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From: "Sidney Keith" <sidkeith@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 17:15:21 
Message-ID: <LC6-LFD28PBg9Xkx8SF000001ef@hotmail.com>

Ron, we have to be careful in saying what is impossible, or what can never be discovered.  One of the most famous stories in the history of science involves the founder of the philosophic school whose views you seem to share, positivism.  In 1825 August Comte wrote that one thing was permanently beyond mankind's knowledge -- the chemical composition of stars.  In 1859 Kirchhoff published studies of stellar spectra which not only revealed the chemical composition of stars, but lead to the discovery in the sun of an element that had not been discovered on Earth, helium.  It didn't take forever, it didn't take a thousand or a hundred years, it didn't even take fifty years for science to discover the "undiscoverable."

 

On your list of topics beyond the realm of science is one that a scientist may already know, the nature of gravity.  Ed Witten, the father of superstring theory, writes that the most exciting moment in his life was when he saw how gravity fell out of the superstring equations.  (I've been looking forever for an account of this experience for the uninitiated -- if anyone knows of one please let me know.)  It's true that much of superstring theory lies currently beyond the realm of testable hypostheses, but if no one proposes a theory, it's a sure bet that it will never be tested, and if no one wonders about a topic, it's a sure thing that a theory will never be proposed.

 

It was the aggressive anti-intellectualism of my science teachers in high school that turned me off of science for years.  They seemed to be saying, "We are not part of the Western tradition of philosophy that goes back to Socrates.  We are here to make toasters and bombs (it was during the Vietnam War), and that's all.  You won't discover anything meaningful about life from us."  It seemed a thoroughly ignoble pursuit to me, all about power and money.  While teaching the value of testing hypotheses is certainly appropriate, we shouldn't be dogmatic about the limits and the role of science.  Its real purpose is to nourish the sense of wonder that Einstein speaks so eloquently about.

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