@lillycoyote I’m not sure if you understand, but maybe I can clarify.
1. We understand a lot of the natural world, but a lot of that knowledge is recent and the result of new ways of looking at things.
2. The greatest minds of history who tried to deduce the nature of the world all failed, and accurate knowledge only started to be accumulated on a broad scale when people started running experiments to check their hypotheses against reality. Aristotle (I think) thought that projectiles could only travel in straight lines, so they went diagonally up and vertically down. It wasn’t until Galileo checked this theory with experiments that parabolic motion was found. This question was sparked by the book I am reading, The Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza. He uses pure reason with few examples, and although he comes up with some startlingly accurate ideas, others are way off base because he did not test his hypotheses with experiments.
3. For the background to this claim, see this video. Of course we rely on our perceptions, since we have no means of gathering data that does not rely on perception, but science teaches us to measure rather than stating impressions.
4. As many others, and yourself, have pointed out, this point was not clear. Intuition and reason are what we rely on most, and for the most (maybe all) of history that has been the case. However, when we rely solely on reason to guide us, we slowly diverge from reality unless we run experiments to check hypotheses against reality. For this reason, high level theoretical physics has not progressed significantly in quite some time. There are numerous competing hypotheses that are all logically consistent to a greater or lesser extent, but none of them are able to be tested to date although the LHC will get us closer so none are yet confirmed or rejected.
@ETpro I do not laugh at the achievements of the ancients. What I am saying is that pondering and reasoning can easily lead you astray when it is not checked with facts in the manner that modern science does.
@Nullo If you can provide a rival theory that is as successful as evolution, I’m sure the whole scientific community will be listening. Until then, I will continue to assume it is the most successful theory we have and build upon it as such.