[js1138]

Math, logic and philosophy may provide intellectual tools compatible with science, but they are not science. Science is speculative and messy. Its primary tool is not deductive reasoning, but rather inventing or creating explanations. Some people like to assert that science discovers things. It does do this, but there is a huge difference between discovering something like a fossilized trilobite, and describing how it got to the place you found it.

Critics of science like to ridicule forensic sciences like geology and paleontology as inventing "just so" stories. What they fail to understand is the iterative process of telling the story, working out the necessary context of the story, and searching for supporting evidence.

You don't build fundamental paradigms like evolution overnight from deductive reasoning. You build it year by year, decade by decade, from speculation to evidence to refined speculation.

[rwfromkansas]

There is a difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, but one can pick that up pretty quickly if they are smart enough.

[rwfromkansas]

Though no doubt you only truly learn inductive reasoning by doing it a lot via science class.