ABSTRACT
If I were to assert that investigation of the nature of life after death was an area for which any increase in knowledge would be important, enriching as regards age-old debates, and certainly timely in the modern world, few would disagree. If I were to suggest further that contemporary science (a) has not really addressed this issue and (b) has generally failed even when it has tried, and if I were to observe that a knowledge of life after death might not be germane to a growth of knowledge regarding how our world of experience, the natural world, actually works (i.e., we can learn about our world without a prior knowledge of the question of life after death), would it be logical to conclude from this discussion that science has failed, that science is worthless, and that one should accordingly abandon science as a learning strategy as far as the world of experience is concerned? Should we really kick over the traces of an allegedly failed science in favor of another learning strategy that is said to make possible a knowledge of life after death? We may query still further, has science really failed in terms of its goals, the accumulation of knowledge and understanding of the world as we know it? Such a claim would certainly be difficult to defend. Faced with this type of logical situation, what is the form that debate over this issue is likely to take?
