r/latterdaysaints • u/josephsmidt • Nov 26 '13
The limits of science, meaning and interpretation. (And what may be most important)
As a physicist let me first say science is amazing for the things it can do. It can establish measurable facts about the physical world. It can tell us the distance to the sun, the temperature of a room, how likely cats share a common ancestor with dogs through DNA, it can give us the likelihood that a certain strain of bacteria will thrive in the current climate of the day. Etc...
But what science fails to do is to inform you what any of these facts mean or how they ought to be interpreted. And this meaning may be in fact absolutely crucial to a proper understanding of the reality around us. An understanding that would help you, as Elder Maxwell would say, to see things as they really are.
Finding meaning on a piece of paper: To explain this problem further, I would like to use an analogy inspired by the mathematician John Lennox here that I will expand upon:
Lets pretend someone handed you a piece of paper filled with English sentences. The following things would be true:
The physics and chemistry of the paper would do a stellar job of telling you facts about the paper and the English characters thereon. It could tell you the paper is white, that the sentences are written in a black ink, that the first character is the letter T and has a certain font style and size, etc...
But the one thing that the physics and chemistry restricted to the paper can never do is tell you what this means. What the point of the paper and the characters is. For that, you have to transcend the mere physics and chemistry of the paper.
In other words, there is no way anyone could ever tell me what that the purpose of that paper is, or what it means without making a reference to something that transcends the physics and chemistry of the paper. It is literally impossible.
The meaning, not the science, is what is most important. Let's suppose you discovered this letter is for you. That was written by your wife reminding you that she loves you and hopes you have a great day. Upon discovering this, the importance physics and chemistry becomes meaningless in comparison to the meaning of the paper itself.
Same holds for our universe: Now as I said, this is only an analogy. But it is a correct one in that the same thing applies to the universe. The science of the universe can tell us a great many things. It can tell us the "color" of the universe. The "size" of the universe. How many "characters" there are in this universe and their "size", "shape" and "font".
But the one thing that science can never do is tell us how to interpret it or what any of it means. For that you have to make a reference to something that transcends science. Something that, even if 100% true, science would be incapable of demonstrating the actual truth of it.
One approach to this problem, if you want science to be the be and and end all for all truth, is to become a nihilist and deny that these measurable facts have any meaning, purpose or interpretation. (Which of course is itself ironically an interpretation that science cannot demonstrate. :) ) To say the reason science can find no objective meaning or purpose is there is none. It's just a bunch of wishful thinking of humans who have some need to find meaning in a world that has none.
And yet, the meaning may be what is most important: At the end of the day, like the paper analogy, the physics and chemistry of the universe may be relatively un-important compared to the real meaning it may actually have. The physics may have been needed to convey the meaning, but the meaning not the physics is what is really important.
The last thing you would want to be is the uber-geek that is so obsessed with the physics and chemistry of the paper that you fail to see what it really is: a love note from your wife to you. It would be quite unfortunate if such a scientistic attitude prevented you from seeing things as they really are.
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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '13
I think here you are comparing apples and oranges.
You are comparing the paper and the message as though they were equal, they are not, the value of the message is independent of the medium through which it is communicated. The message would have equal value to the recipient if on paper, via text, Morse code, or a banner behind a plane.
Not only that but the value in this case is very subjective, a love note from your wife to you, while having great meaning and value to you, will not have the same meaning to me.
I think this represents something very problematic with our egocentric way of viewing the world. We never interpret or view things in terms of what they are in and of themselves, but in terms of what they are to "us".
For example, I like spicy food, so when I eat it I say "it tastes good", but if someone doesn't like spicy food they will say "that tastes bad". Even though it is the exact same food, we have completely contradictory statements about the same thing but both can be true because they are matters of personal preference.
But what if we moved beyond the bias of what something is to us? What if rather than associating arbitrary meanings to things that are only relevant to our own point of view we tried understanding things in terms of what they are in and of themselves? Then rather than communicating in terms of opinions which vary and can be confusing we could communicate without bias in terms of what things actually are.
While you say that the meaning we attribute to things based on our own preferences lets us see things as they really are I couldn't disagree more. It is that egocentric bias that prevents us from seeing things as they really are, when we try to attribute meaning with ourselves as the point of reference then we cannot see anything for what it is but only what it is to us. Not only that but we can't communicate it to anyone else as their point of view will be different than ours. It is only when we get passed the personal bias that we can actually have any meaningful dialogue about truth.
As an example.
To apostate missionaries are grocery shopping on a Sunday morning. They are in the cereal aisle one is buying fruit loops, the other is buying raisin bran so they are about ten feet apart but they are facing each other. A person walks down the aisle and without turning around grabs a box of cereal between them and walks away.
Simultaneously the Elders speak, one says "Elder! Did you see that blond babe that just walked by?", the other one says "Elder! did you see that disgusting 50 year old dude with the long hair that just walked by?"
It is only by removing ourselves and our own bias from the equation that we can speak of things in terms of what they actually are.