Why it’s only science that can answer all the big questions | Aeon Ideas

All the big questions about our world that can be answered at all can be answered by science

The first colour sunset captured on camera by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, April 2015. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M International University Science has proved itself to be a reliable way to approach all kinds of questions about the physical world. As a scientist, I am led to wonder whether its ability to provide understanding is unlimited. Can it in fact answer all the great questions, the ‘big questions of being’, that occur to us? To begin with, what are these big questions? In my view, they fall into two classes. One class consists of invented questions that are often…

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