• Question: Can science explain absolutely everything?

    Asked by josh8 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Josh, there are definite limits on what science can and can’t explain. In principle, science can only investigate factual questions about the physical world. These are questions about what _is_. If we are clever enough, we can work backwards using our knowledge about what _is_ to say what _was_, and forwards to use our knowledge to say what _will be_. This is only estimating though, since science requires us to test our ideas, and it is hard to test the future :-).

      Science cannot answer what _should be_. This is the domain of philosophy.

      In general, we don’t like to make big claims about science. The best attitude is usually “we don’t know for sure, but we’d like to find out”. In particular, science never gives 100% definite answers. It’s always – as far as we know right now!

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Nope it can’t! Science gives us answers based on observalbe things – things that we can test in the here and now to make reasonable predictions about the future and the past from. But this all relies on a certain level of assumption that the universe is logical and that the laws that are in place in the universe will always and, have always, run logically as we see it. But – if you want to think real deep why should we believe this? why do we think that this “logical-ness” has to exist?

      In essence science answers the “how” of things but it can’t really answer the “why”. There is a problem with the modern rampant atheist movement (people like Richard Dawkins) who claim that science CAN answer everything and it is the only trustowrthy source of information. This is not true. Science can give us some answers but it always has to be tested, re-tested and sometimes rewritten!! 🙂

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      No… but we can try… and maybe have fun trying…

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I wish that it could. It also often can give lots of different answers to questions and be very difficult to know what is the right one. It would be interesting to know what people in 300 years time think of all our scientific discoveries and how much we have gotten wrong!

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi Josh! This is a fantastic question. I agree with the others. No, science cannot tell us everything. It probably can’t even tell us most things! But, science is the best mode of inquiry we have. (note it is not the only mode of inquiry – as Drew mentioned philosophy is also a great way of asking questions about the world). Science provides us a way of not only asking questions, but also looking for answers. Answers we can be fairly confident are true. This is pretty cool, and makes science a very special thing!!

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