Science consists of giving satisfactory explanations of everything that seems to us to need an explanation. Science cannot go beyond phenomena, and consists in their generalization under a uniform law.
Science deals only with phenomena and discovering the facts and the laws that govern them; but all it does is investigate the current uniform operation, wherever it exists, of that which exists before the inquiry arises. The scientific method is limited to what can be observed, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted; that is, it is involved with an interrelated set of proven truths or, failing that, by observable factors. With the development of capitalism, modern science acquired a great impulse, evidencing itself in partial benefits for humanity.
It is no secret to anyone that the capitalist advance has paradoxically impeded the advancement of science, since discoveries have emerged that have evidently proven to be harmful, such as the use of nuclear energy for destructive purposes, whose deadly consequences are closely linked to the values associated with scientists and therefore with the irrationality of capitalism.
The limitations of science can be summarized as follows: Science is carried out by human beings, therefore it is subject to error, The same way of using the scientific method or interpreting the results can lead to error, as it is a process very dynamic, its validity can be questionable, because what is true today was something else yesterday, the results can be manipulated to obtain some purpose and it is not always accessible to everyone.
Scientific method
The scientific experiment is carried out by the researcher as a man not only of thought but also of action, where he simply manipulates some natural phenomenon in a controlled way, with the sole purpose of generating information in order to amplify the magnitude with which it is generated. The most rigorous method applied to the search for knowledge is the scientific method, which, as we will see later, has its limitations, as follows:
The scientific method is limited to what can be observed, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted; that is, it is involved with an interrelated set of proven truths or, failing that, by observable factors. Hence, it is only through the use of these senses that this observation occurs.
In this regard, Duane Gish (1973), points out the following: "For a theory to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be sustained by the events, processes, or properties that can be observed" (pp. 2-3). George Gaylord Simpson (1964) was of the same opinion, when years before he wrote: “In any definition of science, it is inherent that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying something… or at least they are not science ”(pp, 143: 769).
The scientific method is limited by the fact that it is amoral, because science simply does not have in itself the mechanism to dictate regulatory norms on it. There is nothing inherent in the scientific method that provides for the definition or study of morality. In this regard, various authors pointed out the following, I quote: Paul Little (1967), "Science is incapable of making value judgments about the things it measures… There is nothing in science itself that will determine whether nuclear energy will be used for destroy cancer or cities (p. 105). Jacques Monod (1969) “science is ignorant of values” (p. 21) and finally Bales (1976) when he pointed out that “The scientific method cannot prove that we have any obligation to accept the truth if we find it unpleasant,or show why we should not accept falsehood if we can change it to our advantage ”(p. 37).
The scientific method is not capable of dealing with the realm of purpose, but with the mechanism, that is, with cause-effect relationships. It is limited to teaching us to understand how and not why a certain process works. Hawthorne (1960), in this regard pointed out the following, I quote: “Science can give us knowing how, but it cannot give us knowing why” (p. 4).
Now, one way to evaluate the limitations of scientific research is by stating that, given its nature, there are many things that science as a set of objective knowledge about certain categories of facts, objects or phenomena, which is based on laws verifiable and in its own research methodology, it is not trained to understand; such as: emotions and love and, worse still, the origin of our existence and the universe.
Therefore, the scientific method is limited to the present, because it is the only place and time in which the five senses described above operate, since the past is beyond the domain of said method, lending itself to speculation. For Wolthius Enno (1963): “Science seeks to explain the functioning of what is, and to check its explanation through experiments only in the present time. (p. 50).
In this sense, it is also worth noting that the scientific method deals with those things that have universal, reliable, timeless characteristics and that are repeatable; those that do not somehow secure between them, will be outside the scope of science. Similarly, the scientific method is limited by the fact that it cannot deal with the only thing. Science is self-proving and self-correcting.
Science is based on observation, comparison, conjecture and experimentation. However, it has limitations, as described below:
- Physical type: The gravitational attraction experienced by a proton and a neutron inside the atomic nucleus is so small that it can hardly be measured, making it impossible to experiment with gravity at the quantum level, which in turn prevents progress in the search of knowledge. Technical and economic: You need the necessary technology to carry out an experiment. At the present time there is no technology available to reproduce highly energetic conditions for the purposes of checking the validity of string theory, as a fundamental model of physics that basically states that all blocks of matter are actually expressions of a An extended one-dimensional basic object called a string or filament.Sometimes there are insufficient funds to carry out an experiment. Academic: If there is not enough capacity to acquire adequate knowledge, there will be a limitation to advance in the field of study of a scientific nature; that is, there will be difficulties in putting the scientific method into practice for the purposes of studying the environment around us. Human type: Human capacity is limited. There are theories and experiments that cannot be developed without the collaboration of several scientists who diversify the work and form the appropriate synergy to achieve the proposed research objectives. If the right team is not consolidated, the work will not progress. Social type: Modern science, goes through one of the most important limitations,Because unfortunately we live in a society with unscientific characteristics, for it is no secret that there is a great gap between scientific advances and the population.
Definitively, scientific advances have a direct and notable impact on our quality of life, but the assessment we have of science we must change; Since, science in a certain way advances in a society that does not understand it and that is dangerously close to the world of pseudosciences, which Bunge Mario (2002), defined as follows, I quote: “It is a lot of clubs that it is sold as science. Examples: alchemy, astrology, scientific communism, characterology, scientific creationism, graphology, ufology, parapsychology and psychoanalysis ”.
Consequently, it is evident that pseudoscience is a term that accounts for a set of supposed knowledge, methodologies, practices or beliefs of a non-scientific nature, however, they claim that character. This concept is used in epistemological approaches concerned with the demarcation criterion of science and has greater consensus between the exact and natural sciences.
The limits of experimentation
If we momentarily analyze the history of humanity, we will realize that it was during the course of the 20th century, where the greatest number of scientific advances such as nuclear energy, the space race, antibiotics, advanced technologies, the trip to the moon, the search for life on the planet Mars, genetic and molecular biology; However, genetic manipulation (cloning), as a technique was the most controversial, because it is used to duplicate living organisms, either animals, plants or human beings, as if it were a simple procedure of taking a photostatic copy or There is a shortage of some document, only, said cloning is from the cell of a living being, managing to create an organism identical to the original, a copy, as happened in 1996,with the experiment carried out by the scientist of Scottish origin, Dr Wilmut Ian, when the famous Dolly the sheep was born.
In this regard, Dr. Torres José Luis (2005), who serves as Associate Researcher at the National Institute of Perintology of Mexico, in his article entitled Therapeutic cloning: a current bioethical dilemma, published in the Scielo journal, is of the following criteria:
In 1997, the English magazine Nature for the first time published the birth of Dolly the sheep, by means of a procedure called artificial cloning, which caused a strong reaction in society, after various figures from the political world such as former Presidents Clinton of The United States and Chirac from France, among others; from the scientific world like the director of the US National Institutes of Health and especially from the religious world like Pope John Paul II, opposed this procedure.
In Vatican City, the III General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life was held, where a broad group of professionals from various fields (biologists, doctors, philosophers and jurists) worked to draft the so-called "Statute of the Human Embryo "Where they concluded that:"… from the point of view of biology, the formation, the development of the embryo, was a continuous, coordinated and gradual process that appeared from the moment of fertilization and during which a new human organism".
Similarly, the United States National Bioethics Commission ruled in its 1997 report, when it recommended that artificial human cloning should not be attempted for the next five years, and not before re-evaluating the scientific and technical situation at the time.. The recommendation was based on the low efficiency that the procedure had shown and because of the large number of deformed or monstrous products that were produced in the experiments and because of the uncertainty about the conditions necessary to achieve that in man, the nucleus introduced into the ovule initiate cell divisions and regulate them normally.
However, and in the middle of the first quarter of 2009, the obvious is that both genetic manipulation and enigmatic human cloning represent an eminent and true threat, since in our recent history we have a bad and horrendous experience with the well-known murderous segregationism raised by the myth of the «superior race», enshrined by Nazism in the Second World War, which brought so many victims.
On this matter, Dr. Isis de Landaeta, President of the National Center for Bioethics of Venezuela, in her article published in the National newspaper dated 07/17/2008, page 8, Science and Technology pointed out the following, I quote: “You have to protect human beings from abuses of technology… there is no person or entity capable of determining what is ethical and what is not in the field of medical research, but limits must ultimately be addressed.
For her, bioethics is “a discipline that has to deal with all the problems arising from excessive technology applied to man, especially when human values are put aside in that application… people have to be protected from abuse of the technology and the discussion is fair and necessary ”.
Science
Before delving into the limitations of science, it is important to understand its meaning:
According to the Larousse dictionary (2005): Science is understood as the set of objective knowledge about certain categories of facts, objects or phenomena, which is based on verifiable laws and an own research methodology.
Popper, (1971, p 180) regarding this concept states: "Science consists in giving satisfactory explanations of everything that seems to us to need an explanation" and adds: "By explanation (or causal explanation) we mean a set of statements by means of which describes the state of the matter to be explained (the explicandum) using others, the explanatory statements, which constitute the «explanation in the strict sense (the explicans del explicandum).
Alexis González (1983, p15) points out that: «science is the concrete results of the organized activity of those who carry out research with the purpose of clarifying what is hidden within the apparent chaos or what is really manifest of natural, psychic, social or social phenomena. virtual, for which, at first, we have no obvious answer to offer.
Wartofsky (1975, p16) states: «Experiment, discover, measure and observe. Dealing with the how and why of things, inventing techniques and tools, proposing and arranging, making hypotheses and rehearsing; ask nature questions and get answers; guess, refute, confirm or not confirm; separate what is true from what is false, what makes sense from what doesn't; do what we want to do, tell us how to get where we want to go.
Science cannot go beyond phenomena, and consists in their generalization under a uniform law. Science deals only with phenomena and discovering the facts and the laws that govern them; but all it does is investigate the current uniform operation, wherever it exists, of that which exists before the inquiry arises.
From the concepts described above, it follows that science is systematized knowledge, because it essentially tries to understand phenomena and to arrive at essentially proving scientific truths, under the application of scientific research, prepared through observations and methodical reasoning. organized, which uses different methods and techniques for the acquisition and organization of knowledge about the structure of a set of objective facts and accessible to various observers.
Science seeks the truth; that is to say, it seeks to affirm the good correspondence that exists between reality and the ideas that we make of it. Ultimately, the central function of science is to discover the truth, even if it is not visible or goes against common sense, as it is: describe and categorize phenomena, explain them based on the simplest possible laws or principles and perhaps predict them. The application of these methods and knowledge leads to the generation of more objective knowledge in the form of concrete, quantitative and testable predictions regarding past, present and future observable events.
The prestige of science as an inaccurate guarantee of the truth in what is said is very valuable, because science does not admit ambiguities, since what has already been scientifically proven as true is forcefully true, it is easily demonstrated, due to that it is possible to confirm that the predictions made from them are true. In short, science is more than just making discoveries. Science is a creative human activity whose objective is the understanding of nature and whose product is knowledge.
Science implications
In reality, the thinking about science, regarding the fulfillment and scope that is expected of it, is not new. For more than three centuries when the astronomer, philosopher and mathematician, Galileo Galilei introduced the well-known experimental method into physics, it has been shown that science has grown irregularly, not only in the so-called exact sciences such as astronomy, chemistry and physics; but also in the social sciences such as psychology, sociology and anthropology, among others.
Similarly, in the biological sciences, but with less zeal when the experimental method was also included in biology by Harvey William, a physician who was credited with being the first person to correctly describe the properties of blood as it is distributed throughout the body.
If we start to evaluate history and of course the present, unfortunately we observe that science has produced an unhappy world, because despite advances in medicine for example, which although it is true has saved lives, we continue to have irritants and surprising genocides product of the wars given the unhealthy application of the scientific techniques of extermination.
This without stopping counting the exploitation and contamination of our ecology that we are destroying in an unconscious and accelerated way every day and that for many experts such as Fedorov Eugueny (1966), according to the UNESCO post, is the following criterion: “At the moment Today there is almost no element to which no practical application has been found… The exploitation of the many resources is carried out at such a rate that at times it is possible to worry about the possibility of their exhaustion. In certain regions of the world a shortage of drinking water has already been verified ”.
If to the above, we add that today we continue to have serious economic crises, such as the increase in international prices and food shortages, which economic science has not yet given concrete answers and of course many economists do not understand Hence, the accusation of failure persists for many of science, given its fundamental participation in the apparent imminence of destruction that threatens humanity and entire nations.
In short, and given the above, science has had its great advances, but undoubtedly its application has shown true signs of incompetence to generate a world that is more respectful of human life, of the integrity of the environment; that is to say, a less competitive world, less violent, with fewer problems, for sure, we need a world that is more conducive to the nobility of feelings and the elevation of the spirit, of fraternity for the good of all.
Finally, it is important to highlight that with the genesis of science, knowledge about our reality began to be generated; That is to say, the man as creator of science, began to know himself better, but also and in a detrimental way he soon began with the growing knowledge of the different existing forces increasing his power until he came not only to control aspects such as hydraulic, caloric, mechanical energies, electrical and solar, but also, nuclear energy, which as noted and is evident, has been used for destructive purposes.
Limitations of science
The human being by nature seeks the explanation of what usually happens around him; In other words, it seeks, wishes and wants to know and have an explanation of the reality that affects it, in the environment where it operates. However, it is observed that science is trapped in an evident entropy, in an inbreeding, in a technical language that the ordinary citizen does not understand. Not achieving the true symbiosis between science and population. Given this, apparently the problem is not science, but rather pseudoscience, because society accepts its explanations that are otherwise intelligible, simpler, more direct, although also more erroneous. For Moore John N. (1973). "Modern society lacks critical capacity,of a sense of skepticism that makes him consider whether the messages he receives from pseudosciences, a concept widely described as he referred to and which are obviously misleading. And this translates into an isolation of science that, in the long run, ends up being a serious limitation.
With the rise and development of capitalism, modern science acquired a great boost, showing itself in partial benefits for humanity. It is no secret to anyone that with the capitalist advance, the advance of science has paradoxically been impeded, since discoveries have emerged that have evidently proven to be harmful, such as the use of nuclear energy for destructive purposes, whose deadly consequences are intimately linked to the values associated with scientists and therefore to the irrationality of capitalism.
Varsavskyn (1972), stated the following in this regard, I quote: “Some specific achievements are generated that benefit the whole… sometimes the criteria of the dominant classes produce spaces for collective benefit, although the aim pursued is a maximization of the benefit limited to those minority groups ”.
Without science, humanity would find itself headless or completely abandoned to solve the myriad of problems that afflict it. Science is conditioned to the position adopted by each scientist, the prejudices and the social historical context; day by day it is threatened and diminished by individual competition, the unhealthy pursuit of prestige, success and professional practice tied to profit, and the strong economic interests framed by patents.
Hence, it is necessary for scientists to expose themselves to a certification court; since it would be the only instance in which the hypotheses formulated can be validated or not with authority; for the purpose of seeking its transformation into scientific knowledge. It is not logical to assert that all knowledge developed within the scientific field is definitive, which if it is logical is to consider that it is beyond any suspicion about possible determining factors.
For Varsavsky Oscar (1972): "The mission of the rebel scientist is to study with all seriousness and using all the weapons of science the problems of social system change, in all its stages and in all its theoretical and practical aspects."
The suspicions are logical given the events that have occurred, such as the confrontation that arose in 1984, between Gallo Robert from the USA and Montagnier Luc from France, regarding the discovery of the AIDS virus. Similarly, when Korean Hwang Woo Suk falsified his studies on stem cell cloning; as well as Jon Subdo (2004-2005), a Norwegian scientist, who confessed to falsifying studies on mouth cancer in order to gain recognition.
These stories are those that reflect the obstacles faced by the development of science, which are obviously conditioned by factors created in the competitive context, whose intention is to improve the positioning of competitors, instead of researchers, who are more concerned with prestige and their material consequences, than for the development of science for the benefit of society.
In an article published in the National newspaper dated 07/17/2008, page 8, in the Science and Environment section, called the AIDS virus has an Achilles heel, the following can be seen, I quote: “Scientists from the University of Texas Sudhir Paul, Yasuhiro Nishiyama and Stephanie Planque, found the Achilles heel of the AIDS virus in a part of the protein that covers it, essential for the development of the virus in the cells it attacks… it is a small section between amino acids 421-433 of the gp 120 protein, which surrounds the human immunodeficiency virus… The medical team was able to fragment the protein and destroy the amino acid stretch that acts as the brain and tricks the body, something that will be very useful in the treatment and disease prevention ”.
However, and ultimately the limitations of science can be summarized as follows: Science is carried out by human beings, therefore it is subject to error. The very way of using the scientific method or interpreting the results can be misleading. As it is a very dynamic process, its validity may be questionable, because what is true today was something else yesterday. The results can be manipulated to obtain some end and it is not always accessible to all.
Conclusions
Science has its place in society, but not as if it were an infallible light. As stated in the course of writing, there is no denying that the achievements of science on humanity, but we must not forget that scientists are human. Consequently, they are not immune to temptations of any kind, especially corruption, ethics, and bioethics; hence their motives are not always noble. Therefore, we must not forget that science is only a means that man uses for the purpose of obtaining knowledge; but one thing is also certain, the purposes to which this knowledge is applied are not determined by the instrument that served to obtain it.
Science is there to fulfill our wishes, but it is not responsible for them, since if we think for a moment, we realize that the same poison that serves to exterminate certain animals that cause epidemic diseases such as rats, also serves to poison man. But what we must not lose sight of is that the poison itself is not by itself the one who makes the decision of whom to poison and destroy, quite the contrary, the being who does science, in itself the human being is obviously responsible. the result of its application, since he decides with absolute freedom what he is going to do and does once the scientific information has been generated.
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