On Jan 17, 2008, at 10:12 AM, Charles Brown wrote:
>
> Chris Doss
>
> I have never met a scientist, in person or in print,
> who asserted that everything is knowable. Science
> itself does not hold anything. Science is a technique.
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Ok. Scientific technique always proceeds as if what it's
> investigating can be understood. And no one can tell everybody that
> there are questions for which the scientific technique cannot be used.
> No one can foreclose use of the scientific technique on any
> question. No
> one can declare for others that some question is an insoluble
> mystery.
>
> Lets call it scientific philosophy. Scientific philosophy holds that
> there is no question for which scientific inquiry cannot be applied,
> no
> question for which it can be declared that it cannot be understood
> through scientific technique.
This is true, though only of questions that are meaningful. Meaningless "questions" like "Why is there something instead of nothing?" cannot yield a meaningful answer to scientific, or any other, technique.
Shane Mage
"This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 30