Monday, March 7, 2016

Uncertainty in science and the bridge to humanities

Felipe describes in his book "A Foot in the River" how, because so-called hard sciences opened the door to the possibility that there is a limit to our knowledge, it also built a bridge toward humanities, the so-called soft sciences:

At least two positive effects have ensued. First, it no longer seems realistic to demand a predictable cosmos, ruled by definitive, unbending laws and bound by links of cause and effect. The causes may still be there, but are often untraceable. The effects may still there but are often untrackable. Second, science has come to seem more approachable and more intelligible from the perspectives of other disciplines: less hard-edged, more yielding; less cocksure, more flexible; less definitive, more open-ended; less confident of solutions, more entranced by problems. After a long period in which humanities and social studies have tried to be more scientific, science has begun to look more like art. Science has let its hair down and become more arty.
(Chapter 8, "Toward the planet of the apes")

See this old blog post that is relevant to this topic.

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