Re: OT: Huckabee, Ughh

dpb wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
...

It's called a "boundary condition argument". Assume science were perfect.
What could it "know". It could know how things work, how the universe
operates, how life evolves/adapts, etc. It could NEVER know
where it all came from, why things are the way they are, what - if
any - meaning it has, taken as a whole. ...

Well, if it were to be such perfect knowledge then it would also be able to ascertain the existence or not of the outside influence--ergo, all would be known including root cause.



No Sir (or Ma'am as the case may be) - for the following reasons:

Note 1: Science - by it's design and method is innately limited to
those things which can be known by means of the
sense/reason process, as filtered through the rules of logic.
Once you leave sense/reason and/or abandon logic, it *may*
be "true" but it is not science, nor can science comment
upon it. This is where the Intelligent Design people
get in trouble, BTW - they take a big jump that is
outside the methods of science (a jump with which I at
least partially agree), but then demand it be recognized
as "science". Good manners demands that we all admit
the limits of any system of knowledge we're currently
using. I fault the IDers for this but I also fault
the science worshipers for assuming everything else is crap.

Note 2: Goedel pretty much demolished the idea that *any* logical
system can be internally consistent AND complete. In effect,
using logic, you *cannot* "ascertain the existence or not of
outside influence". This drove mathematical logicians
mad when it was first demonstrated within mathematics.
Science folk - especially those who are laypersons interested
in science without the requisite mathematical background -
often don't get how this translates into the limits of
knowledge for *any* logic-based reasoning system, including
science itself.

For instance, a perfect science would take us all the way back
to the Big Bang (or before that if there was a "before"), explaining
all the minutae of how it worked. But even perfect science could
not meaningfully comment upon whence the matter and energy that
comprised the "First Event" came from. It's an interesting
question because science does inform us that matter and energy can
be exchanged but not increased. So ... where did it come from?
Who/what made it happen? Why do the rules of quantum physics
(to the extent we understand them), cosmology, etc. work the
way they do. Once you step up a level from the mechanical details
you discover: a) Science has no voice in these existential/ontological
questions and b) They are pretty dang interesting questions.


It may also turn out, that the root cause is, indeed, buried in the randomness of quantum theory.


Even so, how things got to be quantum/random is a question
science cannot answer.

Then again, more realistically, it's likely we'll continue delving indefinitely.

Probably, and that is as it should be. The search for knowledge is
a very good thing for we humans to undertake. I just rebel at the idea
that there is only *one* meaningful way to know things, that's all...

--
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Tim Daneliuk tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
.

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