Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'
Interpretation
Science can explain the mechanisms behind phenomena, but it struggles to address the underlying reasons or purposes.
In this quote, Erwin Chargaff highlights the distinction between the capabilities of science and the philosophical inquiries about existence and purpose. While science excels in providing empirical answers to questions of 'how' things happen—such as the processes and mechanisms inherent in nature—it often falls short when confronted with the deeper inquiries of 'why' things occur, which pertain to meaning and interpretation beyond mere observation. This reflects the limitations of scientific inquiry, suggesting that not all questions can be answered through empirical evidence alone.
In practice
In a philosophy lecture discussing the limits of scientific inquiry.
Science is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.
One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.
You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.
Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.
A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.
The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.
Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of the seats of diseases, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. How often are we disappointed in our expectation from the most certain and powerful of our remedies, by the negligence or obstinacy of our patients! What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases. We have done more — we have increased their mortality.
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