{"id":45028,"date":"2017-11-25T18:47:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-26T01:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=45028"},"modified":"2017-11-25T23:50:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-26T06:50:17","slug":"does-science-have-it-all-figured-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/does-science-have-it-all-figured-out.html","title":{"rendered":"Does science have it all figured out?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Earliest<\/a>
A NASA simulation of the first stars, about 400 million years after the Big Bang
(Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some interesting comments from a German theoretical physicist about possibly running up against the limits of science:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you prove that Earth is older than 10,000 years?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If I had to hazard a judgment\u00a0from the article, I would guess\u00a0that she\u2019s not a theist. \u00a0But I expect that I\u2019ll be assaulted\u00a0yet again for quoting only anti-scientific Christian apologists, or something of that sort. \u00a0Sigh.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our scientific knowledge remains distressingly superficial. \u00a0By which I mean to say that we\u2019re, literally, largely limited to the surface of the Earth. \u00a0We don\u2019t know nearly as much as we would like to know about the depths of the ocean, and we\u2019re still in the dark to a surprising degree about what\u2019s below our feet:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLife goes deeper:\u00a0The Earth is not a solid mass of rock: its hot, dark, fractured subsurface is home to weird and wonderful life forms\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think that I\u2019ll now continue my fundamentalist-obscurantist war on science with yet another striking article:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Worst Theoretical Prediction in the History of Physics\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Things aren\u2019t as dire as they look, though:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLaws of physics still universal, studies find\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which, in my opinion, is philosophically and theologically intriguing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here, though, is an important statement that might reassure some of my critics, who affect to imagine that, when I suggest that science has limits, I\u2019m attacking science. \u00a0And reason. \u00a0And rationality. \u00a0And decency. \u00a0And so forth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Nobel laureate physicist Albert A. Michelson \u2014 of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment regarding the speed of light \u2014 is speaking here, in the second lecture of a series\u00a0titled\u00a0Light Waves and Their Uses<\/em>, about projected improvements in the precision of scientific measurements:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What would be the use of such extreme refinement in the science of measurement? Very briefly and in general terms the answer would be that in this direction the greater part of all future discovery must lie. The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Science, in other words, has it all just about nailed down. \u00a0There are no big questions remaining. \u00a0We just need to measure things more exactly. \u00a0It\u2019s going to be a process of pinning\u00a0down the details and the minutiae.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, Dr. Michelson\u00a0was lecturing in 1899. \u00a0His lecture was eventually published in 1903, and he won the Nobel Prize in 1907.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Albert Einstein introduced his revolutionary theory of \u201cspecial relativity\u201d in a 1905 paper titled\u00a0\u201cZur Elektrodynamik bewegter K\u00f6rper\u201d (\u201cOn the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies\u201d). \u00a0Then, between 1907 and 1915, he developed his\u00a0theory of gravitation, known as \u201cgeneral relativity.\u201d \u00a0As a whole, Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity represents one of the two most stunning developments in modern physics.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The German mathematician and physicist\u00a0Johann Philipp Gustav von Jolly\u00a0(d.\u00a01884)\u00a0advised one of his students not to go into physics, remarking that, \u201cin this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That student was Max Planck. \u00a0In 1900, he became a pivotal figure in the other\u00a0of those two stunning developments in physics with his proposal\u00a0that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete \u201cpackets\u201d or \u201cquanta\u201d \u2014 a proposal that\u00a0became the basis of \u201cquantum theory.\u201d \u00a0(Max Planck would win the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Edwin Hubble\u2019s discovery of the expanding universe was still to come, as was Father Georges\u00a0Lema\u00eetre\u2019s formulation of the Big Bang theory. \u00a0And so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

None of this is to mock or belittle Albert Michelson, who was a very great scientist. \u00a0It\u2019s simply to observe that much remained to be learned in 1899, and to suggest that much very likely remains to be learned in 2017. \u00a0Revolutions \u2014 indeed, revelations \u2014 may be just around the corner.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not an attack on science. \u00a0Nobody should see it as a criticism or as a threat. \u00a0It\u2019s exciting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Some interesting comments from a German theoretical physicist about possibly running up against the limits of science: \u00a0 \u201cHow do you prove that Earth is older than 10,000 years?\u201d \u00a0 If I had to hazard a judgment\u00a0from the article, I would guess\u00a0that she\u2019s not a theist. \u00a0But I expect that I\u2019ll be assaulted\u00a0yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDoes science have it all figured out?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Some interesting comments from a German theoretical physicist about possibly running up against the limits of science:   "How do you\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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