Science and love, music, art, etc. (The limitations of science)

by Mark , Friday, February 13, 2009, 12:15 (5761 days ago) @ dhw

George: "Science already has reliable answers about such subjects as love, musical appreciation, and creative thought." - Really? Let's make it easier and choose just the last one, "creative thought". Or, to make it easier still, just "thought". Has science got a clue about thought, let alone "reliable answers"? No scientist in the world can observe, measure, locate or prove the existence of my thoughts, yet even George (I trust) believes they exist. Scientists can talk about brain activity, and even make correlations with what I declare my thoughts to be, but the activity they observe is not thought. To say that it is thought is like saying that the ink and paper which comprise the score of Mozart's Requiem is the music. - Science is inherently limited by the fact that it deals with an abstracted model of reality: that which can be observed and measured in time and space. That is fine, as far as it goes. But there is no good reason why reality should be limited to what falls within the scope of the scientific approach. Indeed, I would suggest that thought and all our subjective experiences are untouchable by science, yet undeniably real. - It is because of this that science cannot provide a comprehensive theory for reality. Science can never get to mind. However, if mind is the fundamental reality, and matter is the product of mind, then I have a unified model which explains mind and includes science at the same time.