首页
登录
职称英语
Is science infinite? Can it keep giving us profound insights into the world
Is science infinite? Can it keep giving us profound insights into the world
游客
2023-08-06
17
管理
问题
Is science infinite? Can it keep giving us profound insights into the world forever? Or is it already bumping into limits? In his 2011 book The Beginning of Infinity physicist David Deutsch made the case for boundlessness. When I asked him about consciousness, he replied: "I think nothing worth understanding will always remain a mystery. And consciousness seems apparently worth understanding. "
At a meeting I just attended in Switzerland, "The Mystery of Human Consciousness," another famous British physicist, Martin Rees, challenged Deutsch’s optimism. In that essay Rees calls The Beginning of Infinity "provocative and excellent" but disputes Deutsch’s central claim that science is boundless. Science "will hit the buffers (缓冲区) at some point," Rees warns.
There are two reasons why this might happen. The optimistic one is that we clean up and understand certain areas (such as atomic physics) to the point that there’s no more to say. A second, more worrying possibility is that we’ll reach the limits of what our brains can grasp. There might be concepts, crucial to a full understanding of physical reality. Efforts to understand very complex systems, such as our own brains, might well be the first to hit such limits.
Perhaps complex collectives of atoms, whether brains or electronic machines, can never know all there is to know about themselves.
The riddle of consciousness is a synecdoche for the riddle of humanity. What we, really? For most of our history, religion has given us the answer. Most modern scientists reject these religious explanations, but they cannot agree on an alternative. They have proposed a bewildering variety of answers to the question of what we really are.
Science will never resolve these disagreements and converge on a single, true theory of what we are, for two reasons. One is that we will never have a "consciousness meter," an objective means of measuring consciousness in non-human things. The other is that we are too varying, too creative, to be captured by a single theory. Science itself keeps transforming us. with technologies as diverse as brain implants, genetic therapy and ideas as diverse as queer theory and integrated information theory. To be human means to be a work in progress.
Deutsch’s claim that science is infinite also has a contradiction at its core. He wants science to solve the deepest mysteries, like consciousness, and yet to have more mysteries to solve, forever. That is a radical assertion about the structure of nature, which to my mind reflects wishful thinking rather than hardheaded realism.
Deutsch is both wrong and right. He is wrong that science can solve every mystery, and especially consciousness. We will never understand, once and for all, who we are. But Deutsch is right that science is potentially infinite, if infinite means never-ending. It is precisely because we can never achieve total self-knowledge that we will keep seeking it forever. [br] According to the author, the riddle of consciousness________.
选项
A、has been properly worked out by religious theories
B、is made more perplexing by modern science
C、will be solved in science’s debate against religion
D、is the utmost challenge of human understanding
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/2901897.html
相关试题推荐
[originaltext]Thewintergift-givingseasonisresponsiblefortwentyperce
[originaltext]Thewintergift-givingseasonisresponsiblefortwentyperce
[originaltext]Thewintergift-givingseasonisresponsiblefortwentyperce
[originaltext]Givingagoodpresentationisallaboutthesimplethings—know
[originaltext]Givingagoodpresentationisallaboutthesimplethings—know
[originaltext]Givingagoodpresentationisallaboutthesimplethings-knowled
[originaltext]Givingagoodpresentationisallaboutthesimplethings—know
[originaltext]Givingagoodpresentationisallaboutthesimplethings—know
[originaltext]Givingagoodpresentationisallaboutthesimplethings—know
[originaltext]Givingagoodpresentationisallaboutthesimplethings—kno
随机试题
[audioFiles]audio_etoefz_031(20051)[/audioFiles]A、Shewantsthemantomakear
WhatisRachel’sextendedessayabout?[br][originaltext]DrJones:Comein.Ah
先天缺牙最少见于()A.上颌第三磨牙 B.中切牙 C.下颌第三磨
淡味药多用治A.虚证 B.瘰疬痰核 C.湿证 D.水肿、小便不利
下列除哪项外均为药材儿茶的特点A.来源于豆科植物儿茶B.产于云南西双版纳C.呈方
患者女性,28岁。反复血尿、蛋白尿3年,5天前感冒后出现乏力、食欲减退,查眼睑、
下列场所或部位均设有湿式自动喷水灭火系统,关于标准覆盖面积洒水喷头的布置符合规范
贺某介绍唐某买卖毒品,情节尚不构成犯罪,对于贺某的处罚说法正确的是()A.
下列不能成为民事法律关系主体的是()。A.自然人 B.法人
基础心理学是研究()。 (A)正常成人心理现象的心理学基础学科 (B
最新回复
(
0
)