[floslib]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Sir Roger Penrose has expressed the view that science's search for the Grand Unified Theory will never succeed, until science finds a way to tie in consciousness together with the other 4 elementary forces.

Further Notes by ALG:

1. Who is Roger Penrose? Just one of the most eminent living physicists in the world today.

2. What is the Grand Unified Theory? A theory that will establish the relationship between weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions. It's the Big Question in physics today, and is also known as the Theory of Everything. That's because some say that the discovery of this theory effectively means the end of physics, because all remaining physics questions will be answered by then.

3. What are the "4 elementary forces"? The strong force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the gravitational force.

4. Did Roger Penrose really express such a view? Well, you could read his book yourself. Or you could read the book review here.

Well, it's possible that someone has already discovered the Theory of Everything in physics. Also, I thought the Grand Unified Theory was everything but gravity, but I could be mistaken since it was on Wikipedia I saw that.

As for the rest of the thread, there is a huge difference between science failing completely and failing to explain one element of existence. While science may not be able to do everything, it has done a lot, and as the days go on it does more and more.

Remember, 100 years ago we didn't even know about relativity or quantum mechanics. We also didn't have computers, and cars were still in their infancy and a far cry from what they are today. Science helped bring us this information and these conveniences, and I think it's safe to say without it we wouldn't have those or many other things. Given how useful a tool it is in our lives, I'd say it's hard to make the case that science outright fails. It just fails to explain consciousness at this point in time. Maybe it always will, or maybe we'll someday find a way to experiment with consciousness and learn about it in a scientific manner. If not, there's always the subjective method of self-discovery we can use to learn what we can, even if it isn't scientific or objective.