Will science eventually explain everything?

Rezilia said:

And yet, because YOU can't see it, it automatically doesn't exist?

^ See, that's where I'm getting at here. If he told everyone he could see it too, they'd think he was pulling it out of his behind. EVEN THOUGH he couldn't see it, he found evidence for its existence. And then sought to research it, through which he obtained results, which covered every base at the time.

Back then, everything was qualitative...everything. He very well may have researched it quantitatively, if that was enough of a thing back then to fit properly into his discipline. It wasn't. So going against him because it wasn't "quantitative" is absolute BS, esp. considering that's how the sci community did things back then. That is, qualitatively. Through observation by the senses...only.

In fact, nearly all of Biology is qualitative in nature. I guess that means we should destroy the practice, since it uses the senses.

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It's not only that his theory didn't have independently verifiable observations, it's that there are other competing theories that explain phenomenon better and without all that subjective hassle that his theory deals with. And how did he come up with results when he couldn't observe these things in the first place?

The kicker that made evolution powerful wasn't because it was qualitative. Darwin's work largely was. However, genetics came along and we could quantify evolution in terms of genes and DNA. So what used to be a qualitative discipline became quantifiable, we discovered the mechanism behind it that we could count, and so it became more powerful.

Seeing isn't always believing. That's why we turn it into numbers that we can agree on.

And dude, I'm a bio student. If anything, biology is increasingly quantitative and computerized. It's all about manipulating or identifying numbers, or different states as much as you can, when you do a microarray for example.

I'm not a dude x.x

Okay, yes, biology at its height now is...but the original, defining, base features of biology are qualitative. You don't need numbers to define them. Not the point though...

So what you're saying is, someone needs to find a way to study Odyle quantitatively? That's exactly what I've been saying for years. But no one does, because no one wants to, because everyone seems to think it's gibberish, because the sci community of the past said they disproved it - when they didn't. It's supposed to be an open case but they closed it.

Maybe science will one day explain why kids love cinnamon toast crunch so much...

I reckon with an iron fist that one day science will not only explain everything but lead paths to one day create Mobile suit gundams and digimon...

Yeah it can already explain alot of things but the problem though is we don't have enough proof to prove it wrong like with mathematics its true until proven wrong so we could all be living a lie but then again we might not be...

Science is the tool, a tool used by intelligent people to find answers. I think you mean "will scientists eventually explain everything?" The answer is unknowable, something that is not know is, by default, unknowable. Thus, even if we thought we knew everything, we couldn't know if we knew everything. The limit of knowledge is, itself, and unknowable.

Though scientists could, potentially, figure out everything about the universe using science. Science is a very effective and, ironically, perfect tool for discovering how the universe functions. The reason it's perfect is because it checks itself, it doesn't promote only the correct answers, and expands to include any new information. Though, like all tools, there is room for abuse, scientists who utilize science correctly will always be corrected when they are incorrect. That's the nature of peer review, it creates a bloodthirsty environment where everyone wants to try to prove everyone else wrong.

Rezilia said:

How can science not be flawed if it was created by humans? That makes no sense.

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Considering we have nothing in the universe to compare "perfect" to, yes, science is perfect.

I believe that science will and can only go so far. What happens after death? Is there really a God? Those two questions will most likely never be answered. If they are, that would be amazing but for now, you can't prove one thing over another.

Science will go far, don't get me wrong, but I doubt it can answer every question. There's far too many questions out there. One thing leads to another. :P

Depends on what everything means really, but I tend not to think that science will get there. 'Everything' is a term of absolutism, which seems to be against the inquisitive and always-seeking-improvement nature of science.

Elysieum said:

Depends on what everything means really, but I tend not to think that science will get there. 'Everything' is a term of absolutism, which seems to be against the inquisitive and always-seeking-improvement nature of science.

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That brings up another question... Will science evolve into absolutism?

Science is rather anti-absolutist, at least that's how it's becoming lately. Modernism can tend to be absolutist, and as long as science is associated with a modernist viewpoint (inevitability, progression, the realization of truth) people are going to perceive science aas absolutist when that connection isn't really clear.

Science- understood as the method of inquiry based on sensory perception (and its analogues and derivatives)- is simply not equipped to deal with some questions about reality, such as ethical or aesthetic truths. It needs to be supplemented with other branches of human knowledge to produce a coherent picture about reality. Some academics have used the term "sci-phi" to refer to the mode of inquiry characterized by the conjoined effort of science and philosophy to discover truths about this world. This latter approach seems much more viable to me.

Whether science (or any mode of human inquiry, for that matter) can explain everything isn't an interesting question, to my mind. After all, human knowledge-gathering processes by definition require some sort of grounding. Science is grounded in our trust in inductive and other sorts of reasoning, which in turn are based on truths of logic and an assumption about how the world is, which in turn are perhaps best explained as brute facts about reality. So either we end up grounding explanations in something, or with an infinite regress of explanations. A more interesting question I think is whether science can discover truths which are practically relevant to us. In some cases, for example, "I don't know/I can't explain X" is a perfectly relevant answer. Sure, demarcating what it means to say "practically relevant" is a difficult question, and I don't think any straightforward answer can be given to this- because it is, to an extent, subjective.

Sorry for such a wet noodle conclusion, lol.

Also, I don't see the point of whether scientific/mathematical truths are created/discovered debate. It's obvious that some core tenets of mathematics are discovered. Sure, we made a jargon to make sense of it, but that jargon has real properties and instances as referents.