The Greatest Accomplishments Of Science

The idea that science can illuminate more than a miniscule window of knowledge about reality is a myth, and a powerless one at that.  It is treated as if it is a powerful idea by many modern people, when there is nothing that can genuinely defend it.  When someone mistakenly believes that science is an unassailable epistemic tool, they likely regard it as something that has uncovered legions of facts about reality, though the most significant things to come about from the scientific method are things other than awareness of ultimate truths.

The greatest contributions of science to humanity have nothing to do with any grand knowledge about metaphysics; indeed, science cannot even demonstrate that the external world required for scientific experiments exists in the first place (it is logic that does so [1]), and it likewise cannot even demonstrate that a person is perceiving the external world as it is in actuality.  Epistemologically, science contains so many inherent limitations that the only thing that can be definitively established using science is that certain phenomena are being perceived in the external world at a given point in time--there is no guarantee that scientific laws will remain static.  Only logic has inherent, universal epistemic authority and infallibility.

Nevertheless, the safety and convenience of many aspects of human life have benefited immensely from scientific progress, at least in the Western world: modern medicine, entertainment, and travel particularly hinge on science.  Science does deserve recognition for its role in bringing about a connected world that enjoys unprecedented wonders of technology and disease treatment.  It is every other category--epistemology, ethics, spirituality, and so on--that science cannot illuminate.  We might be able to live longer because of scientific discoveries, and our lives might be more pleasant and relaxing because of them, but science can reveal nothing about issues of an existential, moral, or metaphysical nature.

Metaphysics is required for scientific inquiry to function, since there can be no scientific efforts without an external world of matter that is observed, at least one consciousness to do the observing of perceived phenomena in the external world, and the laws of logic which govern all things (including the material world) and allow observers to have intelligible experiences to begin with.  However, logic and the contents of one's own consciousness are immediately grasped without any involvement of the scientific method whatsoever, and, as aforementioned, the very existence of the external world in which scientific pursuits are conducted can only be confirmed apart from the scientific method.  Science can prove nothing about the existence or nonexistence of anything at all; only reason and phenomenology can do so.

Considering these facts, the only rational stance towards science is one that credits it with many aspects of human flourishing while constantly highlighting its epistemological and metaphysical inabilities.  The greatest accomplishments of science have nothing to do with it independently enabling a greater understanding of objective reality, since reason exposes its numerous epistemological flaws; instead, the triumphs of science have to do with the pragmatic simplification of human life.  Convenience and safety are not minor things, of course, since they make human existence exponentially more desirable for many people, yet they tell us little about reality when left to themselves.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/07/science-and-the-external-world.html