone upon himself. Thus
science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into
subjectivity against its will...

And now the famous bit:

...Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false.
Therefore naive realism, if true is false; therefore it is false".

Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truthp. 15, 1950. Unwin Paperbacks, London.

Do we have to accept that physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false? And if we do, does it
matter? I used to think that physics does show that naive realism is false, but that it doesn't matter.
That's what Russell seems to be saying. Physics can still be true, so to hell with our common sense
beliefs about the world of our sense perception.

I now think that Russell is far too quick to concede the sceptical argument against the common sense
or naive view of perception. Just because a chain of physical causes and effects is involved in human
perception, it doesn't follow that when I seem to perceive a chair, what I really 'perceive' is Russellian
sense data, or the product of processes going on in my own brain.

However, so far as your question is concerned, what I think isn't important. Either way, physics is still
true.

2. Your worry about induction seems at first sight very plausible. Once again I am reminded of
   Russell. (I won't quote him this time.) Picture this. Each day, as the sun goes down, the farmyard
   chicken says, 'I wasn't slaughtered today.' So, each day, the inductive evidence in favour of the
   proposition, 'I won't be slaughtered tomorrow' increases. — Are we really in a better position than
   Russell's chicken?

The chicken's problem is that it lacks the bigger picture. That is always a worry. You thought all
swans were white, but you have never visited New Zealand. There is always a doubt whether or not
we have selected a representative sample.Even if we put aside that worry, however, there still seems
to be a huge discrepancy between the small number of cases examined, and the number of cases
that have not been examined, so small, in fact as to make the number of examined cases diminish to
an infinitesimal fraction as we increase the angle of view to take in the whole universe.

The worry is groundless. To see this, imagine the following case. There is a large barrel in the
cupboard with boiled sweets. The barrel is too big to move, and there is no light in the cupboard. So
you fish around, right to the bottom, grab several handfulls of sweets, and examine them in the light
of day. Every single one of the sweets is red. Provided the sweets are picked at random so that you
have a representative sample, that is excellent evidence that the large majority of sweets in the barrel
are red, even if your sample is only a small fraction of the whole. This is what common sense tells us,
and what the mathematics of probability theory confirms.

Of course, you can't use this method to prove that every single sweet in the barrel is red. You can't
prove that there isn't one blue sweet down there somewhere. The point to make here is that the
example of the jam barrel differs in one crucial respect from gathering evidence for scientific theories:
the generalizations we seek to gather inductive evidence for in science are lawlike.If there is a
contrary instance somewhere, then we shall look for, and can expect to find a relevant difference that
explains it.

Geoffrey Klempner