QuestionsCan science explain everything?Science disenchants the world, but it does not say how one should live
Can science explain everything?True, but not everything

Science disenchants the world, but it does not say how one should live

The disenchantment of the world; value-freedom; the polytheism of values

Max Weber 1864 · 1920Science widens knowledge but does not say how we should live: the world has become "disenchanted".
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What it claims

Science is real and precious knowledge, but it cannot explain everything: it settles neither the value of knowledge, nor the meaning of life, nor the choice between values.

Why

Science masters facts, but it cannot prove that knowledge is worth having nor say how one should live.

In short

"Science disenchants the world, but it does not say how one should live" is an argument by Max Weber (Science as a Vocation, lecture of 1917 (published 1919)) on the question "Can science explain everything?" (answer: true, but not everything). Its claim: Science is real and precious knowledge, but it cannot explain everything: it settles neither the value of knowledge, nor the meaning of life, nor the choice between values. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P6). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Science as a Vocation, lecture of 1917 (published 1919)
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1917, in Munich, Max Weber spoke to students about what it means to make science one's profession. He first describes a fact: science and technology have taken the mysterious forces out of the world. Then he asks the question Tolstoy asked: what is all this for, if science does not answer "what should we do, how should we live?" His answer is twofold: science is real and precious knowledge, but there are questions, about value and meaning, that it cannot settle.

P1The progress of science and technology means that, in principle, there are no more mysterious, unpredictable forces: everything can be mastered by calculation. This is what Weber calls the disenchantment of the world.
P2Science does not answer the question that matters most to us: what should we do, how should we live? That is a fact, says Weber, that no one can dispute.
P3Science itself supposes that what it finds is worth knowing. That supposition cannot be proved by the means of science.
P4The great values of life are in endless conflict, like the gods of old. No science can decide among them: one cannot demonstrate scientifically which value is the right one.
P5Science is not useless for all that: it gives techniques to master life, methods of thinking, and clarity, that is, the ability to see what each choice costs and to give an account of the meaning of one's acts.
P6 · implicit premiseKnowledge that is true and useful about facts, but cannot ground its own values nor say how to live, is knowledge that is true but limited.
Therefore science is real and precious knowledge, but it cannot explain everything: it settles neither the value of knowledge, nor the meaning of life, nor the choice between values.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a world where science does not answer "how to live", and yet that question makes no sense, so that science explains everything that can be explained.
With P6 the argument is valid. Without P6, Weber describes what science does and does not do. One must add that these questions of value and meaning are questions that have an answer or that really matter, which his critics dispute: some think they are false questions, others that science can deal with them.
Analogy. An excellent mapmaker can tell you where all the roads lead, how long they take and what they cost. He cannot tell you where you want to go.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Alex Rosenberg 2011 · attacks premise 6

If science finds neither meaning of life nor objective values in the world, it is not failing: there are none. The questions Weber believes are beyond its reach are questions without an object, and science gives the answer: no such thing exists.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 2011, after the author's death (1920).
The debate goes on (our summary) Weber died in 1920 and Rosenberg writes almost a century later. Weber agrees that science finds no values in the facts; he concludes that each person must choose values, and choose them knowingly. Rosenberg concludes that values are illusions. The core disagreement: does the absence of values in the facts show they do not exist, or that they are of another order?
Hilary Putnam 2002 · attacks premise 2

Putnam disputes the sharp split between facts and values, which Weber shares with many thinkers of his time. Science itself rests on values (coherence, simplicity, precision), and many of our words are both descriptive and evaluative ("cruel", "courageous"). One can therefore reason about values with the same care as about facts.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 2002, after the author's death (1920).
The debate goes on (our summary) Putnam writes more than eighty years after Weber. Weber admits science presupposes values (P3); he only says it cannot prove them. Putnam's supporters answer that reason can nevertheless assess them, without being "science" in the strict sense. The core disagreement: is there a practical reason, distinct from science, that can decide between values?
L
Leo Strauss 1953 · attacks premise 4

If science cannot tell good from bad, it cannot condemn a monstrous regime except by saying "I do not like it". The polytheism of values leads to relativism. We must recover the idea of natural right, which reason can know.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1953, after the author's death (1920).
The debate goes on (our summary) Weber died in 1920, thirty years before Strauss. He writes that the conflict of values forces each person to choose and answer for the choice, and that the teacher must help his students see clearly what their choice implies (P5). His defenders hold that this is not relativism but responsibility; Strauss holds that it leads there.