at the end of the day, 'science' depends on language

as poincare observes, nature does not depend on language but science does, and there are many languages, more or less complex. languages cultivate common belief; i.e. they construct 'semantic realities' which can be used as 'operative realities'. as the language complexifies, so do the behaviours of collectives using the same 'semantic reality' to coordinate their behaviours.

there is no convergence towards a 'true reality', there is only convergence in the sense of coordinating behaviours on the basis of a popular 'semantic reality'. how can you capture a transforming relational continuum in words? answer: you can't. the selection of an 'operative reality' from various 'semantic reality' options is achieved by the principle of Lafontaine; "la raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure".

poincare points out that there are 'pragmatist idealists' like himself, Mach (and he could include Nietzsche, Bohm, Schroedinger) who accept the limitations of language in the foundations of scientific reasoning [it is standard to impose the metaphysical notion of absolute space and absolute time in order to be able to use language with a subject and object splitting structure] and thus to regard science as a convenient way of arranging our observations; e.g. 'DDT kills mosquitoes' which we can experimentally prove. of course all such logical scientific propositions are intrinsically incomplete [the transforming relational continuum is beyond the powers of linguistic articulation, ... this side of infinity].

"Science itself, … may be regarded as a minimization problem, consisting of the completest possible presenting of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought” —Ernst Mach"

there is nothing in science that is 'true' in any sense other than a limited 'logical truth' which depends on a language-based logical proposition that is inherently incomplete because it depends on assumptions of 'independent being' etc. and subject-object splitting; e.g. 'the headache pill cured my headache' and 'we put a man on the moon' [we won't mention the externalities and side-effects of intervening in the physical reality of a transforming relational continuum in our scientific propositions and their experimental validation because that would blur the logical precision that is our own prerequisite we impose in undertaking our inquiry; i.e. such precision is NOT the result of our inquiry]. that is, where you say; ...

"Basically, science has a bunch of assumptions that we can be moderately sure are true (like materialism and possibly even realism)"

... you are leaving the false impression that science can deliver 'truth' that is beyond the synthetic truths of inherently incomplete logical propositions, the basic currency of science.

it is this confused belief in constructed 'semantic realities' that is a primary source of social relational dysfunction. anti-civ factions that fail to let go of their belief in 'semantic reality' and claim that they are in possession of a superior 'semantic reality' offer 'more of the same'.