David Ware: Topic 7: Are There Limits to Science?

	The question of whether science is limited 
is certainly an interesting one, but one 
that I think depends in large part on 
definitions, which I think Tuesday's 
presentation group was smart to 
acknowledge, although they emphasized the 
realism/contextualism difference over the 
difference between science as knowledge and 
the use of knowledge.  One definition of 
"science" can be that it is a set of 
knowledge, and there may be a limit to the 
amount of pure knowledge that humans can 
acquire.  But if "science" can also mean 
the application of that knowlede to solve 
human problems, then I believe that science 
is unlimited.  Someone will always be 
trying to build a better mousetrap, and 
they will always be using science to do it.
	Even if science only refers to the set of 
knowledge, however, it might still be 
unlimited.  The idea of a time when all 
possible knowledge is known is almost 
inconceivable.  There always has to be 
something out there for us to measure.  We 
don't know what the high temperature in 
Roswell, NM, will be tomorrow, so even if 
every other piece of data in the universe 
has been collected, someone in Roswell will 
still have to get up and check the 
thermometer tomorrow.
	That having been said, there are certainly 
limits to many of the sciences as we 
conceive of them.  The Human Genome Project 
is a good example of a scientific quest 
which is nearing its conclusion, and 
although the applications of the knowledge 
about the map of the genome will open up 
whole new worlds, a world that Mendel 
opened will become closed and we will have 
reached the limit of one area of science.
	The examples which the presentation used 
were also interesting because they asked 
different questions.  In astronomy, for 
example, we can conceive of a limited 
universe and thus a limited body of 
knowlege, but that limit is so high that 
for all practical purposes it will never be 
reached.  It is like saying that the 
Earth's surface is limited, but I could 
never in one lifetime examine every single 
square inch of the Earth.  The example of 
anthropology is different, because in that 
case information seems to be much more 
limited, and yet we do not know exactly how 
much of it there is or where it is.
	In the end, while I would argue that 
science as a whole is unlimited, parts of 
it do have limits.  Those limits, however, 
may be derived not from the limits to human 
knowledge as the group stated but by the 
limit of time.  It would not surprise me if 
the fall of civilization and the end of 
man's ability to study the universe and the 
depths of the ocean are what stop 
scientific progress rather than some 
intellectual endpoint.