Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• 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
• Fusion
• Weather Prediction
• Earthquake Prediction
• Gravity
• Consciousness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Origins of life and synthesized life
• Higgs Bosons and other basic particles
Unsolved Problem- Life
• 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
• 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
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.”