h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had this poser put to me recently - and I'll be honest, I'm struggling.

For on the one hand I think the things most people think science can never solve are not in principle insolvable. (most supernatural phenomena , - is predicting volcanoes for example inherently insolvable or just presently so?)

On the other hand the examples I can think of are complex eg.

Was momentum conserved in the atomic collisions of stars billions of years ago? (Probably yes, but we can never know for sure)

And that runs aground of the other condition of this exercise : I've got to put this into a leaflet aimed at GCSE students. So that's rules out that example straight away.


The best I can think of (on the home) which can be sort of treated in a irreverent style are:


"If you fall into a black hole - where do you go??'

and

'What colour was T-Rex??' (Was it pink with orange spots?)


But can the SEx-Perts think of anything better?

what does the universe look like from the 'outside'

problems with the question " Are there any questions that science CAN NEVER answer?" are
1) it should really say 'that the scientific method cannot be used to investigate'
2) You are presuming the future state of our knowledge - time travel, multidimensional physics, genetic manipulation could cover the above questions.

However, there are some things that we as humans can't understand via it. What does it feel like for a shark to sense the electrical energy in its prey? We can, theoretically, compute all the neurological interactions but we are humans, not sharks. And we don't have that sense. So experientially we can't know what it feels like.

>>You are presuming the future state of our knowledge<<

I know.
IMO the question is incredibly poorly phrased; however, I ain't got the power to change it: I have to work with the tools with which I am given!

What does it feel like to be a ?

Good one!

Moral questions?

Wanted to avoid moral/supernatural question for fear of presenting 'is the soul' real as in any way equivalent or worthy of serious consideration.

But the reason you are excluding "Is the soul real?" is because it is not a scientific question, with no possibility of an answer, surely?

This is a really good question. Here is a commentary on that, as well as a recommendation:

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1361840.ece

<quote from article>

The beginnings of an answer are to be found in a wise book written back in 1987 by Sir Peter Medawar, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on immunobiology. In The Limits of Science, Medawar reflected on how science, despite being “the most successful enterprise human beings have ever engaged upon”, had limits to its scope. Science is superb when it comes to showing that the chemical formula for water is H2O. Or, more significantly, that DNA has a double helix.

But what of that greater question: what’s life all about? This, and others like it, Medawar insisted, were “questions that science cannot answer, and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer”. They could not be dismissed as “nonquestions or pseudoquestions such as only simpletons ask and only charlatans profess to be able to answer”. This is not to criticise science, but simply to calibrate its capacities.

This deft analysis by a self-confessed rationalist casts light on why scientists hold such a variety of religious beliefs. It makes it clear that scientists are intellectually and morally free to believe (or disbelieve) in God, while at the same time challenging religions to take the findings of science seriously. It also shows that it makes little sense to talk about “proof” of a world view, whether Christian or atheist. In the end, as Gilbert Harman pointed out decades ago, the real question is which offers the “best explanation” of things. And as there is no general agreement on how to decide which of these explanations is the “best”, the argument seems certain to run.

</quote from article>

I'm not sure how you wish to phrase it in your pamphlet, but yes, questions of philosophy, world view, or - dare I say it - belief are outside the realm of science.


Happy Nerd

Wait, I just figured it out. Grab the pamphlet from the philosophy department, and rephrase it.

which is basically saying that for questions which are not based in factual reality, investigating factual reality cannot give you an answer.
E.g. - Does there exist something which we cannot, in any manner, detect? Can't answer that using the scientific method. But then it doesn't matter since it would have no impact on us, so why bother?

Would go further but that would be turn this into another one of Those Threads (tm) which isn't the purpose.

>>Would go further but that would be turn this into another one of Those Threads <<

Exactly. Not my intent. Certainly some could and (no doubt will) use such questions ; what I was interested to know is taking as read that questions of supernatural and pseudoscience can be put to one side. Are there any questions either *in principle* or in actuality, that science will never be able to answer - and which can be communicated to a 16 year old audience in say less than 200 words.

>>But the reason you are excluding "Is the soul real?" is because it is not a scientific question, with no possibility of an answer, surely?<<

That too.

Other suggestions that came up in class were 'is there an afterlife' which fails for the same reason.

So science can answer the scientific questions and it can't answer the non-scientific questions.

You mean that's the answer I put on the pamphlet under "never" - non-scientific questions"

Bigger questions such as, how should I treat my fellow human being? Or, what is the hokey-pokey, and what's it all about?

Science is about understanding phenomena that we can experience with our five senses (list them if you wish), measure, or detect in some way. Any phenomena which we cannot detect in this fashion is outside science's realm.


HN

>five senses (list them if you wish)

One thing it can answer is what the human sense are, and it is more than 5 .


"how should I treat my fellow human being? Or, what is the hokey-pokey, and what's it all about?"
Oh, I dunno, both those are susceptible to empirical research.
Although the definition of the goal behind 'should' maybe not.

I know what the hokey-pokey is!

It's a dance described in a song which was a piece of plagiarism. Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy (famous for such numbers as The Teddy Bear's Picnic, Red Sails in the Sunset and Down Mexico Way) wrote a song about a dance called the Hokey Cokey. An American copied it, renaming it the Hokey Pokey, and made lots of money from selling the song throughout America. The American whose name I can't remember always insisted his song was an original and had nothing to do with the Hokey Cokey which he had never heard of, even though all the rest of the words were the same.

Hmm, but moral questions are not the same as supernatural ones, they are perfectly well grounded in reality.

One answer could be that science can only answer questions which have an answer, and that moral questions don't have a single right answer. Unfortunately, most scientific questions don't have a single right answer either...

Another question that straddles the scientific/supernatural boundary is: why is there something rather than nothing? Or relatedly, why do we have experiences? (That latter one getting into the whole consciousness/qualia debate.)

>>>five

Ah yes, that difference between what my teachers taught when I was in grade school (five senses, the brontosaurus, dried apple theory of mountain formation, and similar outdated notions) and what we know now.

Special note on the dried apple theory of mountain formation: my teacher was really old and didn't do crazy things like read the paper or watch science shows on TV, so she hadn't heard of plate tectonics.


HN

I love Teddy Bears Picnic!

So the hokey-pokey is all about plagiarizing the Hokey Cokey. But what is the Hokey Cokey all about?


HN