Things science can't handle

[Aldebaran]

As in, the complexity of the thing you're studying is to great to ever know all the variables and processes at one time. This is a limit of the human brain though, I think.

This perceived limit could be caused by the current limited use of its capacity (some propose that humans currently only use 10% of their brain capacity).
Question remains if even when this is true, a full use of the capacity of the human brain would give insight in all possible complexity. In my view it would inevitably cause discovery of even greater complexity.

Given the fact that our planet means less then a grain of sand in an unlimited desert, and that humans are only one living species on this totally insignificant planet, I find it quite stunning that humans hope for - or claim - the human brain shall ever be able to gain unlimited understanding of the unlimited (to clarify: I see it as unlimited for the human brain to ever discover, let alone understand).
Let alone that it can be claimed that the human species shall then be the only species to have found all the answers, which additionally must count as indisputable truth for all forms of life. Anywhere.
It is in my view beyond ridiculous to even think that, let alone to suggest it.

salaam.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

please feel free to elaborate, or drop a few links

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/hawkins.html ?

 

[Calva dosser]

Humans only use 10% of their brain capacity- another urban myth.

Only 10% can be seen to be actively working in many subjects. Especially those with a religious or credulous disposition.

 

[Aldebaran]

Humans only use 10% of their brain capacity- another urban myth.

It coud be urban myth, but it could also be looked at as indicating that no matter what is known to date about the human brain and its functions, many quesitons remain unanswered.

Only 10% can be seen to be actively working in many subjects. Especially those with a religious or credulous disposition.

Do you have conclusive scientific evidence or is that your very own urban myth?

salaam.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

It coud be urban myth, but it could also be looked at as indicating that no matter what is known to date about the human brain and its functions, many quesitons remain unanswered.

No it couldn't. This really does refer to a specific myth that 90% of brain matter is completely unused. What you say is true, but it is something utterly separate and different.

Don't de-rail my nice science thread with your usual atheists vs theists monologue, please.

 

[Aldebaran]

No it couldn't. This really does refer to a specific myth that 90% of brain matter is completely unused.

That is not what I mean, actually.

Don't de-rail my nice science thread with your usual atheists vs theists monologue, please.

You attack the wrong messenger. Maybe a conditioned reflex?. What about a sensible comment on post 31 instead?

salaam.

 

[Jonti]

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/hawkins.html ?

An interesting read, thanks.

I think it's fair to argue that science finds no great mystery in the information processing aspects of neurology, which is what Hawkins' work is about. It's the consciousness that accompanies some (but only a very small part) of brain activity that currently has science stumped.

 

[Jonti]

The universe starting? There was nothing. No time, no space or matter. Then there was everything.

Another- how did life start? According to the Bill Bryson book 'A short History of nearly everything':

'whatever prompted life to begin, it happened just once. That is the most extrodinary fact in biology, perhaps the most extraordinary fact we know. Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginnings from the same primordial twitch. At some point in the unimaginably distant past some little bag of chemicals fidgeted to life. It absorbed somer nutrients, gently pulsed, had a brief existence. This much may have happened before,perhaps many times. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary: it cleaved itself and produced an heir. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all. Biologists sometimes refer to it as the Big Birth.'

All life is one.

Yes, it is (source) ...

The single origin of life is supported by the large number of traits that are shared by ALL currently known cellular life, including:

• A nucleic acid based information system (RNA and/or DNA) with the same nitrogenous bases (of the almost infinite number of possible nitrogenous bases)

• The use of the same 20 amino acids (of the almost infinite number of possible amino acids)

• The use of only left-handed amino acids (when there is no a priori reason why some origins of life might not have used right-handed amino acids).

• Almost identical genetic codes (despite the fact that there are a huge number of possible genetic codes)

• Ribosomes (complex structures used by all cells to make proteins)

• A similar energy system involving ATP

• Some shared metabolic pathways (e.g., glycolysis – the basis of respiration)

• A large number of shared proteins and the genes that encode them (e.g., ATPase, aminoacyl tRNA synthetase, etc.)

However, it is possible that there were additional origins of life on earth but that they either went extinct or (less likely) they are alive but have yet to be discovered.

 

[obanite]

What about life elsewhere? Surely we're not saying 'the only life is on Earth'

 

[Jonti]

No, we're not saying that.

Just saying all (cellular) life on Earth most likely has a single common ancestor.

 

[loonytune]

At the end of the day, science might well be surpassed by a more insightful and enlightning method of discovery and explanation.
It makes sense to say that this is effectively what science did to monotheism, as monotheism surpassed polytheism, as polytheism surpassed a world explained by the actions of spirits.
This new method might arrive as we evolve, opening up our 'minds' to a world outlook previously impossible. It might well be that this is in fact the ONLY means of attaining a higher understanding.
BUT... what is true is that SCIENCE WORKS. Science as we know and love it, does work! The surpassing of science would not render the laws of science obsolete, rather, only applicable in explaining certain situations and answering questions of a nature as it currently can.

And my reason for spouting this?

Pseudo-scientists with a real ability to argue are enforcing essentially UNscientific theories (which in turn lend support to political and religious teachings) based on the very undermining of science which has arisen out of both:
scientists pretending that science CAN answer everything (maybe it can, and we'll keep trying) and;
those in opposition to science in turn turning science into a religion in itself...
(there are many reasons in fact for the undermining of science but i suppose these two, which are no doubt intertwined and causally relevant to each other, are of significant importance today.)

Science will never be able to say, surely and firmly: NO, God does not exist (disagree with that and you give humankind too much credit (and an unjustified longetivity)) but at the same time, these such philosophical, ultimate questions, should not need be linked directly and experimentally TO science in order that some general consensus be arrived at: common sense (which admittedly rests on the backbone of scientific means of understanding (but this does work!)) should surely allow us to be rid of age-old and politically motivated drivel and instead help to propagate what is useful in finding truth...........

('truth' meaning an understanding of a material world; as regards the human mind, well, that i suppose is another rant in itself...)

 

[merlin wood]

At the end of the day, science might well be surpassed by a more insightful and enlightning method of discovery and explanation.
It makes sense to say that this is effectively what science did to monotheism, as monotheism surpassed polytheism, as polytheism surpassed a world explained by the actions of spirits.

But then if, like science, this is a method of discovering the truth from the natural and experimental evidence I don't see why it shouldn't itself be called science.

 

[loonytune]

Well said... i found myself browsing a lovely article (which i might talk about in more detail in a separate post) and its accompanying videos regarding a channel 4 tv programme called:
The Trouble with Atheism -
It is such a half-arsed programme, but on first watching it i found some agreement in that people 'need to find spirituality' and all such that can be elaborated from that (although i have got to say that spirituality and, creativity and appreciation of people, literature, all that is aesthetic and inspires the emotions - go hand in hand!).
And so the mind ticks over a couple more tocks and MY WORD! - to believe in that which is not scientific, at least, as regards material truth (and it is in fact important to find material truth in religion, otherwise i might aswell just start believing in a man named StellaArtois, a little angry gremlin from Leuven who watches over me and keeps me safe) is ludicrous - in fact, to kid oneself further and exclaim THE HEAVENS AND SCIENCE REST HAND IN HAND makes me want to have another beer and go read arfken and - ba-boom.....

CONCLUSION (read this first i should say):
there is yourself and other people - what is to be experienced by yourself and other people is a result of what yourself and other people create for you and themselves - at the root of this is a fascinating cogwork of consciousness and that glorious facet one might call SUBJECTIVITY! The aforesaid SYNONYMS OF SPIRITUALITY surely constitute all that is glorious without selling oneself to CLOUD 9 - which, i'm sure is a glorious wee place...

and then there is science: that bitter, cold, beautiful realm of possibility one enters blind and carves away at in order that THE TRUTH BE TOLD; it rests on only one truth-be-told prejudice, and that is that science will spew out something valid, useful and admittedly wonderfully far bigger and more important than the mere human
(p.s. the 'mere human', see that reminds me: in such a vast universe, how can one seek repose in a supposedly immanent omnipotent being? It is in fact a shame that when the 'immanence of God' is experienced by mere mortals, in fact mere mere mortals, the great unquestioning masses, they do not give themselves considerably greater self-respect (for often God is thanked for all such brilliance as was achieved by you and me and him and her))