| > scientists tend to have a very hard time acknowledging these limits of our understanding That couldn't be further from the truth. Scientists have been very upfront about the limits of our understanding, particularly when it comes to combining gravity with quantum physics. Listen to Neil DeGrasse Tyson or any other science communicator talk about general relativity or quantum physics and you'll hear them drive this point home. We know that quantum physics and general relativity don't combine well, yet both are among the most thoroughly tested theories in science. We know we need new physics to combine them, but they're still useful in their own domains. Just like before we had general relativity, we knew that Newtonian gravity was incomplete because it didn't correctly explain the orbit of Mercury. But Newtonian gravity was (and is) still useful, even with those limitations. The key is knowing where the limitations apply. General relativity applies to scenarios of high mass/energy. Quantum physics applies at small scales. They both work great in their respective domains. It's when you have high mass/energy in a small volume that things break down, because both quantum physics and general relativity apply, but we don't know how to combine them. > I think that by failing to acknowledge the limits of scientific understanding, maybe you are confusing science with religion? I don't see dbasedweeb failing to acknowledge anything. dbasedweeb wrote, "incomplete in very extreme conditions such as the interiors of black holes or the first instants after the Big Bang," which happen to be two places where quantum physics and general relativity are both applicable and we therefor run into the limitations that I mentioned above. |
You're right that there are examples of scientists who highlight these gaps in our knowledge, there are more who simply pay some lip service to them, and then there's a much larger group of people, like dbasedweeb, who irrationally suppress all criticisms of scientific theories as if they were literally religious beliefs.