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
2024-03-09
27
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/3518157.html
相关试题推荐
Isscienceinfinite?Canitkeepgivingusprofoundinsightsintotheworld
Isscienceinfinite?Canitkeepgivingusprofoundinsightsintotheworld
Isscienceinfinite?Canitkeepgivingusprofoundinsightsintotheworld
[originaltext]Igrewuponasteadydietofsciencefiction.Inhighschool
A、Physics.B、Mathematics.C、Environmentalscience.D、Lifescience.A
[originaltext]Theworld’ssmartestadolescentsinmathematicsandsciencea
A、Thecombinationofscienceandhumanities.B、Solutionstoambiguity,doubt,an
A、valuebothscienceandhumanitiesB、putfactsandfiguresbeforestatistictC、
A、scoredupto90%inaGCSEsciencepaperB、hadnoideaoftheGCSEsciencesyl
[originaltext]Welcometomylecture!Today,Iwilltellyouamaxim—giving
随机试题
Mostparentsprizethediversitywithintheirchildren’spublicschools.The
[originaltext]Now,listentoPartTwooftheinterview.M:Allright,(6-1)then
Searchingforloveisnolongerjustafavoritesubjectforsongs.Ithasal
男性,64岁,30年前曾患右上肺结核,经INH、SM和PAS治疗约1年。5年前病
十五络脉是指十四经络脉加A.胃之络 B.脾之大络 C.胃之大络 D.虚里之
某工程双代号网络计划如下图所示,图中已标出各项工作的最早开始时间和最迟开始时间,
-13-35-57()A.7 B.8 C
国务院的下列组成人员中,连续任职可以超过两届的是()。 A总理B.副总理C
某高校组织学生参加社会实践,每年年初会集中评审立项,一经立项即划拨社会实践经费1
中央银行提高法定存款准备金率,货币供应量减少。()
最新回复
(
0
)