Sunday, August 14, 2022

Science

Some people might argue that science can, in principle, explain anything. We will not worry about the limitations of any one individual’s lifetime or understanding, because science is cumulative and shared. Of course, human beings are probably always going to be limited in some way, and it could be the case that in order to explain anything science needs to be able to explain everything completely, and even if we were on some path towards this accomplishment, we wouldn’t ever actually achieve it. But anyway, if things in general seem to be connected, and if science seems to be enlightening in any way, even if that keeps changing over time, and if complicated things or sets of things can be explained (or at least somewhat explained) using simpler ideas or language, then why not imagine that science can keep explaining new things and more things better and better, as it has done? Even if we can also imagine that perhaps science as such, or at least how we practice and understand science today, can gradually change into something else, or what we would at this point consider something else, even if we don’t later, or if science comes to include more things that we don’t even know about now, or to speak in a language we don’t understand at this particular juncture…

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