A question has been asked of science since it first took its steps away from religion. The question has evolved and changed over the years but has never been answered beyond being dismissed as irrelevant or outside the realm of science, suggesting that it's both superstitious and a spurious waste of time. The question has an implied illegitimacy - the question has been variously "Can science prove god?", "Can science prove the soul?", "Can science prove reality is not an illusion?", "Is there a such a thing as empirical?", "Where does the observer end and the observed begin?" and a million other variations.
All of these questions are the same question. They're all asked from a sense that most humans can't seem to shake. That we're not here, or there, distinct or alone. That the universe isn't mechanical. Cause and effect are not random at all. That there is an overwhelming presence or connectedness. Be this expressed as belief in god or gods, a universal consciousness, a mishmash of quantum physics, the paranormal or the supernatural.
These questions are often dismissed as a common human need to believe in purpose as with the belief in destiny or fate, a fear of mortality as with a belief in the afterlife or reincarnation, a need to feel important as with the belief in god, or purely the realm of philosophers as with questions toward the underlying nature of reality and specifically mans place in it.
There is a basic assumption that science needn't be bothered with these questions because science is about mapping what can be tested and proved. It's about setting up experiments and crunching the numbers. That ultimately science is a way toward knowledge but not necessarily answers.
The way I ask this question is "Is there a such thing as empirical?" Is there a point at which you can differentiate between the experimenter and the experiment. Often this question is seen from the perspective of the experiment. It's now known that there is an interaction between the two but it's believed that the effects of the interaction can be minimized by repeating the experiment over time and by different experimenters. This assumes two things. First that the effects the experimenter has on the experiment are limited and second that all experimenters are not themselves connected.
My personal belief is that both of these assumptions are false. That there is a great if not complete link between experimenter and experiment, that there is no distinction there at all and that all experimenters, scientists, all people, all things for that matter, are not just intertwined but the same. I answer the question within that beliefs, of course.
Science is a tool, but not one that simply measures. It's not a microscope, it's a screw driver. Science's ultimate end is it's application.
What we're doing is learning to walk on land again, so to speak. Science is part of our evolution. Except it's not hopping out of the sea on onto the beaches that we're talking about.
Regardless of the merit of the beliefs that bring such a question to bare it is not simply a matter for philosophy or religion. It's a question of what science is, not what it is not.