An attack on modern science (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Monday, January 05, 2015, 12:40 (3392 days ago)

There was a review in yesterday's Sunday Times of a book which should appeal to many of us: THE SINGULAR UNIVERSE AND THE REALITY OF TIME by Roberto Mangabeira Unger (a philosopher) and Lee Smolin (a physicist).
 
Apparently they make “three statements that, if true, overturn most of contemporary physics. The statements are: time is real and therefore there are no unchanging physical laws; there is only one universe; and mathematics is of strictly limited use in explaining the cosmos.” Unger talks of “the descent of science into allegory, circulatory, special pleading and factless speculation.” Smolin talks of “crass contemporary determinism” and the “babble of neuroscientists who claim they have disproved free will and dismiss the self as an illusion.” -Before you get too excited, though, Smolin is apparently an atheist. I couldn't find Unger's leanings.


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