This question is really about the scientific method and what underpins it.
Science is not just a method in the way that it is so often characterised. Science is an attitude to learning and investigation that differs from all others because it continually measures it's results against reality. The methods of science have been developed as the best means of negating bias, filtering out falsehoods and achieving the most accurate results when researching the physical world.
Independenetly repeatable research, verification through prediction, refutation of hypotheses through experimentation, statisitical error analysis, peer review etc etc etc.
These are all components of the scientific method but what underlies them and makes science what it is in the first place?
It seems to me that implicit in the scientific method is an assumption that there is an objective reality and that science is the quest to better understand this objective reality by discovering universal truths.
When we "do science" what are we testing our theories against? What makes one theory better than another? When we include experimental errors in results is there conceivably a result that is without error (i.e. a truth)?
My question is - Does there need to be an objective reality with universal truths for the scientific method to be valid?
Is it possible to be a scientist and not believe in an objective reality containing ultimate truths?
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