A debate between Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Professor
Yoseph Agasi was published in 'Conversations about
Philosophy and Science' by the Broadcast University of the
I.D.F. Radio, Ministry of Security, Tel-Aviv in 1996. The
quotations that will follow will show that the discussion of
the definition of science leads towards the metaphysical,
while the next sub-chapter will suggest that theatre as a
practical instrument can be beneficial in the realm of
Natural Sciences education.

Agasi says to Leibowitz: 'If you say that the Social
Sciences or the Humanities are different from the Natural
Sciences because man is a spiritual being, a thinker, a
rationalist, etc. , I will agree with you, but if you say
that there is no scientific discipline about it, I will
disagree.' (p.13). The significance of this quotation is
that Agasi , in spite of his consent to Leibowitz's
distinctions between Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural
Sciences, claims that in the framework of Humanities and
Social Sciences there are scientific disciplines as well. In
his response, Leibowitz suggests a quote from Niels
Bohre(p.9): ' It is a mistake to think that the role of
Physics is to tell us how is nature; because Physics deals
with what can be said about nature.' This is a claim that
Einstein obviously rejected (p.9). The collaborative
thinking of Agasi and Leibowitz is interesting, because
towards the end of the debate, they will reach the
conclusion that science is limited. They both try to define
the boundaries of the scientific debate. Agasi makes the
following claim: 'The argument can be reduced to the
question: Is the goal of science to be at the service of
technology, to be at the service of the man who tries to
control nature, or to discover the rules of nature wherever
they are? Einstein, for instance, said that he wanted to
find the master plan of God and Niels Bohre disagreed with
him, as mentioned above (p.9). And from this very moment,
the debate entered the metaphysical dimension of science.
Who knows what is God's master plan? But another question
needs to be asked: does science know what will be the
questions in the next century? That means that Einstein is
right about the future and Niels Bohre as well as long as we
don't have clear answers about the essence of the future. In
this respect, we will find out the great importance of
theatre when it comes to scenarios and futuristic plays that
enable to enhance the prediction abilities in spite of our
present limitations.

In their book, Agasi and Leibowitz touch upon the question
of the existing paradoxes in the very definition of science,
its limits and limitations. Many who could not accept the
conceits of science and demanded that religious tradition
should be a higher instance to it, claimed that science is
limited (Agasi, p.10).  Therefore we are dealing in the
question of the boundaries of science. On the other hand,
those siding with science claimed that science was
unlimited, since even though there might be many facts that
we don't know, but there is nothing that cannot be known.
With time, we will know more and more. All this means that
science is limited in both cases: either when it is limited
by religious tradition or when scientists admit that today
we don't know everything. And here come in the futuristic
plays and scenarios that will enable science and technology
to deal with the unknown. Emanuel Kant said:' There are
questions that science will never answer like, for instance,
what is God's master plan.' Leibowitz: 'We are engaged in
the philosophy of science, and through this question of
yours, we touch upon the metaphysical.'(p.12) Agasi: 'The
philosophy of science is not a science but Metaphysics and
it is clear that when it speaks about the boundaries of
science, it deals with a non-scientific question...answering
the question of the boundaries of science both in Natural
Sciences (which deal with the concept of the matter) and the
Social Sciences (which deal with matters of the spirit) - we
differ. But, whether there is agreement between the
scientists of nature and the scientists of society and
whether there is not, there is no argument about the fact
that there is no agreement among the philosophers of
science. The question of the boundaries of science has a
metaphysical aspect.' (p.12). When a scientific question is
asked about God's master plan, it is clear that science does
not have empirical instruments to examine the question
today. But we have already seen the theme of the 'time
machine', for instance, in fantastic scenarios and theatre
plays that enable the imagination of the researcher to deal
with the past and the future and examine the future basing
himself on the developments from the past. Here there is no
question of scientific instruments, but a matter of
developing one's imagination that we might call 'fantastic
imagination' that creates access to the unknown by the means
of the known in order to examine the future. After all, the
issue is the human consciousness which is maybe near the
scientific components and often ignored. This is in the very
realm of theatre.

About the matter of scientific thinking, Leibowitz says: I
doubt if it is possible to attribute the term 'science' to
Plato. Plato, like Socrates, looked down upon science: 'What
importance is there for man to know the movement of the
celestial wheels, when man should know himself?' Agasi
agrees with Leibowitz by saying: 'True. Until the age of 40,
Socrates was an astronomer or a physicist and afterwards he
began to study morality (p.22).' In an attempt to define
scientific thinking, Agasi says: 'I am trying to distinguish
between two kinds of certainty. This distinction was made in
the book of Sir John Hershel (1830): ' In science, certainty
is not a psychological issue, but an issue of consciousness.
Therefore he required mathematical certainty.' Leibowitz
responded: '...but mathematics does not deal with reality;
mathematics deals with human consciousness.' (p.23)