I think both are wrong.

Science has a word encompasses a broad variety of definitions and practices. The philosophical question of the relationship of empiricism to truth (because fundamentally the question has more to do with the relationship between observations and deductions than science in itself) is a complex one and overall of little interest to actual practitioners of science. It can’t easily be subsumed in broad aphorisms.

I would hazard that most modern sciences - and physics especially - are nowadays mostly concerned about building models and the resulting predictions. The question then often becomes: does the tool I have built allow me to correctly predict how observations will unfold? The answer to which is often more shades of grey than simply yes or no.

Maybe you think you saw a black swan around the orbit of Jupiter with your new fancy telescope, but later you figure out that the telescope was falty and the swan you saw was actually white.

Because science depends on the external world, and there might always be hidden variables that we are not considering, it can only give us extremely high confidence after we make repeated observations using different methods, but it cannot give us the absolute confidence that Math can give us.

Also, this example of faulty telescopes is actually really close to what actually happened in the history of astronomy. Stars were thought to have a visible radius that made them appear to be much larger than the Sun, which was considered evidence that the Sun was not a regular star.

Science (as in the “natural sciences”, ie.: everything that is not philosophy or mathematics) is not about “proving” anything at all.

Science is about measuring, quantifying and qualifying uncertainty.

I answer it here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41851265

If you want to learn more look up Karl popper. It’s his philosophy.

In response to the other sibling replies I’m basically talking about science as in the scientific method. What are the limits of the scientific method in terms of determining truth?

One thing that isn’t addressed is fundamentally limited accuracy and precision of observational instruments. This actually makes things not falsifiable as well but I don’t talk about this because it complicates everything.