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The world is real. The real world is knowable and comprehensible. There are laws that govern the real world. Those laws are knowable and comprehensible. Those laws don't [radically] change according to place or time, since the early stages of the big bang.
Assumptions of Science
Nature is understandable The rules of logic are valid Language is adequate to describe the natural realm Human senses are reliable. Mathematical rules are descriptive for the physical world Unexplained things can be used to explain other phenomenon (e.g. gravity is thus far unexplained but it is used to explain the movement of planets and the bending of light) Observable phenomenon provide knowledge about unobservable phenomenon
Assumptions of science
True, physical universe exists Universe is primarily orderly The principles that define the functioning of the universe can be discovered All ideas are tentative, potentially changed by new information
Limitations of Science
Science can't answer questions about value. For example, there is no scientific answer to the questions, "Which of these flowers is prettier?" or "which smells worse, a skunk or a skunk cabbage?" And of course, there's the more obvious example, "Which is more valuable, one ounce of gold or one ounce of steel?" Our culture places value on the element gold, but if what you need is something to build a skyscraper with, gold, a very soft metal, is pretty useless. So there's no way to scientifically determine value.
Limitations of Science
Science can't answer questions of morality. The problem of deciding good and bad, right and wrong, is outside the determination of science. This is why expert scientific witnesses can never help us solve the dispute over abortion: all a scientist can tell you is what is going on as a fetus develops; the question of whether it is right or wrong to terminate those events is determined by cultural and social rules--in other words, morality. The science can't help here.
Limitations of Science
Science can't help us with questions about the supernatural. The prefix "super" means "above." So supernatural means "above (or beyond) the natural." The toolbox of a scientist contains only the natural laws of the universe; supernatural questions are outside their reach.
Scientism
Scientism is the acceptance of scientific theory and scientific methods as applicable in all fields of inquiry about the world, including morality, ethics, art, and religion
Materialism
We exist as material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena are the consequences of material relations among material entities." In a word, the public needs to accept materialism, which means that they must put God in the trash can of history where such myths belong.
Richard Lewontin
Retrospective essay on Carl Sagan in the January 9, 1997 New York Review of Books,
Scientific Materialism
Scientific Materialism accepts only one reality: the physical universe, composed as it is of matter and energy. Everything that is not physical, measurable, or deducible from scientific observations, is considered unreal. Life is explained in purely mechanical terms, and phenomena such as Mind and Consciousness are considered nothing but epiphenomena - curious by-products, of certain complex physical processes (such as brain metabolism)
Scientific Materialism
There is no God, No angels No Devil No good No evil No survival of physical death, No non-physical realities, and No ultimate meaning or purpose to life No Heaven No afterlife
Scientific Materialism
Only that which can be observed and measured through the technique of Scientific Method is real, and everything else is unreal.
Hogan continued
Unsolved Problems after many years and dollars spent. Fusion Weather Prediction Earthquake Prediction Gravity Consciousness Artificial Intelligence Origins of life and synthesized life Higgs Bosons and other basic particles
Knowledge
Knowledge is a relationship between ideas about observations.
Are there other ways of knowing in addition to the ways of Science? Are painting, dance, music, religion other ways of knowing?
Knowledge
Are there question asked by art or religion? Are those question understood by Science? Can science answer the questions asked by painting or religion? Can science decide which painting or which musical score is great and which is dross?
Transitions to Complexity
Does quantum physics subsume chemistry? Does chemistry subsume life? Does biology subsume consciousness? OR Are there unanticipated, non-deducible transitions to new organizations of matter?
Organizations of Matter
Prigogine showed spontaneous organization was described by higher order thermodynamics. Chaotic, entropy dissipating systems snap into order as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction,
Transitions
Is life or consciousness impossible to understand in terms of physics or chemistry? The enzymes studied since 1860 is not understood. Is the ancient Greek goal of unifying knowledge impossible? Are there isolated islands of knowledge?
Transitions
Psychology Biology Chemistry
Omega Point
Physics