[the_af]

To be honest, I think you're straying from science into philosophy.

"The nature of being", "ontology", "it calls into question what precisely those measurements might mean".

Science is not about the search for meaning, it's about describing and understanding the physical and natural world. Meaning is up to you, and me, and everyone else.

Asimov was not talking about meaning.

It's easy to see that he wasn't, because nobody would make the categorical statement that there's unequivocal progress in the search for meaning, because meaning is such a cultural (and personal) thing. Meaning is not scientific, and is highly subjective. I wouldn't even know how to measure meaning. Self-reporting? Chemically measured happiness? What.

Had the English professor complained "we think we know so much, yet we're so ignorant about what it all means! People are so unfulfilled, live such empty lives! Wake up, sheeple!" I bet Asimov would have... -- well, he probably would have had humorous words for that too, but his argument would have been different.

[nathan_compton]

I do not think of science as distinct from philosophy. But I'm not talking about the sort of meaning you are talking about. I'm talking about the fundamental basic question of what the physical world consists of and how we relate to it.

When I say that most people think there is more to the world than measurement, I don't mean art or love or whatever. I mean that most people think that the world is made up of things that exist whether we measure them or not, things which have their own nature which we somehow can understand. The purely instrumental thinker says we can't understand those things, we only have measurements and mathematical expressions that relate measurements.