Why Science Can’t Explain Everything
And that’s OK
You’ve probably heard these claims umpteen times: “Everything originated in the Big Bang” or “We all evolved from a primeval soup”. A more careful scientist would avoid making such universal claims, because of the observer effect.
What is the observer effect? Much misunderstanding can be avoided by distinguishing between the pragmatic value of a theory and the veracity of that theory. Most scientific theories are considered ‘true’ based on their pragmatic value, the fact that they make accurate predictions and help us get things done (forecast the weather, launch rockets, etc). For such theories (judged on their pragmatic value), skepticism about the general reliability of our cognitive apparatus, à la Descarte, is not an issue. Even if we’re all brains in a vat, such theories would still be valid within the realm of human experience (e.g. Newton’s Laws can still apply in the experience of a brain in a vat, even if they don’t apply outside the vat).
It’s a different ball-game when you’re judging a theory on its veracity, whether it tells us what the world is ‘really’ like in the absence of observers. Take the claim “We all evolved from a primeval soup.” “We”, of course, refers to us as observers. A more cautious scientist would qualify that by saying “Our bodies …” instead. The problem with “we” is that it also refers to consciousness, and that runs into the observer effect. We can’t observe how consciousness works, we can only observe the objects of consciousness.
Imagine if we’re all born wearing goggles, and we can’t take the goggles off. Can we explain how the goggles work if we don’t know whether (and if so, how) they affect our vision? See the problem? Scientific theories can’t account for the way consciousness affects our observations, so the claim that such theories can explain the origin or functioning of “everything” or an unqualified “us” is unwarranted. Such a claim rests on the unsupported assumption that what we observe as “everything” or “us” really is everything or us.
This kind of observer effect is only a problem for the veracity of scientific theories, such as naturalistic evolutionary theories of the universe or living things, or atomic theories. It’s not a problem for the pragmatic value, if any, of such theories (e.g. atomic theory has practical applications within human experience). The only theories whose claims to veracity are theoretically immune to the observer effect are those that don’t rely on empirical verification (i.e. are a priori). Such theories are either mathematical, logical, philosophical, or religious.
To sum up: From a pragmatic point of view, yes, our cognitive faculties are generally reliable. On the question of their general veracity, all bets are off as far as science goes. However, most of the time, only the pragmatic implications of our theories, perceptions and memories matter to us. Your decision to have eggs for breakfast doesn’t rest on whether you believe the eggs ‘really’ exist in some metaphysical sense. Having said that, if you had metaphysical beliefs about how things ‘really’ are, those beliefs may affect your everyday decisions. They add an extra dimension to the purely pragmatic considerations that would otherwise solely motivate us.
