[safwan]

Frontiers of Science

Dear Friends,

I wish to start this thread for discussion in response to a good question raised by brother Michael (mkirkpatrick) about what is lacking (if anything) in the scientific field today.

This question can be broken down to a number of questions, such as:
1. What is the purpose of science?
2. What is the scope of the "scientific field" today?
3. Does it include social sciences or is it limited to natural sciences, or "exact science"?
4. What are the gaps in scientific knowledge that exist today, both within the field of science and of course outside this field?
5. What is lacking in current scientific methodology?
6. What paradigm shift is needed to widen and deepen the vision, scope and methodology of science in the quest for the Theory of Everything?
7. Can the TOE be reduced to the Theory of the Verything (TOV)?
8. What is this Verything that can be the object of scientific consensus? And how can it be arrived at? By analysis, by synthesis, or by both?

..And so on..

What is implied in raising and tackling these questions, derived from Michael's main question, is a self-critique which the scientific community exercises at crucial moments "or crises" in the evolution of science. I feel that science is passing today through one of these crises.

For while information and knowledge generation is accelerating at unprecedented rates, the global economic, ecological, political and social problems of the world as a whole and especially of the more than 80% of the human beings who constitute the so called "third and fourth worlds" are aggravating at unprecedented scale. Science seems powerless to produce solutions to the problems afflicting the great majority of the human kind, problems such as global conflicts, violence, poverty, misery and pollution.

On the contrary, science, in its current role and manifesto, seems to be contributing the production of many of such problems either directly or indirectly through wrong policies and inverted priorities. It is well known, for example, that the lion's share of scientific R&D is allocated to the development of military technology and warfare, that current wars are consuming huge resources, a fraction of which if allocated through alternative policies could alleviate human suffering. Current science has historically evolved in the last 500 years linked with the evolution of the capitalist system and has therefore an ideological element that cannot be denied.

To justify the current failures of science some science-logists - following the tradition of 18th century atheism- may blame religion for human misery .Yet, religion (= relation with the absolute), has been, is, and will always be an inseparable part of the human nature. It is an evolving phenomenon like everything else. It provides solace, answers and remedies to more than 85% of humanity, where science is silent, where law is potent, and where ethics breakdown. Without religion the world would have been a jungle, without belief the world would be an inferno.

This is not preaching and I'm not a preacher but just pointing the filled half of the cup so that one can see reality as a whole and not just the empty half. In the same way I believe also that mature science has been useful and has got a great role to play in the future evolution of the human kind. It is not impossible to imagine that science and religion (relation) will eventually meet as in the Physics of Immortality.

But first let's address the questions of what is missing and what are the frontiers of science?

Kind regards, Safwan

[mkirkpatrick]

I am most grateful Safwan my brother that you saw fit to use a question I raised earlier
to spark of such a wonderful thread starter.


For me personally I would like science to fully embrace the idea of consciousness as
being the underlying reality of all universal manifestation.




regards michael.