Science is a means of publicly verifying truths about the physical world. It is limited in two respects: it cannot deal with truths that are outside its protocols, and it cannot deal with philosophical "meta- truths" about the meaning of the whole.
For example, science cannot verify my personal experiences, nor validate what I might have gleaned from them, for the simple reason that they are not reproducible or subject to controlled study. And yet I may know things as a result of experience and reflection that are valuable to myself and others.
To take an example from the legal world: suppose I witness a murder, but the law will not convict on the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness. There being no such corroboration, the guilty party goes free. Now, that is a reasonable result, since we want to guard against abuse or mistake. Publicly, the person is not guilty, because the case could not be made. However, ex hypothesis, I know that he is, in fact, guilty, even if I cannot prove it to others according the standards of the court.
As for the second observation, well, science is always constrained to seek natural causes. Therefore, even when the explanation fudges things, or is wildly improbable, it is favored over any explanation that can be accused of supernaturalism. If no natural explanation is proffered, it demands we put matters on hold, for, as an article of faith, there "must be a rational (i.e., naturalistic) explanation after all".
Thus, fundamentals like consciousness, volition, valuation, and sensibility are assumed to be matters amenable to eventual physical description, but it is never contemplated if the physical, observable aspects are all there is to the phenomenon, or even the most important element. Man is a creature whose spiritual and physical aspects are intertwined. Just because there is a correlation of certain brain activity or hormonal secretion with cogitation or emotion does not mean that we have exhausted the subjects of knowledge or love or faith through biochemistry and neurology........ |
