limits of science1

7/29/2019 Limits of Science1

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Assumptions of Science

The world is real.

The real world is knowable and comprehensible.

There are laws that govern the real world.

Those laws are knowable and comprehensible.

Those laws don't [radically] change according to

place or time, since the early stages of thebigbang.


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Assumptions of Science

Nature is understandable

The rules of logic are valid

Language is adequate to describe the natural realm

Human senses are reliable. Mathematical rules are descriptive for the physical world

Unexplained things can be used to explain other

phenomenon (e.g. gravity is thus far unexplained but it is

used to explain the movement of planets and the bendingof light)

Observable phenomenon provide knowledge about

unobservable phenomenon


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Assumptions of science

True, physical universe exists

Universe is primarily orderly

The principles that define the functioning of theuniverse can be discovered

All ideas are tentative, potentially changed by newinformation


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Basic Assumptions of ScienceNature is orderly, i.e., regularity, pattern, and structure.Laws of nature describe order.

We can know nature. Individuals are part of nature.Individuals and social exhibit order; may be studied sameas nature.

All phenomena have natural causes. Scientific explanationof human behavior opposes religious, spiritualistic, andmagical explanations.

Nothing is self evident. Truth claims must be demonstrated

objectively.Knowledge is derived from acquisition of experience.Empirically. Thru senses directly or indirectly.

Knowledge is superior to ignorance.


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Basic Assumptions of Science

Assumptions are accepted without proof

Form the basis of all scientific thinking


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Limitations of Science

Science can't answer questions about value. For example,

there is no scientific answer to the questions, "Which of

these flowers is prettier?" or "which smells worse, a skunk

or a skunk cabbage?" And of course, there's the more

obvious example, "Which is more valuable, one ounce of

gold or one ounce of steel?" Our culture places value on

the element gold, but if what you need is something to

build a skyscraper with, gold, a very soft metal, is prettyuseless. So there's no way to scientifically determine value.


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Science can't answer questions of morality. The problem of

deciding good and bad, right and wrong, is outside the

determination of science. This is why expert scientific

witnesses can never help us solve the dispute over

abortion: all a scientist can tell you is what is going on as a

fetus develops; the question of whether it is right or wrong

to terminate those events is determined by cultural and

social rules--in other words, morality. The science can'thelp here.


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Science can't help us with questions about thesupernatural. The prefix "super" means "above."So supernatural means "above (or beyond) thenatural." The toolbox of a scientist contains onlythe natural laws of the universe; supernaturalquestions are outside their reach.


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The Limitations of Science

Scientismforms the basis for many

modern materialistic and rationalistic

philosophies.


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Scientism

Scientism is the acceptance of scientific

theory and scientific methods as applicable

in all fields of inquiry about the world,including morality, ethics, art, and religion


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Materialism

We exist as material beings in a material world,

all of whose phenomena are the consequences of

material relations among material entities." In aword, the public needs to accept materialism,

which means that they must put God in the trash

can of history where such myths belong.

Richard LewontinRetrospective essay on Carl Sagan in the January 9, 1997New York Review of Books,


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Scientific Materialism

Scientific Materialism accepts only one reality: thephysical universe, composed as it is of matter andenergy. Everything that is not physical,measurable, or deducible from scientific

observations, is considered unreal. Life isexplained in purely mechanical terms, and

phenomena such as Mind and Consciousness areconsidered nothing but epiphenomena - curious

by-products, of certain complex physicalprocesses (such as brain metabolism)


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Scientific Materialism There is no God,

No angels

No Devil

No good No evil

No survival of physical death,

No non-physical realities, and

No ultimate meaning or purpose to life

No Heaven

No afterlife


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Scientific Materialism

Only that which can be observed and

measured through the technique of

Scientific Method is real, and everythingelse is unreal.


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John Horgans

The End of Science

But science itself tells us that there are limits toour knowledge. Relativity theory prohibits travelor communication faster than light. Quantummechanics and chaos theory constrain our

predictive ability. Evolutionary biology keepsreminding us that we are animals, designed bynatural selection not for discovering deep truths of

nature but for breeding. Perhaps the mostimportant barrier to future progress in scienceespecially pure scienceis its past success.


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Hogan continuedUnsolvedProblems after many years and dollars spent.

Fusion

Weather Prediction Earthquake Prediction

Gravity

Consciousness

Artificial Intelligence Origins of life and synthesized life

Higgs Bosons and other basic particles


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Unsolved Problem- Life

For nearly 50 years since the Miller and Urey

experiment which synthesized amino acids and

nucleoside in vitro the hope for the artificial

creation of life appears ever more distant than.


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Knowledge

Knowledge is a relationship between ideas aboutobservations.

Are there other ways of knowing in addition to the ways ofScience?

Are painting, dance, music, religion other ways of

knowing?


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Knowledge

Are there question asked by art or religion?

Are those question understood by Science?

Can science answer the questions asked bypainting or religion?

Can science decide which painting or which

musical score is great and which is dross?


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Transitions to Complexity

Does quantum physics subsume chemistry?

Does chemistry subsume life?

Does biology subsume consciousness?

OR

Are there unanticipated, non-deducible transitions

to new organizations of matter?


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Organizations of Matter

Prigogine showed spontaneous organization was

described by higher order thermodynamics.

Chaotic, entropy dissipating systems snap into

order as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction,


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Transitions

Is life or consciousness impossible to understand

in terms of physics or chemistry?

The enzymes studied since 1860 is not understood. Is the ancient Greek goal of unifying knowledge

impossible?

Are there isolated islands of knowledge?


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Transitions

Physics

Chemistry

Biology

Psychology

Omega Point


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But Still I Take the Side of

ScienceI take the side of science in spite ofthe patent absurdity of some of itsconstructs, in spite ofits failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises ofhealth and life, in spite ofthe tolerance of the scientific community forunsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, acommitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of

science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of thephenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a prioriadherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a setof concepts that produce material explanations, no matter howcounterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, thatmaterialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. Theeminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believein God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allowthat at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miraclesmay happen.

Harvard Genetics Professor Richard Lewontin

January 9, 1997New York Review of Books,

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