The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books)

Overview In The End of Science, John Horgan makes the case that the era of truly profound scientific revelations about the universe and our place in it is over. Interviewing scientific luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, Francis Crick, and Richard Dawkins, he demonstrates that all the big questions that can be answered have been answered, as science bumps up against fundamental limits. The world cannot give us a “theory of everything,” and modern endeavors such as string theory are “ironic” and “theological” in nature, not scientific, because they are impossible to confirm. Horgan’s argument was controversial in 1996, and it remains so today, still firing up debates in labs and on the internet, not least because—as Horgan details in a lengthy new introduction—ironic science is more prevalent than ever. Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world’s leading researchers, he offers homage, too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well. Preface to the 2015 Edition: Rebooting The End of Science Introduction: Searching for The Answer Roger Penrose’s ambivalence toward The Answer. The difference between science and literary criticism. The anxiety of scientific influence. What is ironic science? 1 • The End of Progress A meeting on the end of belief in science. Gunther Stent’s Golden Age. Is science a victim of its own success? What physicists really thought 100 years ago. The apocryphal patent official. Bentley Glass casts doubt on Vannevar Bush’s endless frontier. Leo Kadanoff sees hard times ahead for physics. Nicholas Rescher’s wishful thinking. The meaning of Francis Bacon’s plus ultra. Ironic science as negative capability. 2 • The End of Philosophy What the skeptics really believe. Karl Popper finally answers the question: Is falsifiability falsifiable? Thomas Kuhn is hoist on his own paradigm. Paul Feyerabend, the anarchist of philosophy. Colin McGinn pronounces philosophy dead. The meaning of the Zahir. 3 • The End of Physics Sheldon Glashow’s doubts. Edward Witten on superstrings and aliens. The pointless final theory of Steven Weinberg. Hans Bethe’s doomsday calculation. John Wheeler and the “it from bit.” David Bohm, clarifier and mystifier. Richard Feynman and the revenge of the philosophers. 4 • The End of Cosmology The infinite imagination of Stephen Hawking. David Schramm, the big bang’s biggest booster. Doubts among the cosmic priesthood. Andrei Linde’s chaotic, fractal, eternally self-reproducing, inflationary universe. Fred Hoyle, the eternal rebel. Will cosmology turn into botany? 5 • The End of Evolutionary Biology Richard Dawkins, Darwin’s greyhound. Stephen Jay Gould’s view of life: shit happens. Lynn Margulis denounces Gaia. The organized disorder of Stuart Kauffman. Stanley Miller ponders the eternally mysterious origin of life. 6 • The End of Social Science Edward Wilson’s fear of a final theory of sociobiology. Noam Chomsky on mysteries and puzzles. The eternal vexation of Clifford Geertz. 7 • The End of Neuroscience Francis Crick, the Mephistopheles of biology, takes on consciousness. Gerald Edelman postures around the riddle. John Eccles, the last of the dualists. Roger Penrose and the quasi-quantum mind. The counterattack of the mysterians. Is Daniel Dennett a mysterian? Marvin Minsky’s fear of single-mindedness. The triumph of materialism. 8 • The End of Chaoplexity What is chaoplexity? Christopher Langton and the poetry of artificial life. Per Bak’s self-organized criticality. Cybernetics and other catastrophes. Philip Anderson on the meaning of “More Is Different.” Murray Gell-Mann denies the existence of “something else.” Ilya Prigogine and the end of certainty. Mitchell Feigenbaum is refuted by a table. 9 • The End of Limitology Pondering “The Limits of Scientific Knowledge” in Santa Fe. A meeting on the Hudson River with Gregory Chaitin. Francis Fukuyama disses science. The Star Trek factor. 10 • Scientific Theology, or The End of Machine Science The out-of-sight prophecy of J. D. Bernal. Hans Moravec’s squabbling mind children. Freeman Dyson’s principle of maximum diversity. The “bunkrapt” vision of Frank Tipler. What would the Omega Point want to do? Epilogue: The Terror of God A mystical experience. The meaning of the Omega Point. Charles Hartshorne and the Socinian heresy. Why scientists are ambivalent toward truth. Is God chewing his fingernails? Afterword: Loose Ends Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography Index As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well. As a staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Steven Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoveries behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding details to existing theories? Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information at speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literary criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage, too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well Propelled by a series of interviews with luminaries of modern science such as Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Weinberg, E.O. Wilson, and Karl Popper, science writer John Horgan makes the case that science as we have known it - of startling revelations about heretofore unrecognized aspects of reality - is over. There will be no more discoveries like those of evolution or quantum mechanics; rather, all the big questions that can be answered have been answered, all the knowledge worth pursuing has become known. The point is not that the search for a final "theory of everything" has reached its successful conclusion, but rather that the world cannot give us one. According to Horgan, modern endeavors such as string theory are "ironic" and even "theological" in nature, not scientific, and as a result it is no surprise that no one can think of a means to confirm them. It was a controversial argument in 1996, and it remains one today, still firing up debates in labs and on the internet, not least because - as Horgan details in a lengthy new introduction - ironic science is more prevalent and powerful than ever. Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage, too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well