Bas van Fraassen - What are the Scope and Limits of Science?

How far can science go? How much can science discover? Must all truth come from science? Are there boundaries to science? Are there truths, real truths, beyond science?

[cubefox]

Bas van Fraassen is probably the most influential philosopher of science of the last 50 years or so. He is especially known for his book "The Scientific Image" (1980).

[KnightofEkron]

Much more sensible than the nonsense of the Realists or the Constructivists.

[datacat]

Just did a baccalaureate in philosophy with a task using this video as a material

[jamesruscheinski]

Would help to find a method to investigate human experience, as science does for physical reality?

[jamesruscheinski]

What might be basis for human experience, as observables are for science?

[chriskutz]

He assumes his own metaphysics by implying the conceptual realm is separate. He's doing the same thing he accuses the realist of doing but privileging the conceptual act (observing through thinking). One could simply respond by saying it is the same stuff that gives rise to the presumptions that allow the science to proceed in the first place.

[jamesruscheinski]

Philosophy seeks a method to look into human experience, including science?

[agitutkan]

He looks and sounds like Edward Norton

[jamesruscheinski]

Science not explain all human experience?

[vblake]

So. Science is a sandbox. Feel what I’m saying?

[SeanMauer]

I'm an empiricist and I find the biblical historical accounts to hold up to empirical veracity.

[ThePetachu]

He lost me at the end when he essentially said science is A paradigm. Science is and has to be very open ended, so mush so that you could hardly call it a paradigm. For practical discriptive reasons in a conversation yes, but only in those terms.

[danielkoehler]

Seems to completely miss the point, scientific data is only judged to be 'true' or 'false' via human interpretation, human interpretation itself utilises 'abstract universals' which themselves cannot be verified empirically. Hardcore empiricism leads to such nonsense as 'my life taken as a whole is unrepeatable therefore it can't be stated whether it happened or not'.

[BradHolkesvig]

Science cannot teach you what's real or not. You need to listen to the Voice of God to learn how we were created.