Limitations of Science

Science can't answer every question. However, just because science can't answer those questions doesn't mean that answers derived by other means are reliable or correct.

Also, check out the book "On Being a Scientist" from the U.S. National Academies at http://www.nap.edu

Category:

Education

Tags:

• science
• religion
• god
• questions
• limitations
• knowledge
• philosophy

[WarmWeatherGuy]

There is a great book about how our minds suck as a way of knowing. It is called "How We Know What Isn't So - The Fallibility of Human Reason In Everyday Life" by Thomas Gilovich.

I am about 60% of the way through it right now and I recommend it to everyone. I especially think every creationist should read it.

[TheFallibleFiend]

Will put that on my list.

tx,

tff

[C0nc0rdance]

I'm going to work on a "Philosophy of Science 101" video pretty soon. Any advice? Would you be willing to proof and edit it?

I'm going to focus on issues of parsimony, logical regressions, falsifiability, modeling, and limitations of knowledge. I'll run evolution, creationism and ID creationism through the tests, maybe atomic theory and astrology as well as "type groups".

[TheFallibleFiend]

I'm not familiar with "type groups." Something to do with taxonomy?

Anyway, happy to help any way I can.

[C0nc0rdance]

Fantastic. This complements perfectly what I am trying to say about bad scientists like Duesberg and Luskin. All theories are tentative, and good scientists can walk away from their pet theories when evidence points the other way. That's the difference between a kook or shill and an honest scientist.

Why no voice, TFF? Or at least some public domain music?

[TheFallibleFiend]

Screwed my computer thrice, network problems, camera broken ... several things at once. May use some pub domain music on the next one, though. I've done that before and enjoy it, but I wonder if some people ever find it irritating.

You, TF, DE2, etc are covering all the points. I'm just filling out a few things.

[idster7]

who says science can't answer every question?

[pbrskater26]

To me I have a better understanding of the world trough science and the natural world. I fill that the christian theology dose not wont you to think for your self that our way of thinking should be gods way of thinking, which defeats the whole reason of free will! The lack of scientific understand and a lack of freethinking is why I left christianity, my intellectualism was being oppresed by biblical literalism and dogma!

[EdwardHowton]

As I said, science formalized the only real way we've ever known of knowing things.

Religion falls under making stuff up (you say so yourself), and philosophy is unreliable because it doesn't test its findings ("how many angels can dance on the head of a pin", for instance. Any answer is purely a guess, and no answer is any more valid than another).

Gut feeling is also guesswork. We remember the hits when our gut tells us things, but forget the misses. "Divine revelation" IS gut feeling.

[WarmWeatherGuy]

The other ways of knowing are philosophy, religion, gut feeling and divine revelation. Philosophy is like science minus the experiments. Religion knowledge comes from sacred texts. New knowledge can come from these texts by changing interpretations (I know, its gonna suck).

If you plot mankind's knowledge versus time it is flat for tens of thousands of years and then goes up exponentially around the time of Galileo and Newton, when science was discovered. Yay science!

[EdwardHowton]

I'm going to have to agree with oarobin here.

As far as we can know anything, the most reliable method is the scientific method. Everything else we "know", we know through a similar, if less rigorous method. Science simply formalized the only way we've ever had of knowing things, and took it out of the fallible human context to filter out as many mistakes as possible.

"Other ways of knowing" are closer to a guess when they aren't outright invention.

That's the only point I'll address for now.

[oarobin]

i may disagree with the part of the video about "other ways of knowing". if the definition of science used is the body of facts and theories known through formalized testing then i agree. but if science is thought of more broadly as the application of the scientific method in evaluation of claims and evidence then "knowing" that your mother loves me can be on par with the other scientifc facts since i came to such a conclusion by evaluating her actions, words, mistakes,emotions over time.