The limitations of science (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Monday, September 20, 2010, 11:08 (5177 days ago) @ dhw

An article in yesterday's Sunday Times reports on a study of more than 4000 British children. "One of its main conclusions is that intelligence is controlled by a network of thousands of genes [...] rather than the handful of powerful genes that scientists once predicted."-There are two reasons for drawing attention to this: 
1)	Yet again we're confronted with the complexity of the genetic network, and the massive leap of faith required to believe that the mechanism leading to such complexity could assemble itself spontaneously.
2)	Science is continually changing its tunes. Some people may take this as confirmation of their faith that science will always correct itself and come up eventually with the facts. Others will point out that the constant revisions, new theories, new discoveries make it necessary to remain sceptical of all current pronouncements masquerading as facts.-That doesn't mean science is not our best chance of unravelling truths about the material world. It may even be the only chance. However, it does mean that we should remain open-minded when scientists attempt to draw authoritative conclusions from speculative findings, and that so long as we have no solution to basic mysteries such as the origin of life and the universe, and consciousness with all its ramifications, we should not assume that the material world ... as we know it ... is all there is.