Limits of Science

Our Brains evolved for survival on

Earth and not for understanding the
nature of the universe.
 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 the big
bang.
 Basic Assumptions of Science
• Assumptions are accepted without proof

• Form the basis of all scientific thinking

 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 pretty
useless. So there's no way to scientifically determine value.
 Limitations of Science
• 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't
help here.
•
 Limitations of Science

• Science can't help us with questions about the

supernatural. The prefix "super" means "above." So
supernatural means "above (or beyond) the natural."
The toolbox of a scientist contains only the natural
laws of the universe; supernatural questions are outside
their reach.
 The Limitations of Science
Scientific Method, which is a relatively recent
historical phenomenon, is one of the most potent
means of understanding its particular aspect of
reality.
In the metaphor of the Blind Men and the Elephant,
the blind man who employs Scientific method would
probably learn much more detail concerning the part
of the elephant he touched then the others would
about the parts they touched.
The Blind Men and the Elephant

• John Godfrey Saxe's ( 1816-1887) version

of the famous Indian legend,
• It was six men of Indostan
• To learning much inclined,
• Who went to see the Elephant
• (Though all of them were blind),
• That each by observation
• Might satisfy his mind.

• The First approached the Elephant,

• And happening to fall
• Against his broad and sturdy side,
• At once began to bawl:
• "God bless me! but the Elephant
• Is very like a wall!"
The Blind Men and the Elephant
• The Second, feeling of the tusk
• Cried, "Ho! what have we here,
• So very round and smooth and sharp?
• To me `tis mighty clear
• This wonder of an Elephant
• Is very like a spear!"

• The Third approached the animal,

• And happening to take
• The squirming trunk within his hands,
• Thus boldly up he spake:
• "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
• Is very like a snake!"

• The Fourth reached out an eager hand,

• And felt about the knee:
• "What most this wondrous beast is like
• Is mighty plain," quoth he;
• "'Tis clear enough the Elephant
• Is very like a tree!"
The Blind Men and the Elephant
• The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
• Said: "E'en the blindest man
• Can tell what this resembles most;
• Deny the fact who can,
• This marvel of an Elephant
• Is very like a fan!"

• The Sixth no sooner had begun

• About the beast to grope,
• Than, seizing on the swinging tail
• That fell within his scope.
• "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
• Is very like a rope!"

• And so these men of Indostan

• Disputed loud and long,
• Each in his own opinion
• Exceeding stiff and strong,
• Though each was partly in the right,
• And all were in the wrong!

• Moral:
• So oft in theologic wars,
• The disputants, I ween,
• Rail on in utter ignorance
• Of what each other mean,
• And prate about an Elephant
• Not one of them has seen!
 The Limitations of Science
Another problem in modern science is
institutionalization. The way science gets
caught up in bureaucracy and large
organizations. The 19th century free
scientist is long since gone.
 The Limitations of Science
Scientism forms the basis for many
modern materialistic and rationalistic
philosophies.
 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
 Materialism
• “We exist as material beings in a material world,
all of whose phenomena are the consequences of
material relations among material entities." In a
word, the public needs to accept materialism,
which means that they must put God in the trash
can of history where such myths belong.”
Richard Lewontin
Retrospective essay on Carl Sagan in the January 9, 1997 New York Review of Books,
 Some Limiting Theories
• Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
In the Quantum Mechanical world, the idea that we can measure things exactly breaks down.
• Goedel’s Theory
In 1931, the Czech-born mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given
branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn't be proven
either true or false using the rules and axioms
• Speed of Light
According to the Einstein's Theory of Relativity, nothing in our universe can exceed the
velocity of light; thus, it is a kind of cosmic speed limit against which all other velocities may
be measured.
• Entropy of closed system
Entropy just measures the spontaneous dispersal of energy: how much energy is spread out in
a process, or how widely spread out it becomes – as a function of temperature.
• Quantum mechanics
Constrains our predictive ability.
 Scientific Materialism
• Scientific Materialism accepts only one reality: the
physical universe, composed as it is of matter and
energy. Everything that is not physical,
measurable, or deducible from scientific
observations, is considered unreal. Life is
explained in purely mechanical terms, and
phenomena such as Mind and Consciousness are
considered nothing but epiphenomena - curious
by-products, of certain complex physical
processes (such as brain metabolism)
 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
 Scientific Materialism

• Only that which can be observed and

measured through the technique of
Scientific Method is real, and everything
else is unreal.
 John Horgan’s
“The End of Science”

• But science itself tells us that there are limits to our

knowledge. Relativity theory prohibits travel or
communication faster than light. Quantum mechanics
and chaos theory constrain our predictive ability.
Evolutionary biology keeps reminding us that we are
animals, designed by natural selection not for
discovering deep truths of nature but for breeding.
Perhaps the most important barrier to future progress in
science—especially pure science—is its past success.
 Hogan continued
Unsolved Problems 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
 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.
 Unsolved Problem - AI
• The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has been an active
entity at MIT in one form or another since at least 1959.
The goal is to understand the nature of intelligence and to
engineer systems that exhibit intelligence. There are in the
interdisciplinary laboratory of over 200 people that spans
several academic departments and has active projects
ongoing with members of every academic school at MIT.
• No luck so far even though a computer once beat the world
chess champion.
Unsolved Problem-String Theory

Or the End of Science

Only indirect evidence:
searching for super symmetry. This symmetry between forces and matter is called
•
super-symmetry. The partner particles are called super-partners.
Direct evidence not possible, beyond energy and experiment size available to mankind
•
 Has not or Cannot
• Make an observation

• Form an hypothesis

• Test an hypothesis
 Has not or Cannot Make an
Observation
• No measuring instrument exist or is of poor
quality
• Not observable or at limits of detection such as
neutrinos, Higgs boson, dark matter, dark energy
• Occurred in the past or no longer extent
 Has not or Cannot Make an
Hypothesis
• Not thought of or impossible to conjure as an
hypothesis

All Sentences in this box are false

• History of Science
• Not included in the current, dominating
paradigm
Has not or Cannot Find Evidence
• String theory requires energies beyond human
capacity to provide

• Expositions in terms of non-observables

electrons, quarks, neutrinos, protons, neutrons
positrons, bosons, fermions etc
 Knowledge
• Knowledge is a relationship between ideas about
observations.

• Are there other ways of knowing in addition to the ways of

Science?

• Are painting, dance, music, religion other ways of

knowing?
 Knowledge
• Are there question asked by art or religion?
• Are those question understood by Science?
• Can science answer the questions asked by
painting or religion?
• Can science decide which painting or which
musical score is great and which is dross?
 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?
 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,
 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?
 Transitions Omega Point

Psychology

Biology

Chemistry

Physics
 But Still I Take the Side of
Science
“I take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in
spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite
of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories,
because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the
methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material
explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a
priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of
concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no
matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for
we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck
used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To
appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature
may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

Harvard Genetics Professor Richard Lewontin

January 9, 1997 New York Review of Books,
 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 bending
of light)
• Observable phenomenon provide knowledge about
unobservable phenomenon
 Assumptions of science

• True, physical universe exists

• Universe is primarily orderly

• The principles that define the functioning of the

universe can be discovered

• All ideas are tentative, potentially changed by new

information
 Basic Assumptions of Science
Nature 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 same
as nature.
All phenomena have natural causes. Scientific explanation
of human behavior opposes religious, spiritualistic, and
magical 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.