• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Science has its limitations. Can it exceed them?

Kemosloby

Kemosloby

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Genesis 11:6 "Look!" he said. "The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!

We can do anything if we all work together, Apparently that is a bad thing...

"Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."…
 
George-ananda

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
paarsurrey said:
Science has its limitations. Can it exceed them?
Please
Regards
Click to expand...
It may be able to continually expand and understand all. In the meantime, there is no justification in my mind for the sometimes arrogant attitude of many against claims of the paranormal nor for the philosophy of 'scientism'.
 
Skwim

Skwim

Veteran Member
paarsurrey said:
Science has its limitations. Can it exceed them?
Please
Regards
Click to expand...
Are you talking about self imposed limitations or those imposed by the character of nature? In the first case, yes. In the second case, no; although, some limitations are only because of a lack of our ability to overcome them, which may change.


.
 
Last edited:
Cephus

Cephus

Relentlessly Rational
Which specific limitations are you talking about? Real, demonstrable limitations or made up limitations?
 
siti

siti

Well-Known Member
OK - so what do you mean by "can it exceed them"? Because the things you mentioned will never be done by science. But that doesn't mean that morality, aesthetics, the application of science and the occurrence of supernatural explanations are not amenable to scientific investigation and/or explanation.

Personally, I think the limiting factor in science doing what it is meant to do (i.e. explaining the world in terms of the natural processes that make the world what it is) is the insistence of scientists (not all, and not science itself) of looking for reductive answers to everything. But we are slowly moving away from that and looking at systems and complexity and emergence...etc. The more ecological the scientific lens becomes, the more I think it will get closer to a "true" picture of reality. Investigating what "atoms" do in isolation is all well and good as an underpinning of our understanding, but beyond the near vacuum of interstellar space (where nothing happens) "atoms" (whatever they really are) rarely, if ever, exist in isolation. Its what they get up to when they get together that makes a world.

In the end, I suppose, the best possible outcome would be a science that describes accurately and in detail what an entire universe does when all the bits are joined together. Of course we'll never actually be able to do that - if we did we might very well "know the Mind of God" as Hawking put it - but I also think the idea that reality is ultimately reducible to a set of relatively simple equations (some kind of elegant "Theory of Everything") is almost certainly wrong. As somebody once said, it is absurd to imagine that the Ten Commandments or the Mona Lisa could derived from the standard model of particle physics.

So science is destined, for as long as there are true scientists (honest, curious and intelligent people), to continue probing the natural world for natural answers to add incrementally to our partial understanding of reality and our place in it. And that process will probably ultimately know no limits (in the sense that it would, at least in theory, be able to explain anything and everything that happens in terms of natural laws and forces) - but it still won't make moral judgements or admit supernatural causation as a valid scientific explanation.
 
paarsurrey

paarsurrey

Veteran Member
siti said:
OK - so what do you mean by "can it exceed them"? Because the things you mentioned will never be done by science. But that doesn't mean that morality, aesthetics, the application of science and the occurrence of supernatural explanations are not amenable to scientific investigation and/or explanation.

Personally, I think the limiting factor in science doing what it is meant to do (i.e. explaining the world in terms of the natural processes that make the world what it is) is the insistence of scientists (not all, and not science itself) of looking for reductive answers to everything. But we are slowly moving away from that and looking at systems and complexity and emergence...etc. The more ecological the scientific lens becomes, the more I think it will get closer to a "true" picture of reality. Investigating what "atoms" do in isolation is all well and good as an underpinning of our understanding, but beyond the near vacuum of interstellar space (where nothing happens) "atoms" (whatever they really are) rarely, if ever, exist in isolation. Its what they get up to when they get together that makes a world.

In the end, I suppose, the best possible outcome would be a science that describes accurately and in detail what an entire universe does when all the bits are joined together. Of course we'll never actually be able to do that - if we did we might very well "know the Mind of God" as Hawking put it - but I also think the idea that reality is ultimately reducible to a set of relatively simple equations (some kind of elegant "Theory of Everything") is almost certainly wrong. As somebody once said, it is absurd to imagine that the Ten Commandments or the Mona Lisa could derived from the standard model of particle physics.

So science is destined, for as long as there are true scientists (honest, curious and intelligent people), to continue probing the natural world for natural answers to add incrementally to our partial understanding of reality and our place in it. And that process will probably ultimately know no limits (in the sense that it would, at least in theory, be able to explain anything and everything that happens in terms of natural laws and forces) - but it still won't make moral judgements or admit supernatural causation as a valid scientific explanation.
Click to expand...
"Because the things you mentioned will never be done by science."

And that is the point.
 
Quintessence

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
paarsurrey said:
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do:
  • Science doesn't make moral judgment
  • Science doesn't make aesthetic judgments
  • Science doesn't tell you how to use scientific knowledge
  • Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do
Right? Please
Regards
Click to expand...

Firstly, I'd like to point out that everything has limits. Without limits, something lacks form and definition. Limits, in other words, create identity. While this list here can be described as limitation, what it also describes is what sciences are. When sciences allege to do anything on that list above, it looses its identity as science and becomes something else.

To answer the question in the OP in simple terms, where the sciences "exceed" the limits that define what it is, it stops being science. Not sure what your point is supposed to be beyond stating the obvious that identity requires limits to define the nature of a thing.
 
Cephus

Cephus

Relentlessly Rational
paarsurrey said:
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do:
  • Science doesn't make moral judgment
  • Science doesn't make aesthetic judgments
  • Science doesn't tell you how to use scientific knowledge
  • Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do
Right? Please
Regards
Click to expand...

But those are things that science is not intended to do, so what's your point? Religion doesn't tell you how to file your taxes. Let's just throw out religion now!
 
siti

siti

Well-Known Member
paarsurrey said:
"Because the things you mentioned will never be done by science."

And that is the point.
Click to expand...
And...? I am even more confused by your question now that I seem to have given you the answer! So far, you contention seems to be that science has limits (OK, it does, so what?) and that it is not used to make moral judgements...etc. (agreed, that's not the purpose of science). But your argument seems to me on a par with stating the perfectly obvious - something akin to saying "the principles of the internal combustion engine are not explained by animal physiology" (unless its my old jalopy which kind of behaves like a cross between a paraplegic donkey and a flatulent snail - but that's another story). "The point" so far seems to me to be entirely redundant pleonastic tautological prolixity (now analyze my last four words and you'll see exactly what I mean about yours ;)).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top