0.5.2 Limits of Scientific and Historical Perspectives

Version 1.6 March 2013                                                  Previous Version

Science and history provide practical analyses of the world that impact on our philosophy – our theoretical analysis.

Scientists (including science journalists and historians) write impressive books and make excellent TV shows explaining the cosmos, life on earth and aspects of human nature. 

●  Some of these are completely “values neutralâ€�, trying to be polite to everyone.  Some are contemptuous of unscientific views. 

●  Many scientists can't understand why their sensible suggestions aren’t taken up by everybody, especially the politicians.  Not enough scientists are studying why science is being ignored when critical decisions are being made. 

●  Some scientists are personally quite limited in their views.  Some suggest that we can only discover the truth through the scientific method, and that science answers all our sensible questions – including moral questions.  This is taking science too far.

●  When there is a scientific consensus, we can generally believe what they say. 

But science on its own is limited: it cannot tell us what we should be doing.  We need to take into account more than just scientific knowledge.

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Historians can only cover a certain amount of ground – there is too much history to document it all in detail, and much of that would be dull and boring. 

●  History covers not just the changes in nations, but the development of key ideas, such as science and technology, religion and human rights. 

●  Often the history is told from a particular perspective, looking at it from one nation’s side or using feminist, socialist or capitalist ideas to understand the past.  We need to overcome our parochial bias and vested interests.

●  Of course we’ll never know what really happened in complete detail.  Post modernists will say we’ll never know anything in general, only what individuals express at various points in time and space.  But we can still piece together enough stories to get a central narrative. 

●  There are some impressive “histories of the worldâ€� which explain the broad trends, some with many authors so that there is less local bias. 

●  History does help us to work out what has been effective in the past, which helps with working out what might be possible for the future. 

But history on its own is limited: it doesn’t tell us what we should be doing.  We still need to know how history fits into the rest of knowledge. 

We propose to provide more detailed reviews of the related literature in future.  more