The Limits of Science

A reflection on comments made by Richard Feynman.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• science
• richard feynman
• theory
• meaning

[AnariPlanet]

@TheCartesianTheist

The nature of God is always said to be unknowable. When we get into semantic arguments, no scientific conclusion is 100% certain. We could just as easily say that we can never know for sure if Airplanes work, or if we've just been exceedingly lucky for a hundred years.

No one ever applies this logic-- that we're not 100% sure, so we can't know-- to any subject except theology. It's rather irksome, if you ask me; why should it be treated any different from any other subject?

[TheCartesianTheist]

@AnariPlanet

"The nature of God is always said to be unknowable."

I'm afraid you do not know the subject you are talking about [viz. theology]. All the monotheistic religions, for example, think that God has communicated with his creation in many ways. Therefore they believe that God has revealed his nature. To say, as you do, that God is "always said to be unknowable" then you have not read or listened to any monotheist ever. That is sad.

[TheCartesianTheist]

@AnariPlanet

Again - PLEASE listen to Feynman. This video is not about being paralysed about technology working or not. It's about the ultimate truth of the paradigms of science and whether science can answer all meaningful questions.

[AnariPlanet]

Watching this video, I can't help but wonder...

When you make toast, do you arrogantly assume that the toaster will work?

Or do you sit and contemplate how you can never know if it will function until you use it, and thus must assume that a toaster cannot be expected to make toast, because we can never know for sure that it won't, say, turn into a pony or burn your house down instead?

[TheCartesianTheist]

@AnariPlanet

Reading your comment I cannot help but wonder if you actually took the time to listen to what was being said in the video because your comment is so unrelated to what I was talking about.

[burstofsanity]

@TheCartesianTheist Cute. As far as I'm aware that's right. The "right" I used in quotations before was ment as a synonym for correct as in "this is the right answer" and not as in right and wrong. For example, "what is beauty?", "what is right (morally)?", "what is truth?" are all questions without correct answers. Many different people all have different answers to these questions. To go a step further, all these questions are about human constructs that don't exist outside of the mind.

[TheCartesianTheist]

@burstofsanity

"For example, "what is beauty?", "what is right (morally)?", "what is truth?" are all questions without correct answers. Many different people all have different answers to these questions."

BUT that doesn't stop you. You think you know what the truth is!!

By the way - you're view would also slay science since most paradigms in science have differing interpretations. For example there are two main schools of thought in interpreting quantum phenomena!

[TheCartesianTheist]

@burstofsanity

"There are no "right" answers in philosophy..."

Is that right?

[InspiringPhilosophy]

The video is excellent. It reminds me of Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which proves the limits of human logic. There will always be questions unanswered, and we can't expect science to solve them all one day.

[grayxy]

@InspiringPhilosophy

I agree, that's the right answer, or at least right way to search for it. Sadly there is so little philosophers that know mathematics sufficiently (especially set theory) to see what it actually means. We need a new kind of philosophers (or old ones - like old Greeks were)

[AnariPlanet]

@TheCartesianTheist

If God interacts with his alleged creation, then he must inevitably exert a force of some sort within it, and that force could be observed and measured, bringing him within the realm of scientific knowledge. If he influences anything meaningful to us, then his influence will be detectable.

However, when you disprove the claims of miracles, and discredit his supposed interactions, they always and inevitably fall back into saying that he is unknowable.

[Truth4JWs]

I'm tired of the New Atheists' scientism. So many of them need to get an education in philosophy. Great video.

[arizonaviking]

"It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man." Richard P Feynman