What are limitations of science?

Answer 1

1. We can only go with what we can observe. String theory is one example - strings are predicted mathematically, and "make sense", but are incredibly tiny (if they do exist!) and are not yet observable.

So "string theory" is a working hypothesis which may be shown to be correct one day.

2. We tend to accept authorities. Some ancient Greeks believed the planets had perfectly circular orbits, then we had to add orbits-within-orbits to make the theory work, and we accepted this for something like 2,000 years until Kepler showed that orbits are elliptical.

3. We accept plausible-but-false theories. We once thought that fire was the release of "phlogiston". Which worked OK until we did precise measurements and found that metal oxides (Mercury, for example) are slightly *heavier* than natural metals. So, if oxidation had released phlogiston, it had *negative* weight (!). The theory was abandoned once the evidence made it unsupportable.

4. At least so far, we just can't explain *everything*. B.F. Skinnner aimed to expand his "operant conditioning" theory - which worked fine to train pigeons to walk in circles - to describe the acquisition of language in humans. The task of a complete description was just too difficult, even if it was theoretically possible.

Answer 2

There is literally no limit to science. Human advances in science is restricted by imagination, prejudice, tendencies to accept tautologies as answers, and acceptance of group think as scientific fact. Currently the greatest limitation is the willingness of the United States Patent office to Patent naturally occurring substances leading to constant ligation when such substances are found almost everywhere. Another problem comes from the different terminology used by different branches of science talking about the same phenomena. A third problem comes from the overwhelming amount of literature mostly duplicated. We have recently discovered dark matter and dark energy. We do not know what they are and have no way to find out. We have no way of finding out what else we do not know or even what technology will help us.