Science and the Limits of Knowledge

Is science journalism showing signs of edging off the platform of physicalist dogma? A recent series from the New Scientist offers some reason for cautious optimism.

In a recent post I asked how we can build a worldview based on science if science can’t answer basic questions about truth and reality. The strange fact is that from a cultural perspective we have no alternative to use science as the ultimate guide for building our understanding of what the world is, how it works and our place in it. All other sources of authority on these subjects — primarily religion — have been discredited. For two hundred plus years we have been hearing how the scientific method is the nearly infallible source of knowledge about our world and scientists are the most reliable interpreters of reality and they are here to help us make sense of it all.

Like most, I accept that science has much to offer in our understanding of the world. We benefit from this knowledge in many ways. But also like most, I believe that science fails to explain all that we need to construct a comprehensive, coherent and useful worldview. My primary issue, as readers of my Medium posts well know, is that there are still a number of science leaders who continue to deny this and promote the idea that the physicalist belief system is all we need and all we can expect in uncovering what is true and what…