From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
To: technology@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
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Message ID: <199606291214.MAA23695@pipe6.t2.usa.pipeline.com>
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UTC Datetime: 1996-06-29 14:57:54 UTC
Raw Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 22:57:54 +0800
From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 22:57:54 +0800
To: technology@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: The End of Science
Message-ID: <199606291214.MAA23695@pipe6.t2.usa.pipeline.com>
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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)
Or, we will E-mail a copy. Send a blank message to
<jya@pipeline.com> with the subject THE_end
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1996-06-29 (Sat, 29 Jun 1996 22:57:54 +0800) - The End of Science - jya@pipeline.com (John Young)