How is scientific study always an ongoing process?

Answer 1

There are a couple of levels to this question.

First off science is ongoing in one sense because it is a process of deduction (and occasionally induction) supported by observation. We conclude that something is "true" to a certain degree of reliability when a certain number of observations have been taken confirming it. But there is always the possibility, however remote, that contrary observations regarding a phenomenon might be made. There is no rule that says if we see 100 consistent observations we are allowed to ignore the inconsistent observation.

Secondly, our methods of observation (and analysis of observation) are always improving. At any given time we can for the most part only describe the universe or a part of it as effectively as our instruments allow us (allowing for a certain conservative amount of inspired induction). Over the past several hundred years the quality of instruments for observation has improved by orders of magnitude. This necessarily changes the way we look at conclusions we came to in the past. It was the ability to do very precise calculations with electromagnetic radiation in the lat 19th century that set the stage for Einstein's innovations of Newton's theories of physics.

Thirdly, major discoveries in one area often change the way we look at other areas and this causes old certitudes to be revisited. At some point in the late 18th or early 19th century scientists began to realize the world was older than a few thousand years as it had always been believed to be. This opened the floodgates of inquiry in astronomy, geology, physics and related disciplines. It also legitimized the time scale required by Darwin's contemporaneous Theory of Evolution. One of the things about a paradigm shift is that all of our old certitudes must be reevaluated.

Finally, at one level science is a tool for inquiry into what is that provides us with a metaphor for what is that is intellectually comprehensible to us. There are often more than one valid metaphor possible for the same set of phenomena and changes in the temperament of society or the requirements of the time and place may suggest a shift in the way we look at things without the old way of looking at things being entirely incorrect. Ideally scientists are capable of seeing more than one way of looking at a thing at the same time (If I may use a crude example, scientists are not sure whether light - or for that matter - at the atomic and subatomic level is compose of particles or waves - I think most scientists now regard the difference as irrelevant for the question at hand but for a while there was something of a debate. For a long time there has been a practice of focuing on particle like properties when that is convenient and wave like properties when that is convenient without deciding that such subatomic things are either one or the other) So to an extent as long as people are capable of novel and potentially useful new ways of looking at things, even without new information, science -or rather the picture of the world science shows us- may continue to change over time.

Answer 2

because something new is always happening