Hi Mario,

You are correct in your comparison of science with astrology. Science has given much better answers. The question, though is what will science look like from a future viewpoint.

A large part of the success of science can be attributed to its deliberately narrow field of inquiry. Science tries not deal with any phenomenon which cannot be quantified and measured. What physics has almost completely described is how a universe of quantifiable phenomena must behave. That is, a universe that can in principle be modeled by a set of numbers.

Science has made much less progress answering questions that have not been quantified. In fact some of those, particularly those involving human nature, might even be better answered by astrology. At least astrology beat science to the punch by many centuries with their answers, such as they are, and I would guess that more money is spent today consulting astrologers for help with personal problems than is spent consulting scientists for the same problems.

I'm not saying astrology's answers are any good; I'm just saying that science's answers aren't much better, if at all.

Some questions that science has failed to answer satisfactorily (at least in my firm opinion) are the origin of life, the nature of consciousness, human nature, and the reason for sleep. That failure is understandable because those questions have not yet been meaningfully quantified, and maybe never will be.

There may be some new way discovered of discerning some truths about reality other than 'running numbers' that might prove to be successful in the next three thousand years. If so, it will be after a number of our outstanding mysteries have been solved and explained that people will look back and judge science to have followed the paradigm of astrology.

Warm regards,

Paul

• Maybe you use a narrower definition of science than me - stormcrow - June 22, 2001 - 02:50 UTC
  • Only historically narrower - paulm - June 22, 2001 - 23:19 UTC
    • Science - stormcrow - June 23, 2001 - 00:48 UTC
      • More on consciousness - paulm - June 23, 2001 - 03:23 UTC
        • I'll try and clarify - stormcrow - June 23, 2001 - 03:55 UTC
          • Yes, that makes it clear - paulm - June 23, 2001 - 17:19 UTC
            • Consciousness - stormcrow - June 23, 2001 - 22:25 UTC
              • Yet more on consciousness - paulm - June 24, 2001 - 00:28 UTC
                • How do you know it's a radio and not a CD player? - stormcrow - June 24, 2001 - 01:51 UTC
                  • I get current news without inserting a new CD - paulm - June 24, 2001 - 05:09 UTC
                    • Be back soon - stormcrow - June 24, 2001 - 10:41 UTC
                      • OK But please start a new thread when you get back (NT) - paulm - June 24, 2001 - 21:44 UTC