Why is science just a starting point and not an end point?

       "Reality is merely an illusion," Einstein once admitted, "albeit a very persistent one."

                                  re: that falling tree...

                https://blog.oup.com/2011/02/quantum/

            'Why is science just a starting point and not an end point?'    

                              Is a scientific, "end point" possible?

       For inquiring minds, as opposed to the (so common) expiring ones:

https://www.livescience.com/65628-theory-of-everything-millennia-away.html

@millercarbon. +1

I was trained as a scientist and practiced professionally as one for ten years. I have used the methods and approaches for my entire life in all aspects of my career and life. Science is the starting point and it is like peeling the layers of an onion… you learn about one layer after another, towards full knowledge at greater levels of detail.


If high end audio had a large multidisciplinary group of scientists that were not working for profit and we’re publishing their results for the last fifty years we would have research documenting all component characteristic and be able predict several levels below where general knowledge is today. Many companies have drilled down many layers.. typically in the design processes and material science. But they do not make it public knowledge for obvious reasons.

The idea that science is either a starting point, or an ending point is misguided.  Science is a tool for us to organize our thoughts and derive models to help explain the universe we live in.

You observe something, you make hypothesis, you try them out and see if they work. 

Science is not metrics.  It is not quality assurance. It is the process that very much includes human experience, explains some of it, and then looks for the next opportunity to enhance our understanding.

It is neither supreme to nor independent of human experience. 

To everyone who thinks measurements for audio gear which were widely adopted over 50 years ago equals science, that there is your problem.  Science generated those measurements, but it does not say that should be their end point, the last measurements for all time.

The fields of room acoustics and head related transfer functions IMHO show just how much more there was left after that. I believe that the field of audio equipment measurement and explanation is still pregnant with opportunity for science to continue expanding  and for that expansion to reach the hobby press, but it has not happened yet.

Those measurements, codified half a century ago are not the start and end of audio science.  Those who apply them as the only standard of quality are not scientists. They are technicians.