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Don Salmon's avatar

Excellent column.

One more thing to ponder. Yes, science does done an extraordinary job of explaining ASPECTS of the natural world.

But let's just take one claim that we find universally in pre modern cultures - that there are vast non physical universes, where in fact, the causes for ALL that occur in the physical universe reside.

Notice that there is no empirical experiment that can refute this thesis (nor could it support it, since the kinds of experiments that are acceptable in most science - except parapsychology - cannot ultimately find anything beyond either sense-data or abstractions from sense-data).

If you think, well, the physical universe is closed, and we dont need to look anywhere else for causes - that too is a metaphysical statement that cannot be verified by the means of empirical science.

If you accept, on the other hand, the well verified and well replicated findings of parapsychology, this may give a hint as to how we can extend science - a new more integral science - into these non physical realms.

But this step will be impossible if we don't take into account what Eric has written here about the need to understand philosophy of science in order to truly understand science.

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Evro's avatar

Very well-elaborated piece , the distinction between "real science" and "Scientism" . I myself had this strong view that science could explain all forms of phenomena However , like you've mentioned Science has its assumptions and LIMITATIONS which most scientist's have a cognitive bias towards.

Scientist's and Humanity in general all have to exercise making conclusions based off from all different perspectives.

And I strongly agree that Philosopy is the foundation of all forms of deciplines.

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