Can Science Explain Everything?
Can Science Explain Everything? There are many facts today that are known to be true that science hasn’t been able to account for. Scientists are still very active in their search to prove some of the puzzling questions that remain unanswered. In Elliot Sober’s work, Can Science Explain Everything, he addresses that controversial question. Sober thesis claims to prove that when science attempts to explain events, and does so by describing its causes, it will never find answers to global why-questions. Sober believes that it is reasonable to accept that at this point in time we don’t have all the answers, but we eventually will have an answer backed by scientific explanation. Elliot Sober addresses to main questions: (1) Are there any facts about the world that science is inherently incapable of explaining? (2) If there are, can we plausibly argue that the best explanation of why those facts are true is that God exists? To answer the first question, Sober argues that, the questions science has failed to answer aren’t because they haven’t found an explanation yet, it’s the nature of scientific explanation that prevents an answer from ever being found. Science either aims to answer questions about a generalization, or to explain a particular event. True generalizations describe what is true in all places and times, such as a chemist’s question of why hydrogen and oxygen combine to form a water molecule. An event, however, happens at a certain time and place; events either happen or fail to happen. Science aims to explain an event by looking at what preceded it; a habit that creates a chain of events, with an infinite number of links, which extends back into the past. Sober’s thesis about explanation states that when science attempts to explain a certain event they must look to at what occurred in the neighboring place and time. By looking at what precluded it you can find reasoning that can be cited as an explanation of why the spatiotemporal event
Cited: work: Kelly, Kevin. Edge- Speculations on the Future of Science. Online. Internet. 2006 John Brockman, Editor and Publisher. Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher. URL: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly06/kelly06_index.html