Frontiers of science

Definition: Limit, line that separates two things or that marks an extension (RAE, 2016).

"Limit" means term, limit or boundary of kingdoms, provinces, possessions, and figuratively, end or term. However, it is not a unique term.

It indicates that one cannot go beyond, but also the scope that must not be invaded; the place from which one cannot leave or cannot enter; the inside and the outside (Palma, 2015).

Science: Below are the definitions of the most frequently cited term:

Set of knowledge obtained through observation and reasoning, systematically structured and from which general principles and laws are deduced with predictive capacity and experimentally verifiable (RAE, 2016).

Skill or mastery to carry out a task (RAE, 2016).

Orderly and generally experienced knowledge of things (Oxford, 2016).

Set of methodically ordered knowledge and doctrines, related to a specific subject (Oxford, 2016).

Set of knowledge related to mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and geology (Oxford, 2016).

Branch of human knowledge made up of the set of objective and verifiable knowledge on a given subject that is obtained through observation and experimentation, the explanation of its principles and causes and the formulation and verification of hypotheses and is also characterized by the use of an appropriate methodology for the object of study and the systematization of knowledge (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016).

The limits of science, then, would demarcate the spheres within which science has (epistemic) sovereignty, and also the borders beyond which science has no concern or, simply, that it is not possible to know. Without any evaluative implication, I call the first limit positive and the second limit negative (Palma, 2015).

The Limits in a Positive Sense

The limits of the sciences in a positive sense refer to epistemic exclusivity, and not only for the obvious question of specialized knowledge, but also, and above all, for the validity of values associated with the imaginary about science, which sees itself same as an impregnable, special, esoteric site and to which only some initiates have access, after completing some extensive and complex rituals. It is a place of power, specific word, authorized and recognized that has been reached after a long history.

Negative Limits

But, in addition, science has limits in a negative sense, that is, as barriers beyond which it does not advance, either because it could not, should not, or because it has nothing to say (Rescher, 1994).

In this sense, at least five different types of overlapping limits proposed by (Palma, 2015) can be thought of, which are explained below:

1. The end of science

It is because of editorial opportunism, it is because nobody wants to live in a time when nothing extraordinary happens, or because many with an ego greater than their merits want to go down in history as founders of a time (Gherdjikov, 1995; Horgan, 1996; Weinberg, 1992), every so often a book comes out announcing the end or death of something: philosophy, history, modernity, politics, art. Something similar happens with science, but reality –and history- tend to deny such predictions in the sense of the phrase of dubious origin that those “dead you kill are in good health”.

2. The ethical and prudential limits

The increasing presence of science and technology in daily life, in the economy and in development, caused the inescapable posing of problems and even ethical or convenience dilemmas.

It is assumed that not everything that can be done from a techno-scientific point of view is ethically correct or convenient for the future. The list is long, but among the topics that promote ethical debates, the main ones are: those that arise from medical practices (from bioethics, including neuroethics) and even more general questions related to the possibilities (real or fantastic, time it will say) of interfering and modeling future human beings thanks to developments in genetic engineering.

The generally polluting nature of a large part of industrial production in some areas of the planet through practices that are prohibited in other areas, the quality of the food produced thanks to new technological procedures (such as GMOs) or the risks of Certain ways of producing energy (such as nuclear energy) are also subject to controversies that raise ethical limits or invoke questions of cost / benefit or convenience in the future.

3. The limits of incumbency

The unprecedented developments in science and technology in the last two centuries (Enlightenment and positivism through) led to not recognizing the limits of incumbency and to feeding the belief that little by little science would give satisfactory explanations for all aspects of natural reality. and social, which would eventually lead to answers in terms of human happiness as well. The scientific utopia according to which more science less religion, goes in that line, the same as the pharmacological fantasies that promise quick and easy happiness. However, the central and most distressing problems of the human species are not and will not be answered in science and technology.

4. The technical / practical limits

It is undeniable that in some areas of research (basically in the natural sciences) there is an increasing need for increasingly complex technological developments to allow access to dimensions or aspects that are still unreachable. At the same time, this technological limit, by involving a geometric increase in costs, becomes an economic problem and, at the same time, a political problem to the extent that States must finance such research.

5. Theoretical limits

Perhaps the most disturbing question about the limits of science refers to the question of theoretical or cognitive limits, referring to the existence of areas, aspects or processes of reality that cannot be known. The question could be subdivided into at least two different problems.

The first, more general, can be formulated: is it possible to establish some a priori limit for scientific research, some aspect of reality that is intrinsically unknowable? It would be a limit only imaginable or thinkable, but by definition not knowable.

The second question: is there any limit that the science we have is a human science? The science we have is not only marked by its social and cultural genesis, but by the fact that both the perceptual apparatus and the rationality of humans is the product of thousands of years of a particular and contingent evolution. In such a way that our capacity for relationship with the world develops in a wide range of possibilities and interests, but limited and defined.

The limits of knowledge would be given by a set of capabilities and possibilities that work a priori for humans but are the result of a particular and unique evolutionary development among many other possible, that is: an a posteriori evolutionary or phylogenetic. Man is the measure of all things, but in a biological key.

conclusion

So far, a way of thinking about the problem from the limits. However, this way of seeing conceals the most interesting aspect of the problem: the very idea of a limit implies gray zones, more or less wide and diffuse zones of intersection or interaction, intersections, mixtures and heterodoxies, and why not, of important disputes. on spaces of symbolic, theoretical, institutional or political power.

Borders, in this sense, are fiction, and not because they are well or poorly placed or artificially or forcibly located (which can also happen), but rather because where there is a limit, what is generated, immediately and inescapably, are interactions, intersections, edges and overlaps. Rethinking the issue in this way is perhaps more productive (Palma, 2015).

Thanks

I thank the Orizaba Technological Institute for providing the tools and human capital to develop professionally and the MAE Fernando Aguirre y Hernández professor of the Fundamentals of Administrative Engineering subject for promoting learning through practice among their students, thus encouraging proactivity and genuine learning.

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