The limitations of human cognition. Due to the inadaptability to the abstraction and complexity of science, as well as the limited attention and thinking mode of the brain, the complex natural phenomena and scientific principles are not thoroughly understood, and it is easy to produce wrong ideas.

Incomplete scientific knowledge. Due to the continuous development and evolution of scientific knowledge, at a certain stage, people may only know a part of scientific knowledge without a deeper explanation. This kind of incomplete knowledge will lead to wrong ideas when explaining and understanding some phenomena.

scientific research

Scientific research can be marked as basic research or applied research. Basic research is the exploration of knowledge, while applied research is the use of this knowledge to find ways to solve practical problems.

Although some scientific research is applied to specific problems, much of our knowledge comes from basic research driven by curiosity. This leads to the choice of technological progress is unplanned, and sometimes even unimaginable.

For example, studying the influence of red light on human eyes seems to have no practical use; Finally, it is found that our night vision is not disturbed by red lights, which will lead search and rescue teams to use red lights in the cockpit of jet planes and helicopters. Finally, even basic research may have unexpected changes, and a scientific method of using luck has been established in a sense.

Mathematical formal science

In natural science and social science, mathematics is very important for the formation of hypotheses, theories and laws. For example, it can be used for quantitative scientific modeling to generate new hypotheses and predictions to be tested. It is also widely used to observe and collect measured values. Statistics is a branch of mathematics, which is used to summarize and analyze data so that scientists can evaluate the reliability and variability of their experimental results.

Computational science uses computing power to simulate the real world, which makes people understand scientific problems better than simple formal mathematics. According to the Association of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, calculation is as important as theory and experiment in improving scientific knowledge.