Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought (...) processes. Yanofsky describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there. (shrink)

Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher’s discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of (...) limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists both ask questions about what the world is like. How do these fields interact with one another? How should they? Naturalism Beyond the Limits of Science investigates an approach to these questions called methodological naturalism. According to methodological naturalism, when coming up with theories about what the world is like, philosophers should, whenever possible, make use of the same methodology that is deployed by scientists. Although many contemporary philosophers have implicit commitments that lead straightforwardly to (...) methodological naturalism, few have a clear understanding of how widespread and disruptive methodological naturalism promises to be for the field. By way of a series of case studies involving laws of nature, composition, time and modality, and drawing on historical and contemporary scientific developments including the discovery of the neutrino, the introduction of dark energy, and the advent of relativity theory, this book demonstrates the ways in which scientists rely on extra-empirical reasoning and how that very same extra-empirical reasoning can yield surprising results when applied to philosophical debates. Along the way, Nina Emery's investigation illuminates the complex relationship between philosophy and the sciences, and makes the case that philosophers and scientists alike would benefit from a greater understanding of the connections between the two fields. (shrink)

The problem of the limits of science — of the “barriers” and the “confines” — requires a new analysis, which is the task of this book. The issue is considered from the perspective of science as a human activity.

John Dupre warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. Not just in the academic world but in everyday life, we find one set of experts who seek to explain the ends at which humans aim in terms of evolutionary theory, while the other set uses economic models to give rules of how we act to achieve those ends. Dupre demonstrates that these theorists' explanations do not work and that, (...) if taken seriously, their theories tend to have dangerous social and political consequences. For these reasons, it is important to resist scientism: an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do for us. Dupre restores sanity to the study of human nature by pointing the way to a proper understanding of humans in the societies that are our natural and necessary environments. Anyone interested in science and human life will enjoy this book--unless they are its targets. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This peer-reviewed philosophy of science book examines the scope, purpose and methodology of science, and areas of the universe, reality and knowledge that lay beyond its scope. Science itself and scientists themselves say that there are important areas, topics and questions, including within and about science, that cannot be answered and often even addressed by science’s tools of sensory observation, empirical testing and logic.

John Barrow is increasingly recognized as one of our most elegant and accomplished science writers, a brilliant commentator on cosmology, mathematics, and modern physics. Barrow now tackles the heady topic of impossibility, in perhaps his strongest book yet. Writing with grace and insight, Barrow argues convincingly that there are limits to human discovery, that there are things that are ultimately unknowable, undoable, or unreachable. He first examines the limits on scientific inquiry imposed by the deficiencies of the (...) human mind: our brain evolved to meet the demands of our immediate environment, Barrow notes, and much that lies outside this small circle may also lie outside our understanding. Barrow investigates practical impossibilities, such as those imposed by complexity, uncomputability, or the finiteness of time, space, and resources. Is the universe finite or infinite? Can information be transmitted faster than the speed of light? The book also examines the deeper theoretical restrictions on our ability to know, including Godel's theorem--which proved that there were things that could not be proved--and Arrow's Impossibility theorem about democratic voting systems. Finally, having explored the limits imposed on us from without, Barrow considers whether there are limits we should impose upon ourselves. For instance, if the secrets of the atom are to be found only by recreating extreme environments at great financial cost, just how much should we devote to that quest? Weaving together this intriguing tapestry, he illuminates some of the most profound questions of science, from the possibility of time travel to the very structure of the universe. (shrink)

Mass drug screening offers a deceptively simple solution to the problem of drug use among workers. Even a very effective test is subject to error. In any given group of tested individuals, some will unavoidably be falsely accused. Even though scientific tests appear to provide efficient solutions to social and legal problems, these tests should not be accepted unless they also meet our standards for fair dealing.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato, Proclus, and the Limitations of Science S. SAMBURSKY I THE NEOPLATONICREVlV~of Plato's views on the physical world offers some highly interesting aspects to the historian of scientific ideas. There is first of all the interaction between a 600-year-old tradition and other philosophical systems that grew up during this long period and that exerted such a decisive influence on later antiquity. And there is further the magnificent development (...) of science--mathematics and astronomy in particular--in the period following Plato, reaching its climax in the Hellenistic era. This development introduced profound changes in the scientific world picture by adding a wealth of new facts to astronomy, mechanics, optics, and biology, and thus facing the later disciples of Plato with a difficult alternative : They could either assume an orthodox attitude by doubting the facts or at least belittling their significance for the Platonic doctrine; or else they could compromise by attempting to interpret the facts in the Platonic spirit--doing so by availing themselves of the well-known expedient of reading between the lines of the master's writings. It can, of course, not be denied that everything Plato has written on the physical world and on scientific cognition will always be, as it has been in antiquity, subject to interpretations. The task of a Platonic commentator is made even more difficult by his poetic style, his predilection for allegory, and his frequent use of allusions at the very moment when one expects systematic analysis. The increasing anti-metaphysical bias of modern science combined with the fact that Plato himself was neither a practicing scientist nor a creative mathematician led to the disparagement of his contribution to scientific thought in the last centuries. This applies in particular to the Timaeus,where the main tenets of PIato's scientific doctrine are expounded. However, on the whole, this negative attitude is not justified. The consistency and significance of Plato's epistemology of science is borne out by his statements in the Timaeusif they are taken together with his assertions concerning the role of mathematics in the cognition of nature and his appeal to the astronomers to "save the phenomena" of the planetary motions. Careful consideration of all these passages, regarded as a coherent whole, will show in the first place that Plato's philosophy of science does not fall short of his other great contributions to philosophy and human thought. It will further serve as a background against which the significant shift of emphasis that is found in Proclus's evaluation of the capacity of the human mind for the progressive understanding of nature will be seen. We all know of Plato's fundamental belief that the sensible world, i.e., the obiect of physical inquiry, is only an image of the inaccessible world of ideas. The intelligible world, the ultimate reality, is permanent and unchangeable, whereas [11 2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the material world is a world of transience and change. Every possible description of the physical world is therefore by necessity only a plausible story, not rising above the level of probability. This is the background of the celebrated passage in the Timaeus (29 C) : If then.., we prove unableto render an accountat all points entirely consistentwithitself and exact,you must not be surprised.If we can furnish accountsno less likely than any other, we must be content,rememberingthat I who speak and you my judges are onlyhuman, and consequently it is fittingthat we should, in these matters, accept the likelystory and look for nothingfurther. Here science has once and forever been assigned a place below the absolute truth, in view of the transient nature of the physical world and the role of the sensible world as an image of truth. Can some assertion be made as to the essence of this image? What is the ontological significance of all the changes and transmutations and what is the mechanism of that permanent generative process whose various components blend into the one perceptible unit which we call "nature"? Plato's answer is given in his allegory of the struggle between Reason and Necessity (Timaeus 48 A) : "The generation of this universe was a mixed result of the combination... (shrink)

Kant and Heidegger argue that our subjectivity escapes scientific explanation, while also providing the conditions that enable it. This understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and science places limits on the explanatory scope of the sciences. But what makes transcendental reflection on the structure of subjectivity possible in the first place? Fink argues that transcendental philosophy encounters its own limits in attempting to characterize its own conditions of possibility. I argue that the limits of science (...) and transcendental philosophy entail that nature cannot be conceived as a specific object, or as a totality of objects in the world, but only as the ontological ground of phenomenal manifestation in general. Nature is not identical with anything discoverable in either science or phenomenology; it is, rather, the origin from which discovery of phenomena proceeds. (shrink)

As the author notes in the Preface, this book is an outgrowth of a long-standing interest in the theory of scientific inquiry, an interest that has issued in such earlier books as Scientific Explanation, Scientific Progress, Cognitive Systematization, and Empirical Inquiry. In some respects, then, this book represents a refinement and a development of issues treated earlier. In particular, the book stands in apposition to the earlier book Scientific Progress, a book that focused on the practical and the economic obstacles (...) to scientific progress. This book, however, focuses more on the theoretical limitations of science and on those philosophical questions that bear on an understanding of such limitations, real and imagined. (shrink)

How Heidegger criticizes and "locates" science, and some problems with what he is trying to do.

Following the introduction of the special and general theories of relativity and development of consequent cosmological models, the extent to which time and space play a starkly abstract role in physics has become more and more apparent. We examine here whether the full force of such abstract characterizations comes ultimately into opposition with the practice of science and implies some hard limitations on the scope of scientific discourse.

Some problems are too subjective, too intimate, too proximal, to admit in principle of any scientific solution: Why is anything you? Is there free will? Is death the end? Other problems are too objective, too macroscopic: Why is there a universe? Why is there anything? What is it to be? Why does mathematics exist? Why does anything happen? Scientific explanation is therefore essentially subject to at least two types of limit, subjective and objective, even though other problems prima facie straddle (...) the subjective/objective divide: What is consciousness? Why is there such a time as the present? Why is there any distinction between right and wrong? Classical (Newtonian-Einsteinian) science largely brackets these problems, but the interpretations of quantum physics variously force them upon us. They only admit of solutions if God exists, there is free-will, and, if some existence is your existence, then you are an immortal soul. (shrink)

Both opponents and proponents of the death penalty express faith in science and in DNA evidence to justify their positions. This article examines the production of forensic evidence as a social activity and suggests that tendencies toward bias and error may not apply symmetrically in inculpation and exoneration contexts.

The Limits of Influence is a detailed examination and defense of the evidence for largescale-psychokinesis . It examines the reasons why experimental evidence has not, and perhaps cannot, convince most skeptics that PK is genuine, and it considers why traditional experimental procedures are important to reveal interesting facts about the phenomena.

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the (...) sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

“Relying on Science, Romney Files Death Penalty Bill.” With that headline, a press release on April 28, 2005 announced that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was seeking to reintroduce by legislation the death penalty that the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled unconstitutional in 1984. The remainder of the text left little doubt that science was a major basis for the governor's action. The press release quoted Romney as saying that the bill provided a “gold standard for the death penalty (...) in the modern scientific age.” Positing a symmetry that will be questioned below, Romney also declared, “Just as science can free the innocent, it can also identify the guilty.” The bill itself deferred to science by calling for corroborating scientific evidence, multiple layers of review, and a novel “no doubt” standard of proof. By raising the required standard of evidence and by restricting the class of capital crimes, the proposed law hoped to correct the defects of other death penalty statutes. (shrink)

Should we only believe what science can prove? Robert Almeder analyzes "naturalized epistemology," which holds that the only valid claims that can be made about the world must be proven by the natural sciences and that all philosophical questions are ultimately answered by science. The author examines and refutes different forms of naturalized epistemology before settling on "harmless naturalism," a compromise which implies that certain questions about the world are answerable and have been answered, without appealing to (...) class='Hi'>science. (publisher). (shrink)

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too.... Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for such a talk; (...) it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts and little fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. (Edmund Burke). (shrink)