I think physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, from whom I derive my perhaps ignorant conclusions, is right on two accounts:
1.)
Statements of fact are facts only when society agrees that they are. For all intents and purposes, when the geocentric theory was around, it was a
fact that the sun revolved around the earth. To think otherwise was blasphemous. Even though geocentricism did not reflect how the universe ACTUALLY works, you must agree that society can only operate in the parameters of what it knows. What we determine to be fact, therefore, is independent of what is actually the case. In other words, what we determine to be fact is inherently subjective social convention.
2.)
The basis upon which someone adheres to what they perceive to be correct is ultimately a leap of faith. There are several ways to make sense of the world. You can make an outright assumption and hope for the best. Or, you can rationalize inductively with your previous experience. Finally, you can test it, via scientific method. Each and every one of these ways requires a sense of 'faith' to work. That's clearly the case with the first way -- you just assume it works and move on. The second case is more profound because you have to leap across the problem of induction (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_problem_of_induction). Finally, faith applies to the third case in three accounts.
First, you have faith that the scientific method 'works.' That faith is fostered in part by your previous experience. Once, you touched the stove while it was burning. You quickly discover how it feels to be burnt. You hypothesize that hot = bad. Then you watched brother touch stove and experience the same thing. Therefore, you both conclude that hot = bad. Pretty much the scientific method right there! Observation, hypothesis, experiment, replication, confirmation. So, based off of your past experience, you conclude that methodology is the 'most' correct way to go about understanding the world. Little do you know that this first premise is made by ignoring the problem of induction.
Second, the scientific method requires replication, which is inherently subjective. Basically, it's not a fact if you don't have powerful people backing you up. When Galileo claimed that the world revolved around the sun, the Pope got fucknuts crazy and forced him to recant.
Galileo was wrong. This is clearly a case where something isn't fact unless someone else (with power) says it is. Later, when the church lost its authority and people noted that the geocentric theory could not take care of certain anomalies (like the seemingly helical path Mars took through the sky), they concluded that heliocentric theory was correct. They didn't have spaceships or airplanes or satellite imaging back then. It just made more sense to them. Never mind that the heliocentric theory back then did not actually predict planetary orbits accurately until Brahms and Kepler, a century later, who came up with the concept of elliptical orbits. So basically, the older heliocentric model ALSO failed to account for Mars's orbit exactly, because they still thought the orbits were
circular. In fact, the followers of the geocentric theory actually came back with an explanation of Mars's path; they believed that mars wasn't fixed in its celestial sphere, but rather it was stuck into a circle inscribed in its side, which rotated as its sphere rotated, accounting for the path aberration. It was slightly less accurate than what the heliocentrists claimed, but both were very inaccurate and on face value each theory looked plausible. Yet one theory rose to power, even before Kepler and Brahms even played a part. The only conceivable reason is increased secularity and the Church's fall from power. As demonstrated, social conventions even exist in the basic premise of replication in the scientific method..
Finally, the scientific method requires observation, which is also inherently subjective. When you see an object, that object exists ONLY in the context of your observation, because it is impossible for you to prove that it exists if you are dead. For an object to be considered 'existent,' you've got to 'be' there, 'thinking' that it exists. There is the possibility that it does not actually exist, of course, but you assume that it does based on faith. When you're standing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night and you see some headlights, you jump the fuck out of the way. You don't stand there wondering about the crux between epistemology and metaphysics. You assume that it's there and jump! That is a good example of the proverbial leap of faith.
I don't know how else to explain this except with the following sentiment: Everything you believe to be true is ultimately faith. You have faith that your numbers 'work.' You have faith that hot = bad. You have faith in the scientific method. You have faith in the idea that what you experience can be cross-applied to future experiences. You have faith in the idea that following the scientific method brings you closer to how the universe works. And when the headlights come, you have enough faith to jump the fuck away.
Most importantly, you have faith in your society's scientific conventions. Do you really know whether carbon dating works? How it works? Or how about your wristwatch? Do you really know whether that wristwatch actually subtends the timespan of a second when it says it does? How about modern physics? Do you have faith in the Higgs Boson? Society puts a lot of pressure on science to produce truths it can believe. Science, subjectivity, and society, at least in my perhaps ignorant opinion, and in Kuhn's, are inextricably entwined.
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