Philosophy Salon Hamburg

For the past 400 years or so, we have enjoyed an unbridled boom in the generation of Scientific knowledge. Making unforeseen leaps and bounds in gaining understanding of the physical principals of the Universe. However it seems that every answer we get, only raises more questions with itself. This in turn raises an interesting question to discuss - Will this unhindered progress continue to grow forever? Or are there limits to Scientific knowledge?

We will try to discuss this in the light of the article written by Jürgen Mittelstrass (https://www.allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Mittelstrass_Limits_science.pdf). Some questions are outlined below -

• What is the difference between the nature of Scientific knowledge generated by different disciplines of Science? e.g. Physics, Chemistry, Biology?
• What does it mean to have Science "completed"?
• Does (scientific) progress still have a future?
• What is the price that we have to pay for gaining more Scientific knowledge of the world (ethical and economical)? What are its benefits? What are its hard limits, if any?

Following is an excerpt from the Mittelstrass article:
"It is possible to think of fundamental physics as eventually becoming complete. There is only one universe to investigate, and physics, unlike mathematics, cannot be indefinitely spun out purely by inventions of the mind. The logical relation of physics to chemistry and the other sciences it underlies is such that physics should be the first chapter to be completed. (...) Some unsolved problems might remain in the domain earlier characterized as organized complexity, but these would become the responsibility of the biophysicist or the astrophysicist. Basic physics would be complete; not only that, it would be manifestly complete, rather like the present state of Euclidean geometry (Bromley et al., 1972, p. 80)"