(March 17, 2009 at 8:47 am)Mark Wrote: The point is this: however certain or uncertain we may be of what the set of all existing things consists of, and however certain or uncertain we may be of the explanations we have constructed that relate these things to each other, we will never have an explanation for the whole shebang.
How do you know we won't? Do you mean because we could always go further and further back so we will never have the full explanation?
If that's your point then I have thought about that myself. But untill an explanation is sought and continued how will we know that it can never be explained?
Shouldn't the explanation be kept going? How do we know that it will NEVER be reached just as, on the flip-side to that - how would we know that it WILL be reached?
We can't know that there will or won't be an explanation can we? How can we predict this?
Why can't an explanation be sought?
I understand the logic that you can always go further and further back for example and the whole thing can be never explained. But we don't know this, scientists should try and find an explanation anyway - they're scientists, its their job I think. How do we know its impossible to find an explanation?
Its about what explanation is? Well if an explanation IS found then that's an explanation isn't it? How will you know untill you look? And how will you make sure you have indeed got it untill you check, double-check, triple-check and so on? To make sure you haven't missed something?
You say Mark, that the universe "is what it is and nothing can change it", but I don't understand your point there because to explain the universe is not to change it.
How evolution is used for an explanation for where life has come from and how it evolves - that discovery by Darwin and Wallace did not manifest evolution into existence for example. It did not 'change' how life came about simply by explaining it. Evolution had been going on way before Darwin had been born of course!
So my point is there, explaining the universe is not to change it. We wouldn't be messing up the way the universe is, we don't need to change it. The universe is what it is and nothing can change it I assume - but explaining it wouldn't change it or f*ck it up in some way.
I don't understand how it could be explained. But I don't see how it couldn't either. I don't see why its a fallacy for scientists to look for an ultimate explanation anyway - even if they can never get further back enough and we're at the risk that the universe is infinite rather than just massive but actually finite - despite the fact its expanding.
EvF
