Comment by mjh2539
4 days ago
If you can't observe it, test it, and reproduce it, then it lies outside of the realm of (natural) science and may lie within the realm of mathematics, philosophy, or (gasp) theology.
> There is no law of the universe that guarantees that science is capable of answering all questions.
There's a name for a more nuanced version of this "law" and there's a good amount of work being done arguing for and against weaker and stronger versions of it: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/
I think it's important to clarify that the question of whether or not everything has a cause is itself outside of science. Science is about determining what a cause is likely to be, using the universe itself as a source of truth, and constrained by fundamental limits on our ability to observe and experiment. Which is to say, even if the philosophers conclude that everything must have a cause, there is still no law that says that we (as scientific agents of a universe that is attempting to understand itself) are capable of determining every possible cause.