if something cant be explained

scientifically is it worth seeking an explanation at all ?

Um...

It would be better to solve world poverty instead.

Nature of consciousness

>>1
science can describe anything observable -- whether or not that leads to robust theory (which is as close to "explain" as science dares to entertain) is never known until someone manages the task.

Everything has the capacity to be understood and understanding a phenomena to be explained.  Right now we are only able to understand what we can see unaided and aided by our technologies.  Just because something is only slightly outside of what we can understand scientifically now doesn't mean we won't someday be able to discern the nature of what it is we are seeking to know.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, unexplainability is only temporary... and I probably just made up a word.

>>6
Good post, excellent example of the arrogance of man.

>>7
fuck off god

>>7
It's not arrogance sir.  Arrogance is the notion that you are absolutely right just because of belief and faith and that a mystical creator crafted YOU and YOUR RACE in HIS/HER OWN IMAGE.  Science continuously shows how small and cosmically insignificant we are as we seek the explanations to the myriad of phenomena around us and thus fill in the gaps of our knowledge.  I simply stated that "unexplainability" is only based on what we can't observe and therefore what we can't come to understand.  It could very well take another century to a millenia to be able to explain some natural processes that are currently beyond our scope.  We may not survive that long, but the event is still capable of being understood.  And understanding gives rise to explanations.

Science doesn't explain things.  Science describes things.

Science does explain, once the facts are gathered and put together.  Would you like me to explain why this is true?

Metaphysics explains, physics describes... there is no mathematical path from the description to the explanation. The common language can not do that, the mathematics too... until now we just can image :(

>>11
Scientifically, no.

>>10
>>12
What sort of explanation are you looking for?  The "why" and "what for?"  Are you looking for purpose?

>>14
I'm not looking for an explanation.  That's a foolish errand, working towards an endgame to the analysis.  The hypothetical description is more than suitable and flexible enough to incorporate new information without shattering in all but the most drastic realizations.

Science does look for explanations.  Explanations are the end result of all the research, observations and formulations.  The explanation comes at the end when someone has taken their ideas through the necessary tedium of the scientific method and, after some trial and error, come to an explanation for whatever phenomena they were exploring.  What you suggested "10 only" is that we should be content with half knowledge instead of seeking out the full truth.  Hypothetical descriptions can be shot down and unless they are hammered down explicitly, unlike evolution, pseudo-scientific bull can be brought in to dissuade people from looking any further.  I fully support evolution in it's explanation of how we have so many diverse organisms on our planet.  But until we can explain with at least 99% accuracy how that life got started in the first place, people like the Wedge and creationists can have a field day ripping it apart and saying it's BS.  I prefer the explanatory scientific law over the hypothetical descriptive.  This brings me back to the conclusion I originally posted, "unexplainability" (if it's a word) is only temporary.

If you understand maths,
Second incompleteness theorem (Gödel): "For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent." (from wikipedia)

Hilbert was cried a lot...

So, if you use mathematics to speak about nature... you can not say everything you want about it.

Math is currently being used to try to come up with the unifying theorem of everything, a theorem that if proven correct would than become law.  If you are just looking for conceptual explanations to scientific phenomena, math is not necessary.  The point was brought up to me earlier today, what is the specific difference between a description and an explanation?  This whole thread started because of limited imagination.

what is the specific difference between a description and an explanation?
A description does not have to be specific.  Gravity is currently a description and has been one since it was proposed - people have a lot of details about it, but they don't know why all of those details qualify the way they do, rendering most of those details "heuristics" at worst.  Evolution is a description of how biological construct changes over long periods of time but does not go into incredibly specific details.  If they did, we would have at least a primitive chart of how different cell groups are affected by macrocosmic behavior on a timescale short of a geologic.  Atomic structure is as much as description as an explanation: spin numbers, orbitals, bonds, just tricks used to simplify complicated concepts.

An explanation leaves no holes or unresolved issues, or at least has recognized the yet-unresolved issues.  With some supplementary evidence, everything related to an exemplary situation could be expounded in a tree diagram or flowchart.  It satisfies the curious child in the back seat who responds to every incremental explanation with another "why?" forcing that we eventually change the topic, albeit subtly, a personal admission of our defeat, or we get to "Because that's how it works."  An explanation is the endgame, what happens when science has run dry and all that's left are practitioners rather than explorers.

Also, I am not saying that they do not wish they could fully or sufficiently explain something; that is what they are trying to do.  My argument is that they will never get to that ends this side of a singularity of some kind.

That is  an awfully big assumption, that "never" you used there.  You're assuming that we will encounter a boundary beyond which everything will be beyond the scope of curious minds and our ability to compensate for our shortcomings.  No such boundary exists for scientific truth.  Now if you're gonna suggest that we may suffer an extinction before we can get to the "endgame" as it were, I'd entertain that notion.  But that doesn't mean something is forever unexplainable, just that we died before we could learn how to explain it.