• Question: Do you think science is the answer to everything?

    Asked by to Aimee, Chris, Dave, Greig, Laurence on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Greig Cowan

      Greig Cowan answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Hi evamayq! I think science is able to answer many questions concerning the natural world and the wider Universe. It is through making scientific breakthroughs that we can make progress in technology and medicine (to name a couple of areas). There are still a lot of things that we don’t understand, for example different aspects of psychology and human behaviour. These are perhaps more difficult systems to study experimentally but I think we are now seeing a much more scientific method being applied to these areas, so we might have a chance to understand more about them.

    • Photo: Laurence Perreault Levasseur

      Laurence Perreault Levasseur answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      That is a very good question, and a very deep one, too.
      I’m not sure that science can give an answer to everything, no. The purpose of science, usually, is to explain how the world works, what are the rules, the laws of nature, an that’s why it can be a proof-based system. Questions like: ‘where did the universe come from’, ‘where is it going’, and ‘how is it getting there’ – I think science can illuminate all those questions, eventually. The things that Greig is mentioning too, these are all things that science can eventually provide an answer for.

      But there are questions that I am not 100% sure science will ever answer. Like ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’. The question of why was the Universe exists rather than nothing existing at all is a very deep question, and at the current moment, I’m not sure it will be possible for science to ever answer it. It might very well be that yes, science can answer this, too. But right now I can’t think of how, our theories of physics are simply not advanced enough to tell.

      There is another class of questions science doesn’t attempt to answer, and I don’t think it ever will. Because the existence of god cannot be proven, science does not say anything about the existence of god, in one way or the other. Things like religion most often tries to tell people about the purpose of life, the existence of god, or the intension underlying the creation of the Universe. These are completely different questions than what science is trying to answer.
      Science can tell us, for example, that the god of the Christians can’t really be textually what the bible describes it to be, but it can’t say that no god at all exist or not.
      (personally I don’t believe in a god, but my answer is as good as yours since there is no proof to support it!)

    • Photo: Dave Jones

      Dave Jones answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Science is about trying to understand everything, for sure. But, there is a lot to understand so we still have a lot of work to do, that’s why we’re all scientists!

      Some people are comfortable with the idea that there are things we don’t currently know or can’t currently explain, others try to solve that problem with religion. Religion, and believing in a God, allows them to explain all the things that science is currently unable to. Personally, I’m not religious, so while there are currently a lot of things that we don’t understand or can’t explain, I prefer to believe that given time we might be able to understand them rather than putting everything don’t to something more mystical.

    • Photo: Aimee Hopper

      Aimee Hopper answered on 21 Jun 2014:

      Science is the strive to answer everything, based on what we know right now. It’s not always right, but that means that we don’t understand the world like we thought we did and so leads to more questions, therefore the search for more answers.

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