[Paul Stamler]

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...

But I'll give you an alternative viewpoint: Science *is*
complicated. Science has the questions. Sometimes, if we're
lucky.

Science ALWAYS has the answers. It would be a disaster if it didn't.

Excuse me, but just about any scientist would disagree. S/he would say that
science has SOME of the answers, SOME of the time, and is always looking for
more. It's also always looking at the answers it has to see if they might be
wrong.

Just to get even farther afield, science has answers to some questions, but
is not the appropriate tool to answer others. A classic example:

It is proposed to build a new factory in an urban area. It will generate
lots of economic activity, which makes the standard of living better, so
most people will live longer and more comfortable lives. However, every year
about 500 of the residents, mostly children, will die from cancer because of
emissions from the factory.

The question, which science cannot answer, is this: Is it worth sacrificing
the lives of those children (and the suffering of their families) to improve
the general condition of the community? Science can provide a lot of
information: it can tell you what pollutants are emitted from the plant, and
what their physiological effect is, and it can predict the number of deaths
(given enough data about similar installations in the past). It can also
make a stab at predicting how much economic good will result from the
factory, and how much the standard of living will rise because of it, and
what effect the rise in standard of living will have.

In short, it can provide the pliuses and minuses of building the factory. It
can tell you what the effects will be, good and bad. But it can't tell you
whether to build the factory, because the decision -- once you know the
facts -- is a *moral* decision, one based on your values system. Is business
activity more important than the lives of individuals? Or not? (And it's of
course complicated by the fact that business activity which improves the
standard of living also saves lives.)

Going way, way afield from cables and Jim Williams's microphones, but it's
an example of some questions science can answer, and one which it can't.

Another question which science can't answer -- yet: What is the nature of
dark matter? I suspect, if we don't destroy ourselves, that science *will*
answer that one in a few decades or maybe centuries. Right now it can't. (Of
course, the answer may be that dark matter doesn't really exist. But that's
looking less likely, from what I hear.)

Oh, one other thing: Eeyore says that science always has the answers, and
would be a disaster if it didn't. Sometimes, it thinks it has the answers,
and is wrong. See "thalidomide".

Peace,
Paul