When Science is Silent: The Limits of Natural Enquiry

The undeniable utility and advance of technology is encouraging a conviction that science is following a path of "natural development"; in other words that science stands above human concerns and exerts ultimate authority over all aspects of life and all other fields of inquiry. Fast-moving developments in fields such as genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and artificial intelligence are leading many to question long-held beliefs that we have entertained about the human condition. A consequence of this naturalism is the marginalization of art and an indifference to history and politics, which are seen as distractions from the main business of science. There is an urgent need to properly demarcate the domain of science and re-establish the centrality of moral and aesthetic understandings. Belief that the mind can be reduced to the brain is dispelled by the notion that reality is gained through the exercise of our imaginations. Wallace Stevens rightly appeals to "reality as a thing seen by the mind, not to that which is, but that which is apprehended."