Stuart Kauffman - Can Science Provide Ultimate Answers?

If we seek answers to ultimate questions of human existence, can science provide them? Which of them? Ultimate questions include morality and art as well as purpose or meaning of life. In other words, if science is unable to know something, is that something forever unknowable? Or are there ways of knowing beyond science? If so, why would we trust them?

Stuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[ghaderpashayee]

He opens up many different categories to the answer, and then under each category opens up bunch of more new categories without any conclusion. And he keeps doing so until the viewer gets Overwhelmed. Even Robert got overwhelmed! 😄

[Crackle]

This conversation is reminiscent of my phone conversation with my homeowners insurance, Miberty Lutual...

[brianlebreton]

Love this video. Something I will rewatch many times to try and extract a better understanding.

[bretnetherton]

Awareness is known by awareness alone.

[iramtauqir]

This discussion enables me to think about human thinking, feelings, emotions and ideas also as functions that emerge to serve the whole individual or social organism. And these again cannot be deduced or explained through either quantum or classical physics. So then we need to look for the 'nature' of laws or logic which is outside the realm of science. Maybe this opens doors for looking into the building blocks of those laws not in the dogmatic framework of religions or religious philosophies but in their essence, as representing an effort to discover those laws as coded hints to be further worked upon and developed by humanity in its evolutionary journey

[blijebij]

Ultimate answers, in my opinion, are those that do not lead to further questions but provide a satisfactory explanation for observed phenomena, viewed from the holistic nature of the Universe and reality, which I am convinced of.

[sustainabilityaxis]

Excellent. Probably one of the best explanations on this complex subject, logical and without any unnecessary details. Good job both the brilliant participants. Keep up your good work.

[ashimov]

The most astonishing talk on this channel

[brendangreeves]

No! Things are essentially relational and dynamical.
The precise definitions of the terms in which a question is posed, determines the nature of the answer.
The relative state goes to infinity, and so knowledge will always be incomplete.

[-by-_Publishing_LLC]

(1:30) *SK: **_"I'm persuaded that that view is profoundly wrong."_* ... As am I. Kauffman just spent 12.5 minutes of 200-IQ-level scientific musing to finally reach the conclusion that "Existence" is just too darn complex, diverse, and unpredictably _morphic_ for science alone to adequately explain it. One thing science cannot uncover (or explain) is the *motive* for why the universe exists because that's outside its scope of inquiry.

*Example:* Science is like a "crime scene detective." The detective's job is to secure the scene, recover bullet casings, examine the bodies, collect DNA, interview potential witnesses, and establish a timeline of events that can lead to the apprehension of a suspect. Once all the facts and evidence have been collected and analyzed, it's up to the "prosecutor" to establish a *motive* for why the suspect committed the crime.

"Existence" is not a wasteful operation. If something exists it's because it serves some integral purpose in furthering the collective. Science "exists" for a reason and obviously lives up to its purpose, but it still must be conjoined with other data processing disciplines in order to comprehend the _big picture._

Religion, psychology, philosophy, the arts, and several other disciplines of thought also exist, ... and they likewise exist for a reason. ... Choosing to leave them out of the discussion will never get you *_Closer to Truth!_*

[JoeZorzin]

Great conversation- one of RLK's best.

[waynesulak]

It is important to be open to humbly accept that do not no the answer to a question, especially the “big questions.” Failure to do so has led humanity to fabricate various metaphysical systems simply to make us feel better.

[pasquino]

Can you have footnotes attached, every time you put this guy on! 😉😮
He is so dense and full of quotations. I am left lost as to whether he is saying anything at all!
We leap from Heraclitus, to Kant, to peptides, at such a pace. At which point I switch off COMPLETELY.

[heresa_notion_]

I agree with everything to the extent I understand it. I wish more contemporary stances on this issue were broached, like chaos theory and "assembly" theory, as I want to learn more about them (e.g., are these non-Newtonian?).

On the whimsical side: if an ensemble of simple tools/objects (e.g., a screwdriver, hammer, wood plank) can have indefinite uses (Kantian wholes?), it seems kind of reasonable that an object as complex as the human species can have "free will" defined in a certain way as to explain its increasing "causal powers" over time (or do they increase?). N.B. increasing causal powers does not entail increasing survivability over time. Also the non-predictability of use for physical parts (in a whole) seems similar to the non-predictability of function (i.e., of a program) that can run in "universal" computers that are implemented deterministically.

[vm-bzcd]

A fascinating interview ... from a totally different perspective... bravo 👏

[FrostSoul-qskq]

Truth is that while Humanity might have a slight glimmer of hope, It's future has still been getting darker and not even bleaker anymore .

[iramtauqir]

I agree with point that you cannot do a mathematization of the evolutionary process occurring in Nature. But saying that there is complete unpredictability in the way new functions emerge to suit the whole only means that is unpredictable for our minds, not that there is no law, or logic to it. It's just that this law or logic is not mathematical.

[mesplin]

"Statement 1: Neither quantum mechanics nor classical physics itself alone describes the evolution of the biosphere."

Quantum mechanics is for predicting the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the atomic and subatomic level. Classical physics is for predicting the behavior of objects that are much larger than atoms and molecules.

Since quantum mechanics studies small things and classical physics studies big things, the claim that the biosphere is exempt is problematic. The explanation about how the evolution of the biosphere suggests random elements and nonrandom elements doesn't justify this claim.

[arthurwieczorek]

I'd rather hear What are the ultimate questions?

[GiorgiMelqadze-oi]

Maybe there are no quantitative laws and mathematization for the biosphere, as said, but there must be qualitative laws in the biosphere. Reality cannot exist outside of a law as such.

In Genesis, God creates the universe through the Word, Logos (John 1:1, 3), which implies the logic of reality, i.e. a law because in Greek, "λογος" means not only a word - and God did not act verbally when creating the universe from Nothing: there was no air in Nothing - but also means a reason, logic. It has been suggested that translating John 1:1, using "word, " is inadequate and that it would be better if we kept the Greek version "Logos" to be then explained. In the beginning was the Logos... So, in Genesis, God creates the universe with laws, both quantitative and qualitative laws.