It is time once again to describe 'reality' and how it's defined.
Reality is just your own perception of the world. Each reality is as unique to you as a fingerprint. There is no absolute reality.
Take, for example, the simple observation of a sunrise.
* To one, it is a god rising into the sky to light the world for his creatures.
* To another, it is a vehicle carrying such a god.
* To another, it is a ball of fire orbiting the Earth.
* To another, it is the effect of the Earth's spin against a stationary Sun.
* To another, both Earth and Sun are moving, and the Earth's spin creates the effect of a Sun moving across the sky.
To each of these views, they are completely real to the viewer. The same event is interpreted by each viewer in a completely incompatible way, and to each, it IS reality.
To each viewer, what their senses detect must be interpreted, each according to how they figure the Universe is supposed to work. This is, in a nutshell, what phenomenology is all about. Even the movies examine this kind of question from time to time, such as the Matrix series.
The question from Morpheus: What IS real? How do you DEFINE real? In this series, the world of living in the Matrix is just as real as the world for those living outside the Matrix, including even the sentient machines in Machine City.
Science does NOT prove anything, not even if something is real. Science isn't a proof and has no proofs, for science is an open functional system. Only closed functional systems have proofs (and with it, the power to predict). Examples of a closed functional system is mathematics or logic. Both are defined purely by their axioms. They are like the 'rules of the game'. Change an axiom, and you change the 'rules'. You are playing a 'different game'.
Mathematics itself is split into different Domains by changing one or two axioms. In every case, the system is functionally closed. Mathematics ONLY exists within those rules.
Science is an open functional system. It is simply a set of falsifiable theories. That itself is a definition, not a rule or an axiom. Theories of science come and go. New ones occur, others are falsified and are no longer science. A theory of science can be about anything. In and of itself, it has NO power to predict. It must be transposed into a closed functional system (such as mathematics, typically) to gain the power of prediction.
In and of itself, a theory is simply an explanatory argument. An argument is a set of predicates and a conclusion. There are plenty of nonscientific theories. A theory of science MUST be falsifiable (by definition). That means a test must be available, practical to conduct, definable, and produce a definable result. That test must test the theory itself. These tests are against the null hypothesis of a theory. They are designed to try to break the theory. Science does NOT use any supporting evidence. The theory itself provides that. Science only is interested in conflicting evidence. A single piece of conflicting evidence destroys the theory as a theory of science. It ceases to be a theory altogether. It's not even a nonscientific theory anymore (though it may still be called that for reference purposes).
Only a religion uses supporting evidence. Science does not. This is the fundamental difference between the two. BOTH use theories. BOTH try to explain the world. But only ONE uses falsifiable theories.
Thus, 'real' and 'reality' are just our own interpretation of the world and universe our senses reveal to us (even if augmented by instrumentation). It is nothing more, and never could be anything more.
This also means observation can never be a proof. It may inspire a theory of science, but it, in and of itself, cannot be a proof.
