Limits of Scientific Enquiry

Abstract

TO SOUND A NOTE of doubt, of limit, in a series of lectures commemorating man’s most recent conquests of nature is an unenviable task. It is one that does not come easily to me, since I am much more familiar with the opposite role, that of pleading the glory of science to humanists who are antagonized and overwhelmed by its power. I am speaking here mainly to scientists, to scientists whose implicit metaphor as they speculate about the future of their science is the boundless reach of space-time itself, into which we have begun to take our first nervous but exhilarating steps. Before our rockets and our telescopes lies a universe that a billion years of earthman’s exploration would not exhaust. It is tempting to assume that our science, the instrument that has brought such soaring exploration into the reach of our blueprints, has an equally illimitable future. To suggest that such may by no means be the case has almost an impiety about it in these heady days of successive dramatic “breakthroughs.” I come then to my topic with diffidence and a certain amount of trepidation, somewhat as an agnostic might approach the opportunity to speak at a Revivalist meeting.