Understanding science: what we cannot know

Is the universe infinite? Do we know what happened before the Big Bang? Where is human consciousness located in the brain? And are there more undiscovered particles out there, beyond the Higgs boson? In the modern world, science is king: weekly headlines proclaim the latest scientific breakthroughs and numerous mathematical problems, once indecipherable, have now been solved. But are there limits to what we can discover about our physical universe?

This free course, Understanding science: what we cannot know, investigates the boundaries of our understanding across numerous scientific fields. It asks whether it’s possible that we will one day know everything, or if some knowledge will always lie beyond the bounds of human comprehension.

This course has been created in collaboration with Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and author of What We Cannot Know. Here’s Marcus to introduce the course.

Transcript

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