"You'll never know whether or not it can answer them if you don't try. We could just pass up on research into how the physiology of the brain creates our emotions, but I don't think we should do that, especially just for the sake of retaining some of the mystery in the universe."
Again. Just in case i wasn't clear. you can imagine this in all caps if you like, in fact, please do. I believe in theoretical research.
Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
Science does not answer some kinds of questions, becuase it is a tool with a range of specific and wonderful uses. I do not support any curtailment of science, especially in the fascinating realm of neuro-science. Learning the how will only help us ask the why. Ideas support questions. Some will be answered by science. Some will remain questions, at least for a while. And some may be addressed by religious and ethical systems. Awe and wonder do not cease with learning. They only increase.
The mystery of the universe is not that we don't have any idea what's going on...it's in the very operations and existance of it that makes it amazing. Even when we know every last bit about how systems work, we can still marvel at their ability to function and adapt. Even if we knew exactly how chemicals created emotions, we could still have awe and wonder that such a system was with in us, giving us that lens with which to view the world.
What you're driving at, i imagine, is that the world might be completely deterministic, and that if we properly understood it, that it would cease to have any wonder for us. Inputs go to outputs, reliably and with out change.
Well...i don't think it's so. Part of that is wishful thinking...it's much more interesting to live in a world that isn't deterministic. Part of it is my beleif in science. Reading Hawking, Feynman, Einstien, and others...i see the same awe and wonder that drives me to ask questions about the universe. And i see them explain the way in which the universe ceaselessly produces more layers of complexity for us to examine.
I think it was Feynman who wrote that "Nature abhors a vacuum." He was talking about the universe's tendancy to make something happen when absolutely nothing was happening otherwise. But i think of it poetically. Where there is no matter, no energy, no life, no change, no awe, nor wonder....that pure isolation will always be disturbed. With out that, there can be no story worth telling. Another writer puts it well.
"In the beginning..."
