CHAPTER 5: Scientific Knowledge from the Perspective of Quantum Cosmology
Contribution to the proceedings of the workshop Limits to Scientific Knowledge held at Abisko, Sweden, May 15–19, 1995.
Existing physical theories do not predict every feature of our experience, but only certain regularities of that experience. That difference between what could be observed and what can be predicted is one kind of limit on scientific knowledge. Such limits are inevitable if the world is complex and the laws governing the regularities of that world are simple. Another kind of limit on scientific knowledge arises because even simple theories may require intractable or impossible computations to yield specific predictions. A third kind of limit concerns our ability to know theories through the process of induction and test. Quantum cosmology — that part of science concerned with the quantum origin of the universe and its subsequent evolution — displays all three kinds of limits. This paper briefly describes quantum cosmology and discusses these limits. The place of the other sciences in this most comprehensive of physical frameworks is described.
