I cannot recall the quote precisely but the great mathematician and physicist, Albert Einstein, was quoted as saying something to the effect that no amount of experimentation could prove any of his work to be true and it would take but a single experiment to prove it false.
We accept scientific evidence and the mathematical models as true until a better explanation comes along, we learn more about the observed phenomena, or it is proven to be wrong. In that sense I contend we do take scientific theory on faith based on what we know and can explain at any given point in our understanding. I was taught atoms were the smallest elements of matter, then there were protons, neutrons, and electrons, that lasted until quarks came along, and today the theoretical physicists are working on string theory as the one in the same largest and smallest elements of matter and energy.
It strikes me that all scientific knowledge is genuinely a working hypothesis that we accept on faith as true until more or better understanding comes along.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
