For the source text click/tap here: Chullin 57
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The Gemara relates that Rebbi Shimon ben Chalafta wanted to see if Shlomo ha'Melech was correct when he stated that ants have no rulers (Mishlei 6:7).
How could Rebbi Shimon ben Chalafta have doubted the words of Shlomo ha'Melech? The Gemara in Bava Basra (75a) says that a person who doubts the statements made by the Torah scholars of the generation is a "scoffer" who deserves to be punished. (TOSFOS DH Eizil)
Rebbi Shimon ben Chalafta certainly trusted Shlomo's statement. He wanted to show others how Shlomo ha'Melech knew that ants have no kings.
However the question is not merely exegetical. It opens onto one of the most persistent problems in Jewish thought: the relation between knowledge that is received through revelation and tradition and knowledge that is won through observation and inference.
The principal medieval and early-modern commentators—Tosafot, the Maharsha, and, in his commentary upon Kings, the Malbim—took up the difficulty and produced answers so divergent that they amount to competing epistemologies of Torah which we explore, the relative weight of scientific epistemology vs the truths of tradition.