can science answer any questions?

Question

Is Science limited in the types of questions it can answer, or is there no question that science cannot answer? If there are limits, what are they?

Answer 1

True science asks more questions than it answers. After they are answered they become fact.

Answer 2

No,.......science cannot answer any question.

The limits are too many to name. But as an example, we can't say what gravity actually is, we don't know why light behaves like a particle and a wave, or why an electron seemingly spontaneously decays from one orbit to a lesser one, and we have no idea what dark matter is.

It goes on and on.

There are always questions to ask, and sometimes the 'answer' is a best guess. Sometimes it's valid, but it's for such a limited case that it's effectively nil. This is hy theories are not necesdsarily set in stone. There is always someone out there with an idea that may be able to shed a little more light here or there, or make an improvement in some way.

That's my 2 ¢ worth.

Answer 3

This is a huge question.
They can answer any question, but the answer is always going to be based on where the state of knowledge is at that present time.
So it's inherently at a disadvantage, yet it's important to keep asking the questions, and keep answering the questions.
The trick is, to be very careful when we, as a society ACT on those answers, because often the price we pay for acting on mistakes is gigantic.

A couple notable examples are:

1. The "science" (now disproven) of Eugenics, which partially caused the whole Nazi extermination.

2. The bad on DDT, thought to be a horrible poison, yet now, because it is banned almost world-wide, TENS OF MILLIONS of people each year die from things like malaria, most of them children in poor countries. Stupid move.

3. Global warming. In 20-30 years at the most, the facts will come out that this is a gigantic mistake - humans haven't caused it, it's natural, and it will have reversed itself and gone the other way by then. Of course, they will then claim that we're causing global cooling - just as they did in the 1970's.

I'm not suggesting that we abandon science, or use paranormal quasi-science, etc., to try to answer questions that science cannot. (they are even less equipped to answer these questions).
Only that we be very careful when we declare things like "the science is in, there's consensus"
There was once consensus that the earth was flat, and people were burned at the stake for disagreeing.

Answer 4

Basically science can only answer a question in which the variables can be tested. For example, does sunlight benefit plant growth? We can answer this question by using two identical plants. One we put in the sun, one in the dark. After a few days of observations, we should see a difference, which could answer the question. However there are some areas of science where direct experimentation is not possible, like Astronomy. We can't manipulate the stars and planets. In these fields, we can only observe and make logical guesses.

Answer 5

Science answers many questions, but only questions that can have definite answers. So if you are looking for a scientific answer to "do ghosts exist" or "is there a God" then you are looking to the wrong people, you need to talk to the religious and philosophical types about that sort of thing, they deal with answering questions on subjects that can't be proven.

Answer 6

Yes, science is limited to making predictions about things which can be observed.

Force and torque and all that stuff you learn about in physics can be measured. The scientific method is to come up with hypotheses to predict those measurements.

Science can answer questions about history in as much as those questions pertain to things which can be observed. The histories of the earth (geology) and of life on this planet (evolution) and of the universe (cosmology) are scientific in as much as they can be verified of disproved by observed evidence. We observe the past in many ways and draw conclusions about it, even if it can't be reproduced in the laboratory.

Science can NOT answer questions about theories which don't make empirical predictions. So for example, my cosmological theory in which the universe was created by a flying spaghetti monster cannot be proved or disproved by science. The monster carefully manipulates all measurements taken by any scientist with his noodly appendage so that they are consistent with the standard model of cosmology, thereby making his presence completely outside the domain of science.