- Questions Science Cannot Answer Apologetics
- Questions Science Cannot Answer Board
- Questions No One Can Answer
- Sep 14, 2017 - 5 of the Biggest Questions That Science Can't Answer Yet. To use a process that preserves organs when they cannot resuscitate a person.
- The 20 big questions in science From the nature of the universe (that's if there is only one) to the purpose of dreams, there are lots of things we still don't know – but we might do soon.
10 mysteries that physics can’t answer yet From why we travel forwards in time to how bicycles travel forwards at all, we present the questions great and small that our finest minds can't explain.
First I ask: what questions can never be answered through experimental observation? The answer is: most of math! There is no way to discover or demonstrate, for example that the square-root of two cannot be expressed at the ratio of two whole numbers. Likewise, there is no way through measurement to show that the Pythagorean Theorem is more than a good approximation.
If we decide to include math in with science, then there are other questions that are beyond our ability to answer. One of my favorites is “what does the color blue look like?' Put differently, when I see blue and you see blue, do we see the same thing? Yes, I know that the perception goes to the same part of our respective brains, but that doesn’t answer the question. Here is the way I describe this issue in my new book:
Excerpt from Now: The Physics of Time:
'In 1982, Australian philosopher Frank Jackson posed my childhood color question in a way that I find particularly compelling. He created the story of Mary, a brilliant scientist who had been raised indoors in a colorless environment, with nothing to look at that wasn’t black, gray, or white. She only read books without color pictures and watched black-and-white television….
Jackson’s imaginary brilliant scientist Mary, in her black and white and gray home, grows up normally, except for the absence of color. She reads about color in her physics books. She wonders what living in a world with color would be like. She finds the theory of the rainbow to be elegant, beautiful (in the physics sense), but she ponders, what would a rainbow actually look like? Would the beauty be different from the physics beauty? Ultimately, Mary becomes a “brilliant scientist,” a master not only of physics but also of neurophysiology, philosophy, and any other discipline you might like to throw in. (Remember, this is an imaginary story.) She understands how the eye works—how different frequencies of light stimulate different sensors in the eye and how the eye does some initial processing and then sends signals to different parts of the brain. She knows all about this, but she has never experienced it herself.
Then, one day, Mary opens the door and walks outside into a full-color world. What will her reaction be when she finally sees a rainbow? (Remember, this is a thought experiment; we aren’t worrying about whether all those years without color atrophied her visual ability.) When she looks at the sky and the grass and a sunset, will she say, “Oh, this is exactly what I expected, from the science I studied”? Or will she say, “Wow! I had no idea!” Jackson asks, “Will she learn anything or not?” And if she does learn something, what will it be?
My answer to Jackson’s question is yes, she will learn something: she will learn what red, green, and blue look like. But if someone else–you?–answers Jackson’s question by saying that she will learn nothing, I’ll be hard-pressed to convince you that you’re wrong. Either you know what I mean or you don’t. I can’t use physics or math or any other quantitative science to explain it to you.'
Once you decide that there is “knowledge” that is outside of physics, it is easy to think of other examples. Do I have a soul? Do others have souls? Can I sense that? In fact, I think that all fundamental questions of morality, ethics, fairness, and justice are based on a sense of empathy, something that I think of as the perception of the soul of another person.
This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:
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Questions Science Cannot Answer Apologetics
To celebrate the launch of its new publication Mosaic the Wellcome Trust asked leading scientists, journalists and thinkers what they thought was the biggest question remaining in science. These are what they came up with.
1.How does the brain generate consciousness?
2.What are the limits of human life and physiology?
3.Can we replace damaged brain parts with computational devices?
4.What happens when you die?
5.What are the cures for the world's biggest health problems, like cancer, heart disease and dementia?
6.Will we ever reconcile the nature versus nurture debate?
7.Is ageing inevitable?
8.Will we ever be able to predict the future of economic, political and other social systems?
9.What is life?
Roger Highfield, author, museum executive and science journalist.
We know what distinguishes living things from inorganic matter, but scientists may never know where life actually comes from and how it began.
10.How can we put evidence into practice perfectly, in medicine: harnessing all the data we have on our patients, and meshing it with all the research data, for the best care?
11.Is there a limit to how smart individuals and communities can be?
12.What are the possibilities for lab-grown fish and could this provide a counter to our overexploitation of the oceans?
13.What makes us 'human', and will we ever find out?
14.Is biology as universal as chemistry and physics?
15.How are bodies able to repair themselves?
16.How does the genome allow a brain to develop that has inborn talents and tendencies – if we have an inborn fear of say, snakes, how does that get wired up in a brain?
Questions Science Cannot Answer Board
17.Why have humans evolved music?
Questions No One Can Answer
18.Are we alone? Is there life in space, and if so, how is it similar or different than life here on Earth?
19.Does the universe have purpose and meaning?
20.How does the brain work and can we fix it when it goes wrong?
21.Is suspended animation possible for humans?
