Even if we had a satisfactory fundamental physics ‘theory of everything’, this situation would remain unchanged: physics would still fail to explain the outcomes of human purpose, and so would provide an incomplete description of the real world around us.
Occasionally you read something that is so refreshing that it makes you suddenly realize the stale air that you’ve been breathing. This quote from an essay by the cosmologist George Ellis as posted by Paul Nelson from ID the Future is such a breath of fresh air. Ellis’s comment unpretentiously and poignantly zones in on the limitation and fallibility of a purely materialistic science and philosophy.