The Limits of Science

[skakos]

I am trying to gather all limitations of Science (of "Exact science" to be exact...) in one piece of writting. You can find the effort at http://harmonia-philosophica.blogspot.c ... ience.html or at http://harmoniaphilosophica.wordpress.c ... lazj6wq-5/.
Science is indeed a great working tool to understand things and make your life easier, but it has severe inherent limitations which I would like to discuss here.

To begin with, I understand exact science as something which deals mainly with measurable things the behaviour of which can be analyzed in a lab. However not all things are measurable. Not all things can be replicated in a lab. I would add the limitations related to the need to start from (by definition unproven) axioms, but this will be the part of future posts hopefully in this thread...

Comments are welcomed...

[narnia4]

Nice article. Science has inherent limitations that should be understood by everybody. I'm obviously not against science, but scientism, physicalism... those I'm against and I don't think they're particularly rational. Couple of things that may mirror some of what you wrote but it deserves repeating.

I think one general point that is often lost but is important to a number of different things, you can't confuse the description or explanation of a thing for the thing itself. The map is not the terrain. I suppose that can extend to just about any discipline, but some things aren't even ON the "map of science"... so for people to claim that they adhere to science alone, its just silly.

Then there's the simple fact that you need philosophical groundwork to get to science at all, which makes "science and only science" absurd. After establishing that, you're really opening the floodgates to explore theology and a lot of other things.

[skakos]

Thanks for the comments,

And I mostly agree with what you say. Making a model to fit the behaviour of a system is not as "fundamental" as scientist-lovers want to think.

[skakos]

How can science study phenomena which happen only ONCE? (e.g. the creation of the Universe) How can it study things which cannot be reproduced?

[skakos]

The full list of 2012 Ig Nobel (a parody of the normal Nobel prizes, which awards weird and funny scientific researches) winners was announced and the list included some really interesting cases. The Neuroscience Ig Nobel for 2012 was granted to Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller and George Wolford (US) for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere - even in a dead salmon. [source: //www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19667664] It is true that modern scientists with a good laboratory and some fancy mathematics can prove everything! (except the existence of God, for a weird peculiar reason starting from "dog" and finishing with "matism"...) Even dead salmons being alive... If we can indeed prove everything, then what is the meaning of "proof"?

[PaulSacramento]

There is no limit to science, there is however limits to our ability to understand the universe and our perception of reality.
Not all science is "created equal" of course.
Science is simply the observation of nature, so the issue is HOW to we understand what we are observing and how do we know that our conclusions are correct/real?

[skakos]

There is no limit to science, there is however limits to our ability to understand the universe and our perception of reality.
Not all science is "created equal" of course.
Science is simply the observation of nature, so the issue is HOW to we understand what we are observing and how do we know that our conclusions are correct/real?

What do you mean by "there is no limit to science"?
Do you really believe that science can prove everything?

Godel surely proved the opposite...

And science does use many methods and tools which have inherent limitations.
Don't you achknowledge that?

[PaulSacramento]

There is no limit to science, there is however limits to our ability to understand the universe and our perception of reality.
Not all science is "created equal" of course.
Science is simply the observation of nature, so the issue is HOW to we understand what we are observing and how do we know that our conclusions are correct/real?

What do you mean by "there is no limit to science"?
Do you really believe that science can prove everything?

Godel surely proved the opposite...

And science does use many methods and tools which have inherent limitations.
Don't you achknowledge that?

Science is what?
sci·ence
   [sahy-uhns] Show IPA
noun
1.
a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2.
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3.
any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4.
systematized knowledge in general.
5.
knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

IN short, science is the observation of the universe we live in.
The only limits science has are US since WE are the observers and those that will comment on what is being observed.
Science doesn't prove anything per say.
The scientific method CAN be used to prove things, but only those we can observe AND understand.
The scientific method has limitations, WE are it's limitations, but science doesn't have limits, no more than knowledge ( what can be known) has limits.
While we may be limited in our ability to understand knowledge, knowledge is NOT limited by US, we are limited by Us.

[Beanybag]

There is no limit to science, there is however limits to our ability to understand the universe and our perception of reality.
Not all science is "created equal" of course.
Science is simply the observation of nature, so the issue is HOW to we understand what we are observing and how do we know that our conclusions are correct/real?

What do you mean by "there is no limit to science"?
Do you really believe that science can prove everything?

Godel surely proved the opposite...

And science does use many methods and tools which have inherent limitations.
Don't you achknowledge that?

Godel was a mathematician, not a scientist, what are you referring to?

[skakos]

Exact Sciences use Logic every day to reach to conclusions.
Logic cannot prove anything, as prove by Godel.

PS. If mathematicians are not scientists, what are they?

[skakos]

Science is what?
sci·ence
   [sahy-uhns] Show IPA
noun
1.
a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2.
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3.
any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4.
systematized knowledge in general.
5.
knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

IN short, science is the observation of the universe we live in.
The only limits science has are US since WE are the observers and those that will comment on what is being observed.
Science doesn't prove anything per say.
The scientific method CAN be used to prove things, but only those we can observe AND understand.
The scientific method has limitations, WE are it's limitations, but science doesn't have limits, no more than knowledge ( what can be known) has limits.
While we may be limited in our ability to understand knowledge, knowledge is NOT limited by US, we are limited by Us.

But you start naming some of science's limitations on your own.

"Observation" is based on senses. Do they not have limits?
"Science doesn't prove anything, but only those we can observe and understand" is quite mystical don't you think?
Which are the things we can observe and understand according to you?
In what sense "we are its limitations"? In understanding what?

PS. Knowledge is not a self-existing notion which can "be" without us being around. There is no "knowledge" without someone "having" that knowledge...

[Beanybag]

Exact Sciences use Logic every day to reach to conclusions.
Logic cannot prove anything, as prove by Godel.

PS. If mathematicians are not scientists, what are they?

I'm really not sure what you're talking about, Godel proved no such thing. Mathematics is wholly and entirely seperated from science. Logic is also possibly very different than mathematics. Math and logic are used heavily in science, but models are not necessarily dependent on either philisophically.

[skakos]

Exact Sciences use Logic every day to reach to conclusions.
Logic cannot prove anything, as prove by Godel.

PS. If mathematicians are not scientists, what are they?

I'm really not sure what you're talking about, Godel proved no such thing. Mathematics is wholly and entirely seperated from science. Logic is also possibly very different than mathematics. Math and logic are used heavily in science, but models are not necessarily dependent on either philisophically.

Godel proved that given any set of axioms, not "everything" within a theory can be proven.
This applies especially to exact sciences which rely on a specific set of axioms.

And this is an inherent limitation of science.

Unless you provide me an example of a science which DOES NOT use axioms...

[PaulSacramento]

Science is what?
sci·ence
   [sahy-uhns] Show IPA
noun
1.
a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2.
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3.
any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4.
systematized knowledge in general.
5.
knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

IN short, science is the observation of the universe we live in.
The only limits science has are US since WE are the observers and those that will comment on what is being observed.
Science doesn't prove anything per say.
The scientific method CAN be used to prove things, but only those we can observe AND understand.
The scientific method has limitations, WE are it's limitations, but science doesn't have limits, no more than knowledge ( what can be known) has limits.
While we may be limited in our ability to understand knowledge, knowledge is NOT limited by US, we are limited by Us.

But you start naming some of science's limitations on your own.

"Observation" is based on senses. Do they not have limits?
"Science doesn't prove anything, but only those we can observe and understand" is quite mystical don't you think?
Which are the things we can observe and understand according to you?
In what sense "we are its limitations"? In understanding what?

PS. Knowledge is not a self-existing notion which can "be" without us being around. There is no "knowledge" without someone "having" that knowledge...

Science is limited by what we can perceive and understand, so the limitation is US not science.
That is like saying that Math is limited because we can only count to 1 million.
I think you are confusing science with scientisim or scientists.

[Beanybag]

Exact Sciences use Logic every day to reach to conclusions.
Logic cannot prove anything, as prove by Godel.

PS. If mathematicians are not scientists, what are they?

I'm really not sure what you're talking about, Godel proved no such thing. Mathematics is wholly and entirely seperated from science. Logic is also possibly very different than mathematics. Math and logic are used heavily in science, but models are not necessarily dependent on either philisophically.

Godel proved that given any set of axioms, not "everything" within a theory can be proven.
This applies especially to exact sciences which rely on a specific set of axioms.

And this is an inherent limitation of science.

Unless you provide me an example of a science which DOES NOT use axioms...

If you're referring to Godel's incompleteness theorem, you should note that this only applies to certain axiomatic sets not all. For instance, if you take addition, identity, and some other basic axioms across the natural numbers, every true statement will be accounted for in this set by the axioms. First-order logic is likewise sound and complete for all possible propositions. You can't assert that every set of axioms is incomplete, that's very brash and is based on a misunderstanding of his incompleteness theorem. Further, science doesn't rely on a set of axioms in the way that mathematics does, it simply uses models and explanations. It doesn't try to account for all knowledge, it only tries to provide some knowledge on a more top-down level, and this isn't necessarily a problem. Using this can't disprove the accuracy of a model nor the explanatory power of a theory.