Limitele ştiinţei

Şi serialele sunt bune la ceva! Căutând comentarii la LOST, unul dintre serialele de top ale momentului, am găsit următoarele reflecţii despre ŞTIINŢĂ şi LOGICĂ, comentariu pe care îl găsiţi in extenso aici.

The Limits of Logic

The problem is the closed, self-referential nature of science and logic themselves.  Science and logic are imperfect subsets of reality.  If we rely on logic as revelation of reality we will discern only an incomplete, warped world far from true reality.

Science makes sensory observations, catalogues these data, uses the rules of mathematics and logic to create connections among the observations, and builds empirical findings into models of reality that we call hypotheses and theories.  A scientist truly comfortable in her laboratory will never claim she is revealing reality, only a poor model for certain physical behaviours that seem to follow a reproducible pattern.  There is no truth in science.  Science is not a tool for illuminating the fulness of reality.

I pick up a pen with the five fingers of my right hand.  Science notes this fact, records the observations associated with the act.  And that is all science can do.  Science cannot tell us my motivation for picking up the pen, cannot predict what I will do with it, how I will do it, what the future outcomes will be, or how the ramifications of the simple act will ripple through the greater world, how the act will affect others.

Science cannot place even the simplest act within the continuum of reality.  Complex interactions are so far outside the realm of pure science that they virtually defy adequate description.  In fact, no interaction can be fully characterised.  Science and logic must be forever partial, incomplete statements of certain events, and they can never claim to explain a basis in reality.

We say logic is “impartial”.  Even if logic cannot connect events to reality, we believe it is at least fair, in the sense that it applies the same syllogisms regardless of context.  But every new, misleading application of logic is a fresh occasion for warped interpretations.  Logic is, in every sense that has meaning, entirely partial, incomplete in every way.  Logic can never, ever be considered impartial.  It is, in its very nature, an instrument of partiality.

 Pearson Moore
Fredericton, NB
February 14, 2010