Recommended book.

 

Measuring and testing.

Howard Taylor.

All knowledge comes through measuring and testing doesn't it?

Wait a moment, that sentence cannot be measured or tested itself. So if it is true then we cannot know that it is true and assert it. Therefore it is  nonsense!

Anyway I didn't know my mother by testing or measuring her. Trying to measure her or test her would not have led to knowledge of her - it would have hindered it. Yet it was a real, though incomplete, knowledge.

I have used the example of my mother but I could have used knowledge of any person because the same applies in the knowledge of my friends. Even scientific knowledge is partly personal because all scientists are human beings.

The conundrum with which this short article began is meant to show that there is more to reality than can be known by the scientific method - as presently understood. The way of knowing itself cannot be reduced to physical objects which can be measured and tested. Science is very useful but it can't lead to knowledge of everything.

This is just one among many reasons why materilism (the doctrine that only the material [Electons, laws of physics etc] exists) cannot be true.

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