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.
During my medical education at the University of Basle I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary
A single neuron in the brain is an incredibly complex machine that even today we don't understand. A single 'neuron' in a neural network is an incredibly simple mathematical function that captures a minuscule fraction of the complexity of a biological neuron.
All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns; be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression.
Anyone who can contemplate quantum mechanics without getting dizzy hasn't understood it.
In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.
Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.
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