The End of Science

[jya@pipeline.com (John Young)]

   Natalie Angier, the sharp-witted science reporter for The 
   New York Times, reviews "The End of Science," by John 
   Horgan, a senior writer at Scientific American, in the June 
   30 NYT Book Review. She writes: 
 
      In this intellectually bracing, sweepingly reported, 
      often brilliant and sometimes bullying book, John Horgan 
      makes the powerful case that the best and most exciting 
      scientific discoveries are behind us. He argues that 
      many scientists today, particularly those he interviewed 
      for this book, are "gripped by a profound unease." Part 
      of that malaise results from all the sociopolitical 
      irritants we've heard about: the dwindling financial 
      resources, the vicious competition, the strident 
      antipathy of animal rights activists, religious 
      fundamentalists, technophobes and the like. 
 
      But a far more important source of despair, Mr. Horgan 
      insists, is that scientists are beginning to sense that 
      "the great era of scientific discovery is over." The big 
      truths, the primordial truths, the pure truths about 
      "the universe and our place in it" have already been 
      mapped out. Science has been so spectacularly successful 
      at describing the principal features of the universe, on 
      a scale from quarks to the superstructure of galaxies, 
      that the entire enterprise may well end up the 
      paradoxical victim of its own prosperity. "Further 
      research may yield no more great revelations or 
      revolutions," he writes, "but only incremental, 
      diminishing returns." 
 
   While Angier does not agree with his thesis that the major 
   problems of science have been solved, she commends his 
   incisive critique of scientists who cannot give up the 
   dream of omniscience, many of whom he has interviewed for 
   the book -- Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, Steven 
   Weinberg, Daniel Dennett, Stuart Kauffman, Marvin Minsky, 
   John Wheeler, Frank Tipler and others. 
 
   She summarizes Horgan's view of detumescent science: 
 
      Where does that leave contemporary scientists? They can 
      either pursue small, manageable and vaguely boring 
      science (sequencing the complete complement of human DNA 
      may fall into this category), or they can turn to what 
      Mr. Horgan calls "ironic science." Such science is 
      "speculative, postempirical," resembling literary 
      criticism "in that it offers points of view, opinions, 
      which are, at best, interesting." Ironic science is 
      provocative, he says, but it fails to converge on the 
      truth. " It cannot achieve empirically verifiable 
      surprises that force scientists to make substantial 
      revisions in their basic description of reality," he 
      writes. 
 
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   For those without access to NYT, the full review is 
   available at: 
 
      http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/theend.txt   (11 kb) 
 
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   <jya@pipeline.com> with the subject THE_end