The Full Professor Alfredo Marcos during his speech
PHOTO: Courtesy

Alfredo MarcosFull Professor of Philosophy de la Ciencia at the University of Valladolidgave the seminar 'Rescher and Gadamer: two complementary visions of the limits of science'. The activity was organized by the group of research 'Science, Reason and Faith' of the University of Navarra.

First of all, Professor Marcos explained that "the question about the limits of science leads us to think about the metaphor of the limit itself", so he began by focusing on it. Thus, he distinguished several levels, from the more conventional ones, which appeal to spatial and temporal limits, to the more metaphorical ones, which refer to functional limits.

"The metaphor of the limit is very useful for thinking science," he stressed. But we have seen that in reality it is not enough on its own for this task. It brings lucidity especially when it is inscribed in a network of metaphors."

Thus, he referred that ideas such as frontier, exploration, path, shore, hour, horizon, link, nexus or pore "are in the vicinity of the idea of limit, they belong to the same network of metaphors. But we are particularly interested in metaphors of an agential character. The idea of limit leads us immediately to that of a subject that does things with that limit: respects it, transits it, reaches it, crosses it, goes beyond it, pursues it, builds it and explores beyond it".

After going deeper into this question, Full Professor of the University of Valladolid focused on "the task of thinking science". To this end, he used the dialogue with Nicholas Rescher (1928- ) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), two authors with complementary views: "The former establishes the limits of science looking from within; the latter from an external viewpoint, which looks at the cultural position of science, from a more general interest in civilization as a whole".

"Technoscience is not enough to provide the basis for a civilization."

According to Alfredo Marcos, Nicolas Rescher argues that "science is not everything, that outside of it there are perfectly valid and rational forms of knowledge and praxis. There are areas in which we have cognitive and practical interests that fall completely outside the province of science".

"Rescher thinks in terms of territories, with their limits or boundaries. Science occupies one of these domains, but beyond it there is also life," he said.

With respect to Gadamer's view, he explained that "one of the functional limits of technoscience is that it is not sufficient on its own to provide the basis for an entire civilization, a complete way of life."

In this sense, he added that "we have to overcome the modern idea of an absolutely autonomous science. We must reintegrate the sphere of knowledge, and technoscience in particular, into the world of life. Technoscience must interact with its environment. Therefore, it needs a healthy environment, made up of entities worthy of respect. It is only one facet of our life, which borders on many others.

"This limit does not imply a deficiency of technoscience, it is nothing negative, except for those who, with a scientistic mentality, pretend to base everything on technoscience," he said.

Alfredo Marcos is Full Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Valladolid. He teaches courses and lectures at other universities in Spain, Argentina, Italy, France, Mexico, Colombia and Poland. He has recently published the books: Ciencia y acción (F.C.E., Mexico, 2012; translated into Italian and Polish) and Postmodern Aristotle (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2012); as well as the chapter: 'Bioinformation as a triadic relation', in G. Terzis & R. Arp (eds.), Information and Living Systems (M.I.T. Press, 2011).