Jerry Coyne has already put up a critique of Russell Stannard’s HuffPo piece on the limits of science and the demand for humility, Russell Stannard being amongst those scientists who think that humility consists in injecting religious questioning into the scientific enterprise. In his article, “Science: A Call for Humility,” he raises the humility question in relation to scientific theory, not by suggesting that there is still more for science to learn — which is where real scientific humility lies — but by suggesting that we can always ask the question: Where do scientific theories come from?

After saying that Stephen Hawking has offered M-Theory as the ultimate theory of everything, Stannard explains, the ultimate question is still not answered, even if we knew what M-Theory looks like when written down; for,

even if the M-theory hypothesis is correct, does it in fact answer the question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It would certainly account for the existence of the world. But would it not raise a fresh question: “Where did M-theory come from? What is responsible for its existence?”

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