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

Horgan, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201626799 ISBN 13: 9780201626797

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1996

Synopsis

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 ther 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 mindles 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 acitivists, 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.

About this title

About the Author

John Horgan is a senior writer at Scientific American.

Reviews

Scientific American columnist Horgan here interviews an impressive array of scientists and philosophers, who seem sharply divided over the prospects and possibilities of science. Among the pessimists, molecular biologist Gunther Stent suggests that science is reaching a point of incremental, diminishing returns as it comes up against the limits of knowledge; philosopher Thomas Kuhn sees science as a nonrational process that does not converge with truth; Vienna-born thinker Paul Feyerabend objects to science's pretensions to certainty and its potential to stamp out the diversity of human thought and culture. More optimistic are particle physicist Edward Witten, pioneer of superstring theory (which posits a universe of 10 dimensions); robotics engineer Hans Moravec, who envisions superintelligent creative robots; and physicist Roger Penrose, who theorizes that quantum effects percolating through the brain underlie consciousness. Other interviewees are Francis Crick, Noam Chomsky, David Bohm, Karl Popper, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, Ilya Prigogine and Clifford Geertz. Despite the dominant doomsaying tone, this colloquium leaves much room for optimism.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A Scientific American journalist, Horgan interviewed such popular scientists as Stephen Gould, Daniel Dennett, and John Wheeler and posed the tough question: Is pure science in sight of completely understanding the universe, thereby foreclosing any further revolutionary scientific discoveries? A question most resonant in physics, it provokes titles such as Steven Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory (1992) and vexes theorists of cosmology, biology, and chaos and complexity. In his interviews, Horgan plays up the scientists' personalities and demeanors to enliven particular abstractions, such as the string theory of particle physics or the inflation model of the infinitesimally young universe. That these notions are untestable doesn't deter optimism in great days ahead, but are these smart people just having fun with unprovable ideas? Some of Horgan's interlocutors believe yes, and the debate will ventilate best in libraries that have steadily stocked the best science books of recent years. Gilbert Taylor

Rich in provocative ideas and insightful anecdotes, this book investigates a serious question concerning empirical inquiry: Is there a limit to the discovery of theories about nature? The ongoing success of scientific research suggests that a final (ultimate), comprehensive, testable, and effective theory explaining the unity of all reality may soon be forthcoming. Exploring this possibility, Horgan, who writes the interview column for Scientific American, introduces the reader to a wide spectrum of opinion, from Francis Crick, Karl Popper, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Stanley Miller, Margin Minksy, Frank Tippler, and Edward Wilson, among others. His probing interviews discuss engaging themes ranging from language, neuroscience, and evolution to quantum physics, complexity and chaos, and cosmology. This celebration of curiosity and speculation as well as of science and reason is a unique contribution to appreciating the human quest for understanding. Recommended for both academic and public science collections.?H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0201626799
• ISBN 13: 9780201626797
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320