Writing a book titled The End of Discovery is asking for trouble. Because there’s every chance that researchers will have come up with some awesome new finding that will make your book seem ridiculous, turn you into a laughingstock, and force you to regret ever putting fingers to keyboard.
But Russell Stannard, an emeritus professor of physics at the Open University, is apparently willing to spin the wheel. His subtitle—”Are We Approaching the Boundaries of the Knowable?”—suggests that discovery’s end is nigh. In the near future, we’ll just be sitting around playing Scrabble and thinking about all the great stuff we discovered while bemoaning the sad reality that everything that can be known already is.
But wait! That’s not what he’s saying at all. From the book (which Oxford University Press will publish in November):
I fully expect science to make many further fundamental discoveries over the next decades, or even centuries. Indeed, I do not see how we shall even know for certain when we have reached the end of the road. How can one prove that there will be no more progress? It cannot be done.
So it’s page two and he’s already answered the question in the subtitle. No, we are not approaching the boundaries of knowable. It’s still a long way off, possibly centuries. So … what is he saying, exactly?
All I’m saying is that we are living in a transient stage of human development—that known as the scientific age—and that at some unknown time in the future it will end.
This is one of the safer predictions I’ve heard. Because even if scientific progress continues unabated from now until the sun burns out, you can always point back to this sentence (I said “at some unknown time!”) and you’re off the hook.
Mr. Stannard acknowledges in the introduction that framing the book this way allows him to talk about some of the great discoveries that have been made in the past. I suppose calling it “Science Sure is Neat” isn’t quite as grabby.
6 Responses to Do We Already Know Everything?
philosophy - June 30, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Might not “The End of Discovery” be be understood as “end” meaning “goal, result, or outcome”? Perhaps his title is deliberately ambiguous.
11182967 - July 1, 2010 at 10:44 am
Anyone remember “the end of history”?
graylibrary - July 1, 2010 at 12:08 pm
The end of the scientific age will be marked by the emergence of the sentient machine. We are still, at least in my opinion, quite a ways off from that.
darkroomjames - July 1, 2010 at 10:37 pm
We have as yet to explore the meaning of the map of the human genome: a far more intriguing voyage of meaning than geographical maps. Where we are in relation to the human brain’s greatest capacities, best experiences, the “genetically-derived” definitions of good and evil, and the many other mysteries of the human psyche and human health are yet to be discovered and put to greatest advantage in the coming centuries. What is the basis for all aspects of culture can be genetically traced, no doubt. We are in the Jules Verne world of speculation about the future as geneticists patiently tease further information out of the complexes of genetic findings and contexts.Genetically speaking, what would the ideal religion of humanity be, if we used the model of brain physiology/psyche to derive the highest ideals and best graduated system of learning and positive reinforcement of good training programs? Would salvation finally become more important than character assassination in religion? Indeed, wouldn’t this be the ground floor to address appropriate psyche definition? (Watch the cynics and paranoids go wild…) Intellectual honesty, bravery, trust, full participation, and committment would address issues in corruption and dysfunction, and the ensuing feedback correction of appropriate measures. I’m sure a future Jules Verne will find all of the wonderful effects of a muse working on his (or Julienne’s)
darkroomjames - July 1, 2010 at 10:41 pm
(continued) imagination. (A key stroke prematurely sent my message.)
raymond_j_ritchie - July 1, 2010 at 11:08 pm
End of Discovery? Well, as a working biologist I am confident there will be something to interest and occupy my mind for the rest of my life.However, I know from history that an interest in science and the rational can fall apart rather suddenly and bodies of knowledge can be lost in a generation or two. Skip a scientific heritage for a generation or two and then nobody can understand the books anymore. The action can be deliberate and not necessarily based on ignorance. That is what happened to Islamic medieval science: it was deliberately neglected because it became apparent that it was incompatible with their theology. The West bought it up as so much waste paper at fire-sale prices in Levantine bazaars from people who no longer valued it. The knowledge was not stolen as some imagine it was. You cannot be accused of theft for picking something up at the garbage dump. Recent natural and man-made disasters show that modern society is not robust at all. Try to read data on floppy-disks 20-years old. How many people in the world actually understand how a mobile phone works? What if something happened to them?