Why reason isn't science
Nonscientists commonly view science through the lens of reason. Unfortunately reason alone is often misleading. If reason alone sufficed to understand the natural world, the ancient Greeks would have understood it as well as we do. Many scientific principles defy reason and many more aren't readily apprehended by reason alone. Scientific principles arise from the hypothetico-deductive method which differs substantially from pure reason.
Gravity involves interactions among disconnected bodies. No known physical structure or particle mediates gravity. This troubled Newton's early readers and should still trouble those who rely on reason alone. Despite it's unreasonableness, Newton's formulation successfully predicts interactions between masses. The ability to predict makes gravity successful science.
According to Einstein, energy and mass are two forms of the same thing. This is counterintuitive if not totally unreasonable. Nonetheless Einstein's formulation precipitated startling discoveries and continues to make useful predictions.
Modern understanding of atomic structure is that atoms are mostly empty space. Neither reason nor common sense suggest this.
Scientific laws and theories aren't necessarily reasonable. To be scientific they must only make useful (and testable) predictions. Bear this in mind in regard to the theory of evolution. Many aspects of evolution seem unreasonable. Nonetheless evolution makes useful predictions. Unreasonableness per se isn't a useful argument against evolution.
Reliance on reason alone leads to serious misunderstandings of science.
