The Limits of Science:

"Our goal as teachers and educators should be to expose our students to the discovery process and to excite them about the challenges at the frontiers of knowledge. We should try to make students understand . . . why a scientist can never be sure that he or she has the final answer to anything." Bruce Alberts, President, National Academy of Sciences, 2005  The last sentence is worth repeating; "We should try to make students understand . . . why a scientist can never be sure that he or she has the final answer to anything."  (Our highlights.)  Mr. Alberts clearly has an understanding of the limits of the science method.

Science method limits.

The statements by Mr. Alberts are certainly true and profound.  The general public, as well as even many scientists, give science far more credit than it deserves for being able to answer basic questions; namely the deep "why" questions in an objective way.   Science can, for example, find the chemical trails made by ants and determine that those trails are a small element in the understanding of ant behavior, but at a deep level cannot tell us "why" ant colonies are organized as efficiently as they are nor how such complex behaviors come about from such simple entities (saying that it just emerges, is really just an admission of ignorance.)

It is not that physics and science in general cannot inform use to a large degree about the relationships at work in complex situations, but this does mean that science can provide a complete description or full explanation of complex relationships to an unlimited degree.  There is no scientific principle which says or even suggests that science actually has unlimited explanatory power.  There are in fact many limits (in the real world of hard facts laboratory science) as to what science can teach us. 

     Overview of science limits and realities:

    1) Science is about relationships of physical entities (matter/fields), not absolutes.  Einstein's theories are about "relativity" because relativity is fundamental to all basic science.

    2) Science relies on models which are only approximations of reality.  No mathematical model of reality can ever be shown to be absolute valid in all possible situations.  Randomness in Arithmetic and the Decline & Fall of Reductionism in Pure Mathematics.

3) Science can never show that a theory will not eventually be shown to be incorrect or even known that it will not be proven to be incorrect by the next new form of test of the theory.  Theories are inherently only a limited approximation to the truth and limited in validity in some way and possibly fundamentally in error in philosophy.

    4) Science is never objective in the interpretations of what the laws tell us about deep reality.  Beyond mathematics, interpretations (word generalizations) of the laws of physics are always subjective.

    5) Relatively simple experiments (compared to the incredible complexity of most of reality) are required to allow simplified mathematical analysis of the data.  Such simple experiments are limited in what they can tell us.  

    6) Science is also generally limited to the simplest situations because of limits of reductionism (the assumption that the whole is simply the sum of the parts.)  What is Occam's Razor?

    7) All science involves faith and assumptions.  At the very least, the scientist must have faith in previous science experiments on which their experiments and theory rely.  If the previous experiment the new experiment is dependent on is flawed, that may invalidate the results of the new experiment.  The scientists also must always make assumptions which if true allow an experiment to describe a larger reality (less simple situations).   Here is a link to an article on science assumptions.  Link here to our essay on science assumptions.

    8) All science involves uncertainties.  At the level of the most basic physical law of the universe is quantum mechanics.  Quantum mechanics only allows calculations of the probabilities of various possible outcomes but usually not certainty.  Quantum mechanics underlies and underpins all other science.

Physics is the deepest science and yet physics is about simple things or situations.  (Certainly, physics cannot tell us much about ant hives.)  Einstein did say;  As we will discuss later herein, however, Einstein was only talking about the theories of physics (the underlying simple conceptual models/ideas.) He was not talking about complex systems which, of course, depend on the laws of physics but which are beyond the simple form explanations of physics.    Einstein was talking about the theoretical concepts which lead to the simple mathematical laws of relationships between various forms of energy and matter.  He probably just wanted to make the point that any physical theory should be basically understandable by laypersons.  In any case, saying that physics underpins all of reality also does not answer the deep "why" questions.

What science tells us in fact depends on what questions the experiments asks.  Noted physicists Werner Heisenberg once said; "Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning."  This is a very profound statement.  When we ask dogmatic questions based on preconceived ideas, we simply get answers as to how reality/nature views that dogma.  We do not necessarily and often, in fact, get a true unbiased picture of nature viewed with an open mind or what the view would be with some significantly different science experiment.

Physicists Ernst Mach once said; "Physical science does not pretend to be a complete view of the world; it simply claims that it is working toward such a complete view in the future."  We will argue herein that that "future" will always be beyond our reach.

Stephen Hawkings, one of the top physicists in the world has written an essay entitled; "Gödel and the end of physics"  (Gödel was a noted mathematician who proved that even simple mathematical systems are limited in what they can tell us.  Also do not be misled by the spelling errors in his essay, Mr. Hawkings has Lou Gherig's disease and cannot even speak anymore and the errors are not a reflection of the still brilliant mind he has.)  Gödel proved that even in simple mathematical logic systems there are profound limits as to what can be proven.  Gödel proved that certain truths are inherently unverifiable.  This is true in both mathematics and in physical science as well.  Certain truths will always be beyond science.

Not only are certain truths unverifiable, but certain modes of reasoning/thinking actually can even hide the truth from being recognized.  Historically famous mathematician Henri Poincare once said; "It is not sufficient for a theory to affirm no false relations, it must not hide true relations."  (It may be that the biological dogmas and even fundamental physics theories are in fact hiding some deeper truths from being found at all.)    Inherent Limits of Reason & Science.

Simply stated, if the "science" cannot be done in a laboratory in a repeatable way, then what is said to be "science" may in fact be mostly if not all opinion and interpretation of science facts and not science itself.   The way of thinking proposed by some science theories may actually direct us away from the truth.  Link here to another site on the limits of science.  Science opinions and interpretations (such as those in this site) are not science fact but essentially philosophy. 

Science is also not usually effective for telling us why things occur, this is true even when science can give us a formula to predict what will happen in certain interactions.  A formula which describes a relationship does not tell us why that relationship exists.   Science supposed answers to "why" questions usually just lead one to another level of questions which just raise more unknown "why"s.

We should not be misled just because science has a descriptive term for some phenomena or even a mathematical formula to describe some phenomena.  Science terms such as centrifugal force do not provide an explanation of why centrifugal force occurs, but only provide a formula for quantifying the effect.  As a simple example of this; science cannot tell us in the most basic terms "why" when we spin a container of liquid (even at a constant rate), the liquid will go up the sides of the container.  Science can give you a formula which tells how high up the sides the liquid will go, but science cannot explain why it basically happens. 

This is a very simple situation and yet science cannot truly explain it but can only describe what will happen if we run a certain experiment with a bucket of water or some other liquid.  You could run a bucket of water experiment at home and see for yourself one very simple case of where science only really describes what happens and not why it happens.   Click here for a more technical discussion of centrifugal force.   Spinning a bucket of water about the circular axis of the bucket, it is easily observed that the water rises up the sides of the spinning bucket.  As simple as this is, it is not at all deeply understood by science why this happens.  (A mathematical formula is a characterization and not a "why" explanation.) 

The mathematics to describe what will happen to the fluid in a spinning bucket are very simple, but at a deep level, the "why" this happens is not understood. (There are some ideas about the water "sensing that it is moving relative to the rest of the matter in the universe, but that just raises even deeper questions.  The essential question is; how does the water know that it is spinning.  It is spinning relative to what, and how does it interact with whatever it is spinning relative to?)  How could water sense what it is doing relative to the rest of the universe?   The Life of the Cosmos, see chapter 17,  starting in the second paragraph.

Science "explanations" will talk about centrifugal force, the balance of forces, and the conservation of energy, but in the end, the science arguments can be circular to cover up the basic lack of understanding of even such a simple experiment.  The spinning bucket of water experiment is not alone in having baffled science for a long time.  (Think about it again.  The attempts at why explanations in this example wind up talking about something like connections between the liquid and all the objects and energy in the entire universe, but this is essentially just weaving words around fundamental ignorance.)  (We recommend the book; Schrödinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by J. Gribben Ph.D. Astrophysics (his book is worth reading on many levels.  The author discusses the spinning bucket of liquid starting on page 175.)

"A second simple example is that science tells us that an object in motion will continue in motion absent some type of force on it; however, Einstein's special relativity says all motion is relative, so how does the object in motion know what motion it is to maintain if there is no absolute velocity but only relative velocity.  If the motion is relative to the rest of the universe, how does the object sense that motion?  How does an inert mass "know" how it is to respond to a force?  Why is the mass which determines force response exactly the same mass that determines gravitational effects?"  Science cannot answer those questions at more than a very superficial/operational level.

We also recommend the book; "The Ascent of Science" by B. Silver Professor of Physical Chemistry, (although we disagree with the conclusions in the section on evolution.)  It is interesting to note that the Professor in the first page of the introduction raises a point that will startle anyone who thinks that science has absolute answers.  He points out that science does not even fundamentally really know what "matter" (material) is.   Professor Silver says; "A particle physicist might tell you that matter is a "bunching up of a field," but if we are honest we have to admit that "matter" is little more than one of the concepts that allows us to deal with what our senses report of what we call the external world."  (We would note that science cannot really tell us what a field is either beyond an operational mathematical description.  So "bunching up of a field" doesn't tell us much.)  The Wave Nature of Matter.

"Integrative Science”: The Death-Knell of Scientific Materialism?  Science simply uses the term "field" as a convenient way to talk about something for which it again only has an operational description but not a deep fundamental description.

Even the vacuum of space is known not to be just a void.  It is known to be seething with potential energy.  The question is; what is it that is seething with energy?  There is no "matter" there by definition in a pure vacuum, but even a pure vacuum contains energy (now believed to be mathematically described at least in part by the "cosmological constant" in Einstein's general relativity equations.)

The limits of science are, in a number of ways, very basic.   Most of the limits of science are obvious without deep reasoning, such as dependence of the existing state of scientific knowledge on faith in the truth of previous science facts (and dogma) to begin with, the limits of physical testing in complex situations, the limits of the human intellect, and human bias in reporting the results of tests.  Some limits such as those below are not as immediately obvious but fairly easily understood once they are brought up.

 Confronting Science's Logical Limits.

Looking in more detail at the above listed realities of science;

First of all, experiments always are about the relationship of some physical condition relative to some other physical condition.  Science is essentially only about relationships between various entities in the universe which can be measured.  An example of this would be "how does light behaves in relationship to a slit through which it passes."  The relationship is between light and the physical slit which effects light passing through it.  Another example would be "how does light interact with matter when it collides with matter?"  There must always be a way to make a measurement and that always involves an interaction.  One cannot run an experiment, for example, to determine what happens to light when it is left alone.  An experiment can make limited inferences about what happens by making measurements "before" and "after".  By definition, however, without a measurement, there would be no data to analyze.  Without data, there is no hard science, there is only philosophy and indeterminate uncertainty.

Secondly, science can generally only provide the results of laboratory experiments and provide possible explanations as to how the results relate to some theory or model of reality.  The experiments may rule out some model as being incorrect but never will prove with any certainty that the model/theory postulated as true is absolutely correct and will not be found to be wrong in the next experiment under significantly different conditions.  A series of experiments can give virtual assurance that the model is usable over a range of conditions but, again, will never prove, even in principle that if the conditions are very different that the model/theory will still be correct.

Thirdly, science always involves some physical experimental setup.  In the case of light going thru a slit, there is always a physical object with a slit in it and some way to detect light after it goes thru the slit.  The physical setup defines and at the same time limits what can be learned/known from the experiment.

Fourth, science is limited to very simple experiments where the relationships can be handled by the mathematics available at the time.  Science is also limited and bounded by assumptions of linearity and reductionism.  The two facts mean that science is limited in the range over which an experiment can be extrapolated to other situations and also is limited as to what can be understood by taking something apart and testing the pieces to understand the "whole which existed before it was taken apart", respectively.

Science is not some profound nor unlimited source of knowledge to an unlimited depth of understanding.   Science cannot provide all the answers.   There are good reasons; "Why so many scientists believe in God."   They are usually the ones who have come to understand deeply the limits of science.

Cosmos Bios and Theos which questions 60 leading scientists including 20 Nobel prize winners;  in the interview with Sir John Eccles, Nobel Prize winner with a Ph.D. in natural sciences, when questioned if he believed in a divine Creation said:  “Yes I do.  I have said that several times in my books.  And this is a creation.  You have to think of it as not just by a Creator who tosses off souls one after another.  This is a loving Creator giving us all these wonderful gifts.”

From the same book:  Interview with Professor Wolfgang Smith, Ph.D. in mathematics: “nothing is more evident, more certain , than the existence or reality of God”.    Again, these statements are not science and certainly not directly related to any proof of God.  The statements just show that a number of highly trained leading scientists do believe in God.  

Besides the limits on actual science experiments, there is a limit as to what the experimenter as a person can ever understand which limits the complexity of experiments which are even meaningful to perform.  With simple and understandable experiments, science may as a result be providing a misleading picture of what happens in the much more complicated real world/life situations.  

Not generally known is that there is a fundamental limit to what any human being can ever know because of the limits of the human brain, if we assume that the brain actually functions like an algorithmic computer and is itself simple enough to be understandable by science.  This assumption is actually open to serious question, but if the brain does actually work like a computer with a program, then we (humanity) have some very fundamental limits in understanding very complex sets or systems of knowledge.  Our simplifying models of reality may be all that can be simply understood to a high degree of probability.

The following paragraph gets somewhat complex for non mathematicians but needs to be included to make the point of this essay.  Our interpretation of this excerpt from a book will follow in the next paragraph in hopefully simpler terms.

In his book "Complexification", John L. Casti (Ph.D. in mathematics) says on page 146 (referring to the work of another well known mathematician by the name of Chaitin;  "It's thought provoking to consider the degree to which Chaitin's result imposes limitations on our knowledge of the world."   "Chaitin showed that it is impossible to prove whether or not a particular number is random, whether a compression is the most concise---it is always possible that there is more order than can be squeezed out."    This is a very profound finding and means that we can never prove that any information set is strictly random.  This would include the information set which evolutionary survival of the fittest selects from.  All such theories are inherently incomplete.  On the Inherent Incompleteness of Scientific Theories.

Casti continues referring also to another well known mathematician by the name of Rudy Rucker (don't worry for the moment about the mathematical language; "Rudy Rucker has made the following estimate: suppose K represents our best present day knowledge, while C denotes a universal Turing machine whose reasoning powers equal those of the smartest and cleverest of human beings.  (A Turing machine is essentially a computer.)  "Rucker then estimates the maximum complexity number "t" in Chaitin's Theorem to be;

                    t = complexity K + complexity C + 1 billion.

What all this means is that if this formula is correct, whenever any physical or non physical information system exceeds a complexity number of about 3 billion (complexity number), there will be no possibility of a human coming up with a short and reasonable simple/full explanation/understanding of it.  This does not mean that science truths in complex subjects such as the structures of living entities cannot basically be understood, but simply stated; complex science interactions can reach a level where there is no possibility that it can be completely understood by any human being.  The key is the word completely, and we would submit that the complexities of life are at that level.

As Casti summarizes it in his book: "Chaitin's work says that our scientific theories are basically powerless to say anything about phenomena whose complexity is much greater than about 3 billion.

Casti further says; "there is a forever unbridgeable gap between what's true and what can be proved."

While the assumption that the brain functions like a computer is, we believe, very much open to question, it is not unreasonable to believe that the human brain still has some limit in any case as to the level of complexity which can be truly understood.  This limits science as do other factors of logic such as the theorem of mathematician Kurt Gödel.  Gödel essentially proved that even very simple systems of logic have very profound limits.  Even simple mathematics (the science/logic of numbers) has its limits.  It is essentially a fact that the goal of physics to fully understand reality will probably never be reached.  This is especially true since physics is mostly based on mathematics.

It is also not difficult to envision that some things of great complexity (like the earths environmental systems in total) may never be adequately understood, let alone fully understood.  Environmental interactions not even adequately understood will prevent making reliable environmental impact predictions.  The fears of global warming are real and very serious even if the effect is small because of the possibility that a small change produced in the atmosphere by societies could produce large and catastrophic warming and/or rebound cooling effects are totally beyond the power of any human mind to ever predict such significantly in advance of the occurrence.

 None of the above facts are to say that Einstein was wrong when he said; ""All physical theories... ought to lend themselves to so simple a description that even a child could understand them."  He was talking about the underlying concepts of physics which could be simple to understand as contrasted to the complex systems which exist in life and in other complex systems such as global weather.  Science understands in basic principles how the global weather works, that does not mean, however, that there is any complete understanding.  Without a complete understanding, no precise prediction of the effects of global warming are even theoretically possible.

Add to the above the fact that science has all the human failings contaminating it as much as other disciplines.  Scientists are human and prone to mistakes.   Many teachers use books loaded with errors and don't know the difference.  There is also science fraud.  There are also science community political structures.  The politics of science and the monetary interests far to often turn science away from the search for anything like objective truth.

Science can also reach some extremely improbable conclusions if one assumes that there is no "design" in the universe (we do not make such an assumption.)   Physics calculations now seem to indicate that when the universe was created, the amount of matter created in the big bang would have had to be exact relative to the amount of energy in the vacuum of space to 1 part in 10 followed by 100 zeros to get the universe we see today.  (Ref. Scientific American Jan 2001 page 49.)  If even remotely correct, this calculation alone makes the universe improbable from chance to an incredible degree based on materialistic science alone.

Sadly, all these limits together with human failings means that it may be inevitable that some day science will reach a point where it has the knowledge and power to do irreparable harm.

If science does not face up to its profound fundamental limits and its inherent human failings, or if it is not reigned in by the voting public, it is almost certainly only a matter of time before unbridled science produces some form of major catastrophe.  Human Nature and the Limits of Science.

The primary hope in preventing science catastrophes is for the voting public to be educated and informed and to in turn inform and guide the government which at least has the power, if not the will, to control dangerous science.

We strongly recommend reading the book; "A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics From The Bottom Down, by R. Laughlin, Nobel Prize physicist.  Mr. Laughlin's book is enjoyable, very easy to read and loaded with astounding and profound comments on science realities and limits.

The Outer Limits: In Search of the “Unknowable” in Science

Grappling With Science's Limits.

The limits of reductionism.

The Case Against Naturalism in Science.  (Against extreme and overstated naturalism is the subject.)

Can Science explain Everything?

Certainty and Uncertainty

The Limits To Science

The Problem of Induction

Karl Popper's Falsification Principle

The Limits of Mathematics

Error and the Nature of Science

Re-examining the Givens: Testing Our Theories of the World.

Philosophy of Science

Scientific Apologetics

The dangers of science without religion.

Science Frontiers; The Unusual & Unexplained

The Cosmic Ray Paradox  Reality exceeds a perceived limit of the science model.

Questions science will probably never answer.

Ten Myths about Science.

Science Myths" in K-6 Textbooks and Popular culture

Open questions in Physics

A New Form of Matter

Limits of Natural Selection, a Reason to Teach All Theories.

Impossibility : The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits

Fallibilism is the epistemological thesis that no belief (theory, view, thesis, and so on) can ever be rationally supported or justified in a conclusive way.  (We would add that faith at some level is always required.)

Why science does not always have the right answer.

The One True Platonic Heaven: A Scientific Fiction on The Limits of Knowledge which illuminates the limits of science.

More public input means better science