This article is part of The Limits of Science: an ongoing debate between scientist Peter Atkins and philosopher Mary Midgley.

Midgley launches the debate by arguing that science does not have the answers to every question. In Science Unlimited, Atkins contends that, in fact, science will explain all of existence. Then, Midgley responds in Knowledge is Not an Empire, by arguing that science is just one field of enquiry among others. Now, Atkins counters that only science offers us a deep understanding of reality.

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Science is not the only way to ask questions about reality. But it is the only way to get reliable answers. You really have to decide between, on the one hand, observation in alliance with coordinated thought, and, on the other, introspection in alliance with sentiment.

The scientific method is just plain common sense, although it took human brains centuries to stumble on it and break out of the bonds of superimposed authority (that is, religion). The method that finally dawned on people as a sensible approach was to make observations, lots of them, and carefully, and then to construct theories that were like some colossal intellectual jigsaw. Some pieces came from biology, some from chemistry, some from physics, and so on. As the pieces were assembled it turned out that the overall pattern was strengthened by the presence of the other pieces: understanding was strengthened when biology imported understanding from chemistry, and chemistry was strengthened when it imported understanding from physics. The whole picture was strengthened by the presence of mathematics, the extraordinarily objective logical framework that enabled concepts to be developed and taken to parts that intuition alone was unable to reach.