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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (83807)	7/13/2000 5:56:18 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

If you've followed my conversation with Neocon, you will see that science (honest science in any case) does not seek to explain everything. But I do believe that honest science is based on the premise that if we knew everything, everything would be explained and explainable. And therefore everything can be explained if we know the right questions to ask and have the right answers to those questions. I don't know of any scientist who will agree with the premise "there are certain things that science cannot and will never be able to explain and should not even attempt to explain." Love does not fall into the currently accepted category of "repeatable, quantifiable observata". That being so it is an unsuitable scientific topic. But even as we write, brain researchers are working on understanding the brain mechanisms which cause people to love. It would not surprise me if in twenty or thirty years we had drugs or electrodes or some other mechanism which would affect the brain in ways which, if they would not actually cause people to fall in love, would at least enhance the brain functions which would lead to people falling in love. To these researchers, the brain is simply an organ every chemical interaction of which can, in theory at least, be understood and therefore influenced by the right stimuli. We're still a long way from there -- but look how quickly (in terms of human understanding) we moved from the discovery of DNA to the virtual completion of the genome project. Indeed, I think you are incorrect in saying science does not seek to explain everything. Precisely the point about science is that it does believe that given the right data it can understand everything.