The hard problems

I ' ve said before that in the view of many, there are three profound questions that pose a fundamental challenge to scientific inference. I think that only two of them really count however.The first I discussed last time. We ' ve been able to deduce approximately when the universe came into existence and how it has evolved since. But it is not apparent what path of scientific inquiry could explain why that happened when it did (if " when " even means anything before there was time), and why it has the observed laws and physical parameters, To put the problem in an epistemological nutshell, the answer to these questions must lieoutside the universe, and by definition the universe consists of what we can directly observe or deduce from observation. Again, saying " God did it " is the intellectual equivalent of saying " OogaBooga! " It ' s completely meaningless. Nevertheless this is frustrating.Note that deep mysteries we just haven ' t solved yet, such as the nature of the Dark Matter and Dark Energy (if it exists, which has been called into question) are not in this category. They are answerable in principle, we just haven ' t done it yet.The second hard question, and probably the hardest, is the nature and origin of consciousness. Something is going on inside our heads that no-one else can directly observe. We can only assume that other people experience something roughly like it, though certainly not exactly the same, but how do we really know that? Maybe everyone else in ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs