Category Archives: Science
>Can we know it all?
>This has been one of the biggest implicit questions since the time of Aristotle. The Judeo-Christian view is that our powers of knowledge are limited, and that there will always be some things we can neither know, nor understand. The scientific view is that we can learn everything. Aristotle thought we could learn everything through pure reason. After the Scientific revolution scientists now tend to think we need evidence too.
What do you think? Can we know it all? And if so what does this mean?
>Is humanity about to face disaster? A conversation with Geoff Hasselhurst
>Geoff Hasselhurst is the owner of http://www.spaceandmotion.com, a popular philosophical & scientific site. The first few comments are a record of the conversation I’ve been having with Geoff this last week. We now want to open the conversation up to others so please feel free to chip in!
>Do you agree with the Big Bang theory?
>The theory of the Big Bang is taken as an accepted fact by science. Yet despite the extravagant theories detailing all the events that happened after it occurred, no one has given any explanation as to what caused it.
The best they can do is keep regressing its after effects until the come to the smallest singularity they can think of, and then stop there.
They neither explain what caused the Big Bang, nor where this incredibly small but incredibly dense first speck of matter from which all others derive, came from.
Secondly, the shape of the universe is postulated to oval-like. But in a vacuum there is no resistance, so any explosion would have travelled outwards in a uniform manner. As such the shape that should be expected to be circular. It would only be oval if the horizontal plane had a magnetic pull or the vertical planes showed resistance in some form.
Do you believe in the Big Bang, and if so how do you reconcile the missing information?
>Where did humans come from?
>Do you believe in evolution and the steady transformation of single celled organisms into complex species like humans? Or do you believe that humans came from Adam, the first human and the one created by God Himself?
If you believe the first then do you think we are related to all other life on the planet, or do you think that more than one tree of life may exist i.e. life started more than once? If you believe the second then do you think God made life from nothing or something? If nothing then how?
>Climate Change
>There’s a lot of disagreement on whether climate change is occuring and what’s really at fault. Do you think climate change is really ocuring, and if so to what extent is it our (people’s) fault?
>Who’s easier to understand; men or women?
>Nuclear Power: Are you for or Against?
>What is life?
>Most scientists have some sort of opinion on what life is. In fact most would state their opinion very confidently as if it were fact. But there are many tricky situations such as the fact that plants are completely different to animals and insects and that there are plasmas in space that reproduce. What do you think life is and why?
>Animal Testing
>Matt: The testing of drugs on animals is important for drug development. But some animals like lab rats and mice are different from humans and may therefore respond to drugs differently. The response of a rat to a newly developed drug might be good but on a human it might do nothing. Should more human tests be done?
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