Knowledge and Certainty
How do we come to know what we know, and how certain do we need to be of knowledge to say that something is known? These are questions that philosophers have asked for a very long time within a branch of philosophy called epistemology from the Greek “episteme,” meaning “knowledge,” and “logos,” meaning study, or science. Scientists believe they know what knowledge is, as they spend so much of their effort to produce it. Can all knowledge be acquired through scientific investigation, or are there inherent limitations to what science can learn? What role does faith play? These are questions we will explore in this talk, as we touch on the nature of knowledge in philosophy, science, and faith.
Dr. John Ambrosiano received his Ph.D. in Physics from The College of William and Mary in 1980 and has worked as a computational scientist at both the Livermore and Los Alamos Laboratories. In 2005 he began to pursue an interest in Buddhist practice,which he now teaches at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Los Alamos. He has since retired from LANL but has remained underfoot as a Laboratory Associate. Dr. Ambrosiano joined the Los Alamos Faith and Science Forum as a board member in 2022 and has presented talks at the Forum’s summer series. These days he mostly spends his time writing talks, teaching, fishing, and feeding horses.
