Lea Sevcik: Topic 7: Are There Limits to Science?

Group 7 did a great job with their presentation.  I 
especially enjoyed the discussion of the various 
definitions of science. While doing research for the 
topic of my group, Science and Objectivity, I thought 
about these different definitions of science a lot as 
I came across them. However, I didn’t at any point 
articulate them so clearly and comprehensively as 
Group 7 did, and it was an eye-opening experience for 
me. Although the group discussed them as they relate 
to the limits on science, I think that these 
definitions are in fact very relevant for many of our 
group presentations, perhaps especially the Science 
and Objectivity one. 

It seems amazing to me that there can be three such 
fundamentally different views of the nature of 
science, in a society where science is so often taken 
to be undisputed truth.  Listening to each definition 
of science (realism, contextual realism and string 
theory), all three of these different views make some 
sense - and yet, they are mutually exclusive. The 
point of view that seems the most accurate from my 
perspective is contextual realism. I do believe that 
there is an actual reality, but we are restricted to 
our senses in perceiving it, and therefore we can 
easily make mistakes. Also, human beings cannot be 
entirely unbiased because they are (as much as they 
may try not to be) swayed by emotions, various 
motivations and interests, and these will have an 
influence on their observations and on their results. 
So I am most comfortable with the contextual realism 
explanation of science. 

In my opinion, science is both limited and limitless. 
I liked the ray analogy in class, because it 
visualizes the state that science is. Science is 
limited because it cannot research effectively in 
some disciplines and areas: religion, the meaning of 
life, some aspects of emotions, morality - all these 
are not adequately dealt with by science. On the 
other hand, science can be used to explain 
quantitative fields with great success. In this 
sense, it is not limited. Whether or not science is 
limitless or limited in the ultimate sense, in 
another words, whether or not our universe is finite 
or infinite, we can’t say. But for our purposes, 
science is limitless even if the universe is finite, 
because certainly in our lifetimes, science still has 
so much more to discover that it is limitless. I 
liked the “Star Trek factor” explanation, which 
seemed to make a good point. We don’t need to worry 
about the limits on science so much, when we are not 
yet even advanced to a point similar to the Star Trek 
culture. Of course, the future may look nothing like 
Star Trek, because that is a very fictional view and 
it is made in our own time. But it seems likely that 
the future will involve a more technological age, and 
the TV series expresses what humans now hope will 
occur, and what we strive towards: vast space travel, 
contact with other forms of life, humanoid robots 
(like Data), and various technological marvels, like 
the holodeck.