As a part of my 11th grade English class, my teacher had us research a topic that we were interested in and write a “research paper.” I decided to write a “paper” on scientific relativism, more specifically to answer the question “does science have limits.” Can science be used to achieve a universal understanding of the world? Initially, I had a very shallow answer to the question: “science has no limits.” I assumed that in the ever so many years in the future, life could be understood with science. After all, we’ve only got up to this point because of science and its innovations. However, as I did further research, I realized I was far from correct.

Unfortunately, the “paper” I wrote in English class had to be mainly written by hand and in a week’s time (during AP season) so I can’t say the paper was to the best of my ability. The goal of this blog post is to write a (hopefully) better version of that and more suitable for reading.

Does science have limits?

July 7, 2025 - 9 min read

Intro

In the past few centuries, society has made more technological progress than the many millennia before. The growth of scientific knowledge can be roughly modeled exponentially, where the rate of discovery is constantly accelerating. We discover new formulas, develop new technologies, and answer previously unexplainable phenomena almost every year. From mapping the human genome to detecting gravitational waves, from developing quantum computers to creating vaccines in record time. Based on our current velocity, it would appear that we have an unstoppable force towards a complete understanding. One might believe that with enough time and resources, science will eventually reach a point where we solve every mystery in existence. Yet, from a philosophical view, the product of this growth remains highly questionable. Like others, I’ve found that science offers a provisional understanding of the world at best, but not an absolute understanding of the world (following the idea of scientific relativism).

Within this field, the term “absolute truth” refers to something that must be true universally, regardless of context or underlying assumptions. Some examples include logical truths (there are no corners in a circle) or mathematical axioms (a + b = b + a). This is where philosopher Thomas Kuhn came up with the idea of “scientific paradigms.” Imagine the progression of scientific knowledge not as a straight line, but rather like a staircase. He proposed that paradigms outline not only the progression of science, but also the actual scientific studies conducted. Paradigms hold beliefs, values, trusted methods, formal experiments, and more that guide the research that is done during that era. Furthermore, Kuhn argued that paradigms don’t evolve as science progresses. Instead, as more and more anomalies, or unexplained edge cases, appear, confidence about the paradigm decreases. It leads to a scientific revolution where a new paradigm arises, involving a “reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals.”

Case Study: Miasma Theory to Germ Theory

Miasma theory was the dominant way of explaining diseases and had existed since ancient times. Miasma theory was the idea that diseases were caused by “bad air,” from sources such as organic matter, swamps, or filth. During the Industrial Revolution, belief around this theory was amplified due to overcrowding, poor sanitation, and more importantly the production of smog. Towards the end of the 19th century, anomalies began emerging. Ignaz Semmelweis found reduced rates of fever in maternity wards when midwives washed their hands. John Snow found a correlation between contaminated water pumps and outbreaks of cholera. These anomalies presented the idea that sicknesses were not developed through foul smells or the fumes from decaying matter. Instead, there was something physical that caused the outbreaks of such illnesses. In the case of cholera, Snow discovered it was waterborne and was the first of his time to use epidemiological methods, earning him the title “Father of Epidemiology.”

But at the time, this was a radical idea and had minimal support. Although these findings had empirical evidence which supported the contrarian idea, many often ignored these because they were anomalies. It wasn’t until further discovery by Louis Pasteur which revealed the presence of physical microorganisms that led to the overturning of the miasma theory.

While this isn’t exactly related to the prompt, you might be wondering why Louis Pasteur’s findings were able to convince the public to eradicate the miasma theory. Semmelweis and Snow had similar limitations which led to their argument being less convincing. Semmelweis’s observations connected reduced fever rates to washing hands. Snow found that cholera was waterborne. The issue was both of these ideas were merely conceptual and could, at the most, only be categorized as a “justified belief,” not yet an innovative finding to science, at least in accordance with “justified true belief” by Edmund Gettier. Their belief was true but only because the claim was true and not because they had any substantial evidence to prove it was true. The magnitude in Pasteur’s discoveries lay within the fact that he had experimental evidence to support his ideas. His proposition contained a comprehensible, experimentally verifiable, and visually explainable. By doing so, he offered a tangible alternative to the miasma theory.

This was revolutionary. It shifted the thinking around diseases from an environmental phenomenon to a physical, tangible causation. It fundamentally changed how medicine was viewed and was what ultimately led up to modern-day epidemiology. Healthcare was not just about treating diseases and sicknesses but rather about preventing them through improved hygiene, handwashing, and more.

Additional studies were done within this field, mimicking the concept of refining paradigms, by Edward Jenner who founded the concept of vaccines. TLDR: he had a hypothesis that small exposure to cowpox could protect against smallpox. He tested it and it was true, thus the term vaccination was created, derived from the Latin word for cow vacca. Later, Louis Pasteur, maybe a more familiar name, generalized Jenner’s discovery into the creation of vaccines.

The point of this is that instead of avoiding germs (or “dirty” areas), it was now intentional for people to insert pathogens into their body to prevent later sickness. None of this would’ve been the norm a few decades prior.

Case Study: Limit of laws

Scientific laws, specifically those in physics, are often referred to as scientific certainty. Universal descriptions of nature’s fundamental workings. Conservation laws, such as the conservation of mass-energy, linear and angular momentum, and electric charge are among the foundations of physics and science. While many believe these laws to be universally true, these laws are in reality context-based, backed not only philosophically but also scientifically.

Noether’s theorem, by Emmy Nother, revealed a discrepancy between the aforementioned laws and the true reality of physics. Her theorem outlined the reason for why all these conservation laws even exist in the first place. They’re all fundamentally related to symmetries of a physical system. What does this mean? Conservation laws are only true because of certain properties in nature that are symmetric throughout space-time. Conservation of momentum is only conserved when the system is invariant under spatial translations (laws of physics do not change based on position in spacetime). Conservation of energy is conserved only when the system is invariant under time translations (laws of physics do not change over time). Conservation of angular momentum is only conserved when the system is rotationally invariant (laws of physics do not change when it is rotated by an angle about an axis).

You might be at least slightly familiar about this topic from a Veritasium video that was posted a few months ago. I happened to be watching the video out of curiosity and saw that it actually applied to this research “paper.”

While the theorem provided a crucial insight to traditional and modern physics, it also revealed the limitations of “foundational” science. These so-called scientific certainties were actually conditional. In classical mechanics, spacetime is treated as a fixed background. Symmetric in all ways imaginable which is what gives the conservation laws its symmetric properties. As we know however, the universe is not static, discovered by Edwin Hubble. If we go back to the birth of the universe, it was a highly dense, hot, small area. As time passed, the universe expanded, becoming less dense and cooler. This means the temperature, density, and average distance between certain locations grew.

You can think about it like this. If space-time was symmetric, an observer wouldn’t be able to tell what point in time they were if it was now vs 10 billion years ago. It would look the same. But if the observer was able to tell the difference, then time-translation symmetry does not exist (shifting forward/backward in time changes the universe itself). Relating back to conservation laws, earlier we illustrated the conservation of energy is founded on time-translation symmetry. Because time-translation symmetry does not exist on a cosmic scale, conservation laws (foundation of physics) cannot be applied universally. Thus, the laws are, in-reality, context dependent, and can only be labeled as powerful descriptions but domain specific.

Conclusion

The journey of scientific knowledge, as we’ve seen, is not easily defined as a steady march towards development in knowledge. Instead, it is a series of radical revolutions. The transition from Miasma theory to Germ theory wasn’t just a change in our understanding of disease, but rather a shift in our focus from miasmas to tangible microorganisms.

Even in physics, where laws are treated as absolute certainties, we find that there are actually limits. The foundational conservation laws, as revealed by Noether’s theorem, are dependent on the symmetries of our universe. On the cosmic scale where symmetries breakdown, so too do the laws they support. What we originally considered fundamental truths are in reality highly provisional descriptions that hold true for specific domains. A fundamental characteristic of scientific knowledge is in fact that it is contextual and provisional, rather than absolute. Science does not provide us with universal truths that transcend all boundaries of space and time. Instead, it offers us powerful frameworks for understanding the world within the specific contexts and conditions.

So to answer the question, does science have limits? The answer is yes. It does. It’s limited by the paradigms that guide it, by the context in which the laws apply, and by the nature of knowledge itself. But these limitations shouldn’t represent failures in science, rather it should motivate us to continue advancing our knowledge of this world.

Embracing scientific relativism means acknowledging that our current understanding, however sophisticated it may be, remains provisional. The question is not whether science will eventually achieve an absolute truth, but rather how we can continue to refine and expand our understanding of the universe we inhabit.