As science progresses, we prove to ourselves more and more: We know effects, but not cause. We describe our world in increasing precision, but come no closer to understanding why it is the way it is.
What is gravity? What is electricity? What are these forces that hold atoms together and why do they work the way they do?
The scientist who pretends to answer such questions is more than helpless—he is outside of his field. He might as well be a doctor voicing an opinion concerning the movement of the stars or an astronomer prescribing medicine. Science describes these things with great precision, yet it does not have the tools to know their essence. Neither does it claim to, because there simply aren’t any.
Human consciousness is approaching a great realization: That beneath the veneer of order and finitude lies a cause beyond mind.
Clarity for C No scientist has pretended to answer what electricity is. That is not science. I''l try to clarify:
Since at least pre-Socratic times, thinking men were concerned with the "what is" of matter, movement and nature. Beginning with men such as Galileo, the focus shifted from "what it is" to "what does it do". Instead of discussing the nature of things, men observed, measured, made predictions and confirmed theories. When Newton described gravity in a single equation, he admitted that he had not explained a thing about why gravity works. When Planck, Einstein, Bohr, et al described the workings of subatomic particles, they did so by abandoning common intuition.
Quite simply, the dramatic progress of science over the last 600 years has been precisely due to scientists recognizing the limited scope of science and not trying to bite off more than they can chew.