The assumptions of science

[Mister Agenda]

I guess I should have made more clear why I posted that quote. You said, "Those aren't assumptions. They're things we've already learned." I posted the quote to amplify what you were saying and put some context to "things we've already learned." I did that because the term, "learned", is vague in this context. How much certainty is implied by the word "learned"? The bit about auxiliaries was to show that though we may be applying things that we "learned" in the past, those "learned" things have their own uncertainties and those uncertainties should be accounted for in determining the uncertainty of the current experiment - that is, we should not assume that the auxiliaries are certain though they have been "learned" about in the past. I wasn't sure what your statement "those aren't assumptions" was about and you put that statement together with one about "already learned" things, so I posted the quote and link in hopes that that would clarify the issue of how "aren't assumptions" relates to "things we have learned".

Thanks for clarifying, Entropy.