[Arny Krueger]

"Paul Stamler" wrote in message


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?

That science can't answer a simple question like this is highly
questionable.

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.

Science can also tell you the economic value of the lives of the 500
children that it is proposed that we sacrifice.

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.

I don't think there are many thoughtful intelligent people who seriously
think that Science is that totally disconnected from morality, and
vice-versa. The idea that science and morality are disconnected would be
something that maybe a Hitler or Stalin would propose.

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.)

This factory problem is one that has been worked out many times. In almost
every modern case, the lives of the 500 children have the greater value.

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.

There are many questions that science hasn't answered, but we don't know
what questions it can never answer.

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.)

See, you made your question reasonable by including a weasel word: yet. ;-)

Oh, one other thing: Eeyore says that science always has
the answers, and would be a disaster if it didn't.

Well, if you look at the big picture of science, I imagine that you can
logically say that science does have all the answers, we just haven't
wrestled some of them away from her. ;-)

Sometimes, it thinks it has the answers, and is wrong.
See "thalidomide".

Bad example that is way too easy to deconstruct. But this post is getting
long and I'm getting hungry for breakfast. Later. ;-)