SCI-ART LAB

Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

Krishna: In the natural world? If I say ‘NO’?

Wait a minute before you say something and hear me out.

People say “Science has limits: A few things that science does not do” . Notice that they don’t say, ‘it cannot do’!

  1. People give the example of morality. This is what they say: Science doesn’t decide these things …. When is euthanasia the right thing to do? What universal rights should humans have? Should other animals have any of those rights too? Questions like these are important, but scientific research will not answer them. Science can help us learn about the contexts that help humans flourish and which of our cognitive capabilities are shared by non-human animals. That knowledge can inform our opinions and decisions. But ultimately, individual people must make moral judgments. Science helps us describe how the world is, but it does not make any judgments about whether that state of affairs is right, wrong, good, or bad.

But like I have been saying always - science has two aspects to it:

One: The principles with which this universe came into existence (to atheists), or created (to theists) and run by it.

Everything in this universe is science based. The universe can’t exist without these scientific principles. There is nothing in this universe that is not science dependent.

Two: The process with which we study this universe.

When we say, “science doesn’t do it”, we are talking about only the second aspect.

Science can do this with the first aspect! I explained in detail here how:

Can science explain or deal with emotions and morals?

Science “can deal” with both emotions and morals.

2. They also say, ‘Science doesn’t make aesthetic judgments’.

Science can reveal the frequency of a G-flat and how our eyes relay information about colour to our brains, but science cannot tell us whether a Beethoven symphony, a Kabuki performance, or a Jackson Pollock painting is beautiful or dreadful. Individuals make those decisions for themselves based on their own aesthetic criteria.

But we have neuro-aesthetics. It explains how the first aspect of science influences aesthetic judgements.

And why do I like some art work like Auguste Rodin’s "The Thinker"? Or why does anybody like any art work? Well, as a person of science I would like to put it in a scientific way. It has everything to do with neuro-aesthetics 91).

What is it? Neuroesthetics (or neuroaesthetics) is a relatively recent sub-discipline of empirical aesthetics. Empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic perceptions of art and music. Neuroesthetics received its formal definition in 2002 as the scientific study of the neural bases for the contemplation and creation of a work of art. Neuroesthetics uses neuroscience to explain and understand the aesthetic experiences at the neurological level.

While much of neuroaesthetics deals with the visual and perceptual processing of art, that's not where the field stops -- imaging studies are revealing a plethora of brain regions activated when we experience art. Not only are visual and perceptual processes involved, but also reward pathways and areas of the brain like the prefrontal cortex, which are involved in evaluative judgments. The prefrontal cortex's role in experiencing art isn't surprising -- it's involved in many aspects of higher-order cognition, like decision-making as well as planning and moderating complex behaviors. Regions of the prefrontal cortex have been implicated in both aesthetic judgments and the aesthetic emotional experience. Our response to art always has an element of appraisal that has to do not only with a work's visual properties, but also with the context it's presented in and our knowledge of its history. . Neuroaesthetics -- as evident from even its name -- often overlooks the fact that art does not have to be beautiful: context and history play a crucial role in our judgments (1).

3. People say, “Science doesn’t deal with supernaturals”:

Supernaturals, most of the time are people’s imaginations. They don’t exist in reality in the natural world.

Let us take the example of Paranormal. Why do people ‘see or feel’ certain things? I gave 22 scientific reasons to the question ‘why’! Read them by clicking on this link:

Science and the paranormal

I also dealt with magic, black magic, godmen tricks, The God concept, science and spirituality and psychic aspects in a scientific way: (2,3,4,5,6,8).

I also dealt with several unnatural, irrational things people put under the heading “science can’t deal with it” (7).

Right. How can science explain things that just lie in the realm of only your imagination and not in the real scientific world? Call it with whatever name you want, but introducing an additional, unnecessary entity, the supernatural thing, to fill the gaps of your understanding, is escaping into an unrealistic world. It’s never justified to call a phenomenon supernatural in a scientific context. Whoever does that has already left scientific ground because science deals only with natural world (9).

There are countless phenomena that cannot be explained by the second aspect of science at the moment, e.g. dark energy or dark matter or the origins of the Big Bang. But that does not mean that those must be of supernatural nature. They are natural phenomena waiting to be understood when we get the capacity to do so (9). It is the human mind’s inadequacy that is making us not comprehend them.

Science ( the process with which we try to study and understand this universe) is still in its infancy. It has to learn a lot, study a lot, think a lot, experiment a lot and then only it can come up with all the answers we are seeking right now. How can you expect a child to solve all the problems of his ancestors? And answer the questions posed by his great, great, great, great grand fathers? Is it appropriate to even expect such a thing? I don't think so.

There is science ( the laws that govern this universe) every millimeter and Angstrom of this universe. And the universe is unimaginably vast! But the scientists are so few! How can the limited number of scientists read the language this universe is written in such a less time?

Moreover, there are more pressing problems like saving lives, more food production for the ever increasing population. We can’t waste our time on less important ones. But we get ridiculed for our choices of problems!

We should be amazed at how we have been able to get so far in understanding the things in this universe despite our inadequacies! Science is doing its best with the limited resources it has to both answer the questions and solve the problems. As the time goes by, I am pretty sure, it will succeed more and more. Please have patience! Give science some time. (9)

According to scientists, there are many, many phenomena that science can’t currently explain for purely practical reasons: they’re too difficult or dangerous or expensive or time-consuming to investigate. But there is no genuine phenomenon we know of which can’t be explained in principle by science.
When these obstacles are removed, science can slowly move forward and explain the things you think is beyond science now (9).

And let me assure you when science answers these Qs, they will not be silly stories but universe-shivering true facts.

A slow, steady and authentic process is better than untested and hasty explanations that don't make any sense.

Another way to put it: It is not science that cannot explain things, but us. Science is merely a tool and is as good or as bad as the one who wields it.

Like one physicist puts it ... As humans we have with mathematics the power to reason about things we can't fit in our brains. With 1200 cubic centimeter of brain we can reason about the universe, which is obviously much larger. The mystery is natural, the model is our power.

Science is the language this universe is written in. It is already there and scientific principles rule this universe and run it. It is the human understanding that isn’t developed to match it. We, the scientists, are not bringing things from somewhere. We are discovering things because they exist in the universe.

Everything has a natural explanation, it's just that we are still yet to understand a great many things.

Just because we can't explain it now, doesn't mean magic or supernatural become better alternatives. (9)

There is nothing science can’t deal or explain if it exists in the natural world. The only limit is human inadequacy, not science. There is also nothing that science can’t deal with if it exists only in peoples’ imagination. There is nothing science can’t make vanish if something doesn’t exist at all!!!

And when everything is science based in this universe, nothing can escape science, according to the first aspect of science. Nothing is beyond science according to this aspect.

When human intelligence can reach a level to comprehend the first aspect, the second one too becomes a great tool to understand everything we encounter in this universe. But can it?

Wait and watch even if that time is denoted by

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