End Of Science Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age

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, Marxs view of progress, Kuhns 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 Horgans 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 worlds leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

"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"

A reissue of the classic work by John Horgan wherein he makes the powerful case that science is ending

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.

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. Horgans 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 worlds leading researchers, he offers homage, too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-298) and index.

John Horgan is a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. A former senior writer at Scientific American (1986-1997), he has also written for The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Discover, The London Times, The Times Literary Supplement, New Scientist, and other publications around the world. Horgan's most recent book is The End of War, published in 2012 by McSweeney's Books. Horgan received a B.A. in English from Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1982 and an M.S. from Columbia's School of Journalism in 1983.

Preface to the 2015 Edition: Rebooting The End of Science

Introduction: Searching for The Answer

1. The End of Progress

2. The End of Philosophy

3. The End of Physics

4. The End of Cosmology

5. The End of Evolutionary Biology

6. The End of Social Science

7. The End of Neuroscience

8. The End of Chaoplexity

9. The End of Limitology

10. Scientific Theology, or The End of Machine Science

Epilogue: The Terror of God

Afterword: Loose Ends