The limits of science

[Anders Hoveland]

Will science ever come to and end? or will it continue infinately?

 

By definition, we cannot know about what we do not know about! Science might eventually dwindle as all the "low hanging apples" currently accessable to humans run out. This is not to say that humans will have discovered all natural phenomena, simply that it may be increasingly difficult for them to make additional discoveries.

 

Alternatively, there may be unexpected new discoveries, or ways of understanding natural phenomena, that may greatly expand the abilitity of humans to discover new things.

 

By 1900, most scientists believed that almost all scientific principles had already been discovered and adequately described. But this was certainly not the case. Even in the realm of chemistry, countless important reactions were later described, new fields of research emerged.

 

I can only offer my own opinion, which is that completely new and unexpected fields of research will develop that will expand the investigative power of researchers even further. There might be a plateau period of relative inactivity before that period. My guess is that no significant discoveries will be made in the next few decades, but at some point there will be a very important discovery, or a collection of advancements that will interplay with eachother to lead to a rapid advancement of technology.

 

I would also like to note that virtually all the important scientific research in the last century has emerged from government universities. Private industry has only refined and made commercially practical such research. But the very structural importance of government research may also be the main hindrance. Several decades ago, Feynman remarked that his colleagues pursued cargo cult science: an activity which is indistinguishable from science except for its lack of useful output. Scientific research decisions have, in some ways, become overcentralised. Curiosity-driven research is now frowned upon. But at the same time, more centralisation will be required to make future discoveries that will require a high level of resources and financing.

 

Again, in my opinion, the "information technology" age has really not been very revolutionary compared to many of the industrial advancements before (electricity and the automotive engine). The scientific world has been relatively stagnant since 1970. The progress of Science also stalled in the historical period between 500 AD to 1000 AD.

 

The progress of science is not always a continuous steady stream of advances. Science grows in sudden clusters of small discoveries, or in great leaps and bounds of understanding.

[farmboy]

Will science ever come to and end? or will it continue infinately?

 

By definition, we cannot know about what we do not know about! Science might eventually dwindle as all the "low hanging apples" currently accessable to humans run out. This is not to say that humans will have discovered all natural phenomena, simply that it may be increasingly difficult for them to make additional discoveries.

 

Alternatively, there may be unexpected new discoveries, or ways of understanding natural phenomena, that may greatly expand the abilitity of humans to discover new things.

 

By 1900, most scientists believed that almost all scientific principles had already been discovered and adequately described. But this was certainly not the case. Even in the realm of chemistry, countless important reactions were later described, new fields of research emerged.

 

I can only offer my own opinion, which is that completely new and unexpected fields of research will develop that will expand the investigative power of researchers even further. There might be a plateau period of relative inactivity before that period. My guess is that no significant discoveries will be made in the next few decades, but at some point there will be a very important discovery, or a collection of advancements that will interplay with eachother to lead to a rapid advancement of technology.

 

I would also like to note that virtually all the important scientific research in the last century has emerged from government universities. Private industry has only refined and made commercially practical such research. But the very structural importance of government research may also be the main hindrance. Several decades ago, Feynman remarked that his colleagues pursued cargo cult science: an activity which is indistinguishable from science except for its lack of useful output. Scientific research decisions have, in some ways, become overcentralised. Curiosity-driven research is now frowned upon. But at the same time, more centralisation will be required to make future discoveries that will require a high level of resources and financing.

 

Again, in my opinion, the "information technology" age has really not been very revolutionary compared to many of the industrial advancements before (electricity and the automotive engine). The scientific world has been relatively stagnant since 1970. The progress of Science also stalled in the historical period between 500 AD to 1000 AD.

 

The progress of science is not always a continuous steady stream of advances. Science grows in sudden clusters of small discoveries, or in great leaps and bounds of understanding.

 

I don't think it is possible to give an absolute (or even an evidence based) answer to your question. Will science as practised by humans eventually reach a plateau? Very possibly. If we assume that there are absolute answers to life the universe and everything then it is entirely possible that these answers will prove to be beyond our understanding. Personally I don't think that will be the case, if nothing else I think that we will eventually be able to create machines capable of higher levels of thought than humans, but then that is pure speculation lol.

[PeterJ]

Given the confusion of science as to the nature of Nature, as it were, the incomprehensibility of the way we have to describe it, I would certainly hope that science has more progress ahead of itself than behind.

 

 

[charles brough]

Will science ever come to and end? or will it continue infinately?

 

. . . in my opinion, the "information technology" age has really not been very revolutionary compared to many of the industrial advancements before (electricity and the automotive engine). The scientific world has been relatively stagnant since 1970. The progress of Science also stalled in the historical period between 500 AD to 1000 AD.

 

The progress of science is not always a continuous steady stream of advances. Science grows in sudden clusters of small discoveries, or in great leaps and bounds of understanding.

 

People think of scientists as "seeking truth.." but that infers that the "truth" can be achieved even though there is no final and total knowledge in our infinite world. All we do is make our understanding of ourselves and the rest of the universe as accurate as we can. And since we can never know completely everything about anything, we will always need science.

 

But as the above post indicates, there have been periods when our understanding of the world and ourselves receeded rather than becoming more accurate. And as the post also indicates, it is slowing down in our Western civilization. This is not unusdual; it has characterized the decline of every past civilization.

 

It is not that the need for science lessens but that the society and its civilization comes to experience such inner social, political and economic problems that people turn back to the old moral belief system they had in earlier times, and that comes at the cost of the advances they had made in science and technology. This is a pattern that has repeated itself over and over and can be considered fundamental to the life cycle of mainstream societies and their civilizations.