Science is the answer for all problems .... True or False ???

This post takes off from a question and an ensuing argument that I had with a friend almost a year back. Posed with a question of what is science and whether science can explain everything, i ended up starting a trail of thought that i have nurtured for a year now...

Posed with the question of "What is science ?" over a simple lunch , I answered, science is a method of inquiry. From then on, I have wondered ever so often, if this is the right definition and every time i have concluded that this is the best i can come up with for now... Science is after all a method of inquiry where observation and hypotheses are used to arrive at a testable theory.

The next question is more tricky.

As a scientist my impulse "should have been" to say that science is indeed the answer to all our questions but then here i hesitated. This of course resulted in a tiff of sorts (because the poser of the question who was a true blue scientist and was certain that science is the answer to all questions)...

In the months that followed, I have tried to formulate my opinion and find my ground.

From my perspective, I see two schools of thought in addressing this question.

The first is of course is the line of thought that science is the answer to all our questions and that we must make it a way of life. This group is an unrelenting champion of the power of science and rationality. They want to rest their statements on objective facts, statistics and numbers and not on subjective observations and interpretations. Here the attempt is to explain every behavior, every like or dislike, every structure with a 'seemingly' rational thought. There is no place for feelings, instincts, biases etc etc.

The second school of thought is a rather convenient one... because, all it says is that science cannot possibly answer all questions. Questions pertaining to religion, morality, conscience and consciousness are beyond the purview of science and perhaps should be such. Science in this case becomes a mere tool to gain technology - a means of simplifying life. Science is not a way of life here and people are happy with terms like belief, faith, morals, unknown, too complex to understand, culture etc etc. This school of thought, implicitly supports a reliance on metaphysics and supernatural to "explain" everyday phenomena or call them as too complex to understand.

Now, where do I stand on these conflicting opinions and schools of thought ?
I think I have found a middle ground which in this case is a very thin line separating the two sides and a slight trip or slip on my part could very well push me to one extreme or the other. I however will attempt to present my case here.

Science is a method of inquiry - the best we have come up with so far!
It helps us develop a framework to arrive at universal facts and truths. It aims to remove subjectivity, and the bias that arises due to interpersonal variation, observation and interpretation. It tries to replace subjectivity with objectivity. But while the aim of scientific investigation is laudable, its means are flawed. They are flawed by their nature and this became clear to me when i read about the black swan paradox and Karl Popper's views of the fallibility of science.

What is the black swan paradox ?

"It is a demonstration of the fallibility of the empirical methods of scientific observation. Europeans for thousands of years had observed millions of white swans. Using inductive evidence, we could come up with the theory that all swans are white. However exploration of Australasia introduced Europeans to black swans. Poppers' point is this: no matter how many observations are made which confirm a theory there is always the possibility that a future observation could refute it. Induction cannot yield certainty."

The problem with science is that it is based on such empirical observations and these can never be absolutely certain. They can only increase the probability of you being right progressively. The method of science is what is flawed. I agree with Popper, when he was critical of the naive empiricist view that we objectively observe the world. Popper argued (and I agree) that all observation is from a point of view, and indeed that all observation is coloured by our understanding. The world appears to us in the context of theories we already hold: it is 'theory laden'. All our theories today are based on older theories. We are all standing on the shoulder of giants, as is often very rightly acknowledged. But this also means that using the wrong theory as the basis only weakens the whole infrastructure of science - it becomes akin to a house of cards.

The other problem one often sees especially in biological sciences is the problem of causation. It is difficult to say what is the cause and what is the effect with great certainty ? For example, does cancer lead to high levels of protein A or does high level of protein A lead to cancer ? This problem becomes more acute when one tries to decipher the past from traces buried in the dust of time as happens in the fields of evolutionary biology. In human evolution, did an increase in brain size result in an erect posture or did an erect posture, give the hands more to do and thereby result in an increase in brain size... ? Questions such as this and many more in evolutionary biology, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology etc border on pure speculation simply because evidence is scanty and incomplete.

Another limitation of science is technology. Science is heavily reliant on the available technology. Our investigations in science are limited by the available technology. In the last century, electrons, protons and neutrons seemed to be the indivisible components of all matter. But with the development of synchrotron and particle accelerators, we now have an ever growing list of sub-atomic particles. Technology has influenced what we know anD perhaps what we can know as well. This is also true in biology. In our attempt to understand a system, we tinker with the system, say for example, to understand the role of a protein, we over express or knock-it down in the cells and see how the system is altered. This approach again has inherent flaws. Removing a particular protein may not give an observable phenotype for many reasons :

- the protein can work even in very trace amounts
- there are other proteins (homologs) which could compensate
- the protein is essential only under particular conditions. And there can be many conditions here - embryonic state, high slat, low, salt, aging, high temperature, low temperature, dehydration, low nutrition, etc etc)... so, as can be seen, we can never be absolutely certain of all the functions of a protein through such approaches.
- proteins may have different functions under different conditions and in different organisms.
- a protein may behave very differently in an animals (in vivo as biologists like to call) than in the tissues and cells that are used as models in vitro

These simple examples, I hope do enough to elucidate the point that there are inherent caveats in the method of inquiry adopted by science.

Questions of the mind, such as consciousness, conscience, language, behaviour, binding, spatio-temporal integration, creativity, etc etc are all complex, open questions to which we dont have the answers still. In fact, there are also schools of scientists who that say that we cannot have answers to some of these questions.

But here I need to draw a line and state that this does not mean my implicit support to the second school of thought that holds science as only a source of technology. The inherent flaws in our method of scientific inquiry does not mean that "no inquiry" is better.

It does not mean that irrationality, superstition, dogma, speculation and faith should replace empirical testing. It just means, that we as scientists, should acknowledge the weaknesses in scientific method and work on correcting them. It means that we as scientists should be open to criticism and skepticism and we should work on strengthening our method.

So for now, I guess, the middle ground is where I am.

I see that science does not have all the answers, not now and maybe will never have.... but it is our best bet to get as close to truth as we possibly can. It is a method that aims to arrive at universal truths through empirical observation and rational thought. It is a method that has flaws but is definitely superior to reliance on pure speculation, faith and beliefs.

I guess, more than science, we should champion for a scientific temper, where people are open to alternative opinions, theories and paradigm shifts.... because thats what ultimately propels science forward.