“The Limits of Science”

This is somewhat dated, but since I just saw a copy of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s new book, The Grand Design, on the latest hypotheses of cosmologists, in the window of my favorite bookstore, I thought I would put this up. Hawking and Mlodinow state that the latest pet theory of the cosmologists, M-brane theory, establishes the absence of God. The Economist took a very dim view of this in its rather harsh critique of his book, and then followed up with another post on the same controversy.

I should mention that I haven’t read Hawking and Mlodinow’s book yet, so I cannot fairly comment on its content or arguments.

Along similar lines, here’s a short, interesting article on the limits of science, titled “On the Limits of Science”. While pointing out that scientific endeavours, by their very nature, are likely to posit incomplete, inaccurate models, the author concludes (correctly, in my opinion, at least with regard to a very wide class of phenomena) that

the shortcomings of science do not make it rational to believe cranks instead. It’s a fair bet that many of today’s scientific beliefs are wrong, but only your grandchildren will know which ones, and in the meantime, science is the only game in town.

Whether scientifically investigable phenomena are the only kinds of phenomena there are is of course an entirely different question—and one that is not itself subject to scientific investigation. (You may therefore either dismiss it as an entirely meaningless question, or hold it up as proof of “the limits of science”.)