I strongly doubt it! I think it's a very good bet that we human beings will continue to improve our understanding of the universe, but I strongly doubt that our understanding will ever become perfect, that there will come a time at which we've answered every meaningful question about it. Certainly there's no evidence from the history of science that such a day will come. Quite the contrary. Every time scientists have thought that the end is in sight, that soon no further important questions would remain in some domain, a revolution has occurred to open unforeseen avenues of inquiry. Here's a trivial reason why the possibility of further inquiry won't end. Suppose we answer the 'final question'; call it 'FQ'. Why did we ask FQ? That question is meaningful and has to be distinct from FQ. Call it 'FQ*'. Why did we ask FQ*? And so on. A less trivial reason stems from the widely held assumption that at least some aspects of our universe are contingent rather than absolutely necessary. If...

I think there are limits to how far the skeptical worry you describe can go. Your reference to virtual-reality devices is telling: "The thing about physical science is that it seems like it doesn't tell you anything that couldn't be simulated by a virtual reality device of some sort." Notice that it's physical science itself (computer science, neuroscience) that encourages you to say that. In broaching the idea that virtual-reality devices could fake what we take to be truths revealed by science, you make two non-skeptical assumptions: (1) Science really does claim such-and-such about reality; (2) science has it right about the power of virtual-reality devices. (Now, someone's skepticism might stem from merely imagining that reality is radically different from how it seems to him/her, but that kind of skepticism doesn't -- and shouldn't -- rely on anything scientific.) Can empirical science test a radical skeptical hypothesis? No. Of necessity, empirical scientific testing always occurs...

You wrote, "Is it accurate to say that we 'assume' such a thing?" I don't think it's part of the concept of an assumption that all assumptions are explicit or top-of-mind when we make them. Some assumptions are merely implicit, unstated, tacit. That's why the phrase "implicit assumption" isn't a contradiction in terms. So the inductive assumptions that we make could be mostly or entirely implicit, and it may be only when such an assumption proves wrong -- for instance, when the floorboard gives out -- that we realize we were making the assumption in the first place. I think your professor is right that we do rely on inductive assumptions all the time, almost always implicitly. Philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) famously argued that we rely on inductive reasoning all the time even though we have no good reason to trust it. See also this link: http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/4574 .

Thanks for your question. I'd distinguish the undeniable claim that memory is fallible from the less plausible claim that memory is unreliable . I'm no psychologist, but it seems that the reliability of memory comes in degrees, depending on who's using it, under what conditions, and what its content is. The kind of remembering described in your question -- remembering what I was thinking just an instant ago -- doesn't seem especially unreliable, under favorable conditions anyway. Furthermore, we logically presuppose the reliability of memory in general even as we check whether some particular memory of ours is false: We ask those who are better-positioned what they remember, we trust that we correctly remember the meanings of words they use in their answers or the meanings of words we read in contemporaneous accounts of the event, and so on. Indeed, if we persist for any length of time in our belief that memory is fallible, that too depends on trusting our memory: it presupposes that we...