Science is running out of steam

Great Debates
1

A brief history of science…

Pre-Newton. Alchemy, magic, occult, ancient wisdoms, ancient maths, astronomy & astology, ancient philosophies etc.etc. blended into a cultural mix.

Newton. Creates a sense of order, mechanical, clockwork, analysis, measurement, form, framework etc. producing laws.

Post-Newton. Wide-ranging activity based upon analysis & observation designed to discover and/or extend existing laws.

(The above should be read with the tongue fimly held within the cheek and with a smile upon the old ‘visage’. But bear with me. :wink: )

The Post-Newton era has delivered much of great value. It would be difficult to place a value for society on many of the present-day applications of scientific work.

Dilemma… it seems to me that the scientific process is about reductionism in the sense that it tries to establish ‘truths’ through a process of distillation. As it focusses in on that ‘truth’, we become more aware of the greater complexity of things in our given area of study. Time and resource means that we are only likely to focus in those areas that would appear to be ‘biggest return for least relative effort’ - particularly if the study area is commercially driven.

So, we begin to know more and more about less and less (in relative terms). We are far more aware now of the things that we don’t know, than we would have been 200 years ago. Taken to its conclusion, science as we know it will struggle provide us with the big answers in the sense that scientific ‘discovery’ creates far more questions than it can possibly answer. It also appears to have no way of answering some of them.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m pro-science and the knowledge that we gain from it, so please don’t tell me that my life would be worse without the scientific advances of the last twenty years. I’m better off for it and I acknowledge that!

IMHO however, science alone cannot be our remedy for getting to the big truths… it leaves us with more questions than answers and will eventually run out of steam.

2

Of course, I know very few people who actually believe that science is in the business of providing the “big answers.” That tends to be the purview of philosophy (if you’re so inclined) or theology (if you’re so inclined).

Science is in the business of How with a lot of What, When, Where, and Who thrown in. When science attempts to answer Why, it is generally on a more localized level than a “big answer.” (I suppose that “Why is there sex?” could be considered “big,” but it hardly equates to “Why can’t I get any?” on most people’s individual “big” scale.)

3

Could you give me a real-world example of what you mean? Just so I can get my head around what you’re saying.

4

The OP’s objective appears to be to find a “remedy for getting to the big truth”.

Perhaps if the OP can expand or articulate what he/she means by the “big truth”, we can then have a debate on whether science can help or not.

I hope the OP is not all about whether there is a creator (God) or not. Because if that is all he/she means by the “big truth”, its answer (whether true or not) will not necessarily give us a direction to move forward in either modifying the existing universe as we perceive it, or creating an alternative (better?) universe.

I assume the OP recognizes that it has taken us billions of years to reach this point, a consciousness of how much we don’t know. We did not start with such consciousness billions of years ago. Now that we are aware of this, where will we be billions of years from now?

Rome was not built in a day. Neither will recreation of an alternative universe.

5

Okay… let me clarify further.

Consider our study of the universe. Firstly IMHO, the degree to which we are providing answers is being outstripped by the degree to which we raise new questions about the universe (often as a by-product of our search for answers). Assuming this is true, then we have a real conundrum.

As an analogy, we might consider a ‘To do’ list of ‘Things we want to know about the universe’. We work on the items in that list in whatever sequence we choose (personal preference, funding availability, commercial impact, political expediency… whatever).

Going down the list, we cross out the bits we’ve figured as we go, but notice that the work done has added more items to the list. The list is now bigger. Progressively, we will know more and more about less and less.

Secondly, as we become more aware of the universe our ability to study it using existing ‘scientific methodology’ is compromised. How do you observe and measure things that are just too big or too far away? How do we observe and measure things that we can only deduce are there because we appear to see an effect but not the actual cause? This seems incompatible with modern scientific rigour in which deduction alone, without the factual evidence is too easily challenged.

As an aside, my choice of the word ‘truth’ was maybe not a good choice. My intention was only to convey the fact that science endeavours to find the essence of things in an way that leaves no doubts or vacillation… a solid basis for understanding the complexity of things. In that sense, it searches for the truth of the matter.

My point is that as our research, by its nature, addresses less and less in relative terms (the conundrum mentioned earlier), it will eventually run out of steam. I’m not saying stop… I’m saying that science alone cannot be the long term answer.

6

Okay, what would you replace or supplement it with? Statements like this imply that there is an alternative.

I don’t agree with your OP anyway. It seems to me that science is progressing just fine, and we have a LONG way to go before we run out of things we can observe and tests we can make. Hell, we haven’t even stepped off this rock and its moon yet, and our efforts at astronomy are in relatively primitive stages. And yet, we’re possibly already seeing the ‘fog’ from the early stages of the creation of the Universe. Our understanding of the mechanics of the universe and its creation are getting very good.

Sure, science will never answer questions outside its realm, like “Why are we here”, or “What happened before the universe existed?” But I don’t see any other tools at our disposal to answer those questions either. Religion? Philosophy? Those are basically just guesses. Philosophy can help us learn how to think logically, but it won’t provide the answers.

7

Seems to me that if every answer leads to more than one more question, science (which to my mind is just the pursuit of curiosity) won’t run out of steam, rather it will thrive.

Now, if you’re suggesting that every answer leads to more than one ‘unanswerable’ question, then maybe it’s time you stepped aside and let the younger folks have a go; your own OP speaks of the progress of science over the decades; the solutions to yesterday’s ‘unanswerables’ are today being uncovered and the fact that they were once beyond anyone’s grasp seems weird and foolish.

To calculate how much you know (as a percentage of everything there is to know), first count up all the things there are to know…
(let me know when you’ve finished counting and I’ll supply the next part of the calculation)

We’ll never know how much there is left to be discovered, but your comment “we begin to know more and more about less and less” reminds me of the famous story of the patent clerk who resigned because ‘everything has been invented already’ (or some such).

Walor, I think I’m right in saying that you believe in (a boundless) God, aren’t I? is it not therefore concievable that the sum of all possible knowledge is also boundless?

8

I think that your conundrum is attributable to the misunderstandings in this paragraph.

Before telescopes, we could not have studied the features on the moon or the satellites of other planets. Once we had the telescope, we could not study the soil of the moon or the surfaces of the planets. You appear to be saying that we are going to run into some sort of “wall” beyond which we will not be able to see any more. Yet what has happened in real life? We developed the technology to go to the moon (Seethruart not withstanding) and actually select soil and rocks for examination. Similarly, we can now launch craft to examine the surfaces of the planets and their satellites. Furthermore, we have developed new tools such as spectrometry to investigate the surfaces of those planets in ways that we never imagined when the telescope was brand new.

There is the popular story of the congressman of the late nineteenth century who is purported to have called for the closing of the patent office since everything that could be usefully invented had already been invented. Your analysis appears to be somewhat similar, believing that there is some limit to what we can examine. Certainly there are specific limits that our current technology imposes, but we are using that technology (and our minds) to discover ever more powerful or more perceptive technology. (For example, it was once postulated that the effect of gravity on light would be such that we might be able to use it to fashion a “lens” from gravity. We certainly cannot replace our 40x-60-120x high school microscopes with a gravity generator, but we have used massively dense stars to look beyond them, farther into the depths of space.)

I don’t see us running out of steam any time soon.

9

Well, I would qualify the description of science by including the scientific method in there somewhere, Mangetout.

You know, though, I can’t help but wonder whether walor has a point. The question is whether or not there are a limited number of natural laws and phenomena, isn’t it? Supposing that there are, all we need to do is reach an understanding of all of them, and voila, science is out of steam. Are we anywhere near this point? I don’t believe so, but this is not to say that such a point may not exist.

10

(N.B. I tampered with the form of the emphasis in order to avoid messing with the quoting conventions)

walor, favor us, if you would, with what you perceive to be the question to which science alone cannot be the answer.

11

Please make that “…the question to which science alone cannot be the long term answer.”

12

“Physical discoveries in the future are [going to be nothing more than] a matter of the sixth decimal place.”

–Albert A. Michaelson, 1894

“Physics will be over in six months.” (paraphrased)

– Max Born, early 1900s

13

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons” – 1949 Popular Mechanics

14

I agree with g8rguy…I also think its a bit arrogant for us (humans) to asume we know so much, when infact I believe its quite the opposite. Is it not the case that most ideas and discoveries, are to a large extent only theories and remain sound until proven wrong. Im not saying this isnt how it should be, but, should we not still bear in mind that these are only theories?

15

ali0r, you said

Discoveries are not theories. Discoveries are things which are…well…discovered. Like the fact that you can produce an astounding amount of energy from a small fragmant of a certain radioactive element.

What is always theory is the overarching system which scientists use to explain and predict such occurrences. The positing and refuting of such theories is the very lifeblood of science. A scientist proposes a theory to explain a set of observable phenomena. The theory then suggests other phenomena that might take place. If no such phenomena are found (or some other empirical evidence contradicts it) than the theory is refined or abandoned completely.

walor, you said

This argument assumes that because the pursuit ofscience is like it is now, it will continue to be so: an unwarranted asertion. Just because at the moment we might be creating questions faster than we can answer them does not imply that this will continue to be true. While the universe tends to display consistent behaviour, academic disciplines do no such thing.

Alex B

16

Your view of this subject seems very limited in scope in my mind. Of course there are not any discoveries, such as gravity. Basically from what I understood you are limiting the BIG discoveries to just the fundamental scientific studies, like basic laws of gravity, physics etc…

Well, it seems more or less like we have discovered all those basics, all that is left are either the roots of those basics, “Big Bang, Superstring” or else their descendents. Biology: Human Genome, Physics: Quantum Physics, Plasma drives, Electronics: Computers and then there are combinations. For instance AI is kind of a combination of psychology and electronics and many other disciplines. I think more is being discovered on a daily basis now than at any other point in history. Not to mention you are comparing the discoveries of the last 5 millenia to what is being discovered in your lifetime. It was thousands of years after Pythagoras that Newton wrote about his theory of gravity. I think that it’s rather impossible to limit things in such a manner as you are doing. Ever since computers were a normal saturation in our lives, I hear about projects that would have been possible when I was a child, and I am only 23 now. The Human Genome project would not have been possible without a computer. So are you lamenting a lack of fundamental laws left to discover, or are you downplaying the discoveries that we make today?

Can you compare the computer to the creation of the wheel? Yes I think you can. I think that the computer will change humanity just as much as the wheel did, or the internal combustion engine, or the airplane.

Can you compare the decoding of the genome to the discovery of gravity? Yes you can, in my opinion. I won’t say that the human genome is discovering something we weren’t aware of, but it certainly is shedding a lot of light on tome that has of yet been locked to us.

Erek

17

To be honest I don’t have any particular one in mind. Let me try to explain it this way. I just did a Google search on Quark. I could have chosen any area of scientific work… to a degree the subject matter is not important.

Google came up with 405,000 references which (even allowing for spurious or irrelevant ones) is a pretty big row of beans. A lot of people have an interest in Quarks. I suspect that the amount of work around the study of Quarks may well increase. Google seraching a year from now may produce a longer list.

I think I’m right in saying that we ‘know’ of the existance of something that we call a Quark, but we haven’t yet been able to touch one, collect one, smell one… we have made deductions about them by extrapolation, hypothesisng or whatever… we see the effect and have deduced characteristics of the cause? One day, we may well be able to study them through our senses (using current scientific methodologies) but for now we can’t.

As I understand it from these boards, a key pillar of science is that it is based on our ability to make ‘observations’ through our senses… as we push the barriers forward then this may, IMHO, becoming the limiting factor. That is, what we are trying to observe is too big to make sense of, too far away to know about, too small to deal with and we are left having to deduce things rather than observe them. We make conitinued progress on the more easily accessible bits (power to our elbow), but have to consider that for some things we may need to consider a different approach that cannot rely on science alone!
Mangetout asks 'is it not therefore concievable that the sum of all possible knowledge is also boundless?

I believe that it is. So we will ultimately have to consider that an understanding of our world is limited by it’s vast size and complexity and our ‘limited’ ability to study it all and make sense of it using scientic study alone.

I’m not at all sure about what the answer is and I do not attack the conecept of sciencfic study. Quite the reverse. But we may need to rethink science’s ability to deliver all of the answers for us.

18

Walor

You are not the only one who is overwhelmed by the information glut. It appears that you are trying to understand bigger things using your individual brain. Forget it. That is not going to work as the world’s growing information base exponentially surpasses the grasping ability of your brain’s billions of cells and all their interactions.

Here is the solution to your dilemma. Think of yourself (your brain) as a single cell. Now, think of a global brain of which you are just one cell. I submit that such a “global brain” will not see any limitation or boundlessness in knowledge.

If you think I am dreaming or hallucinating about the forthcoming development of such a “global brain”, try to find out where the science of neurocybernetics is heading, or read the recent book of Ray Kurzweil: The Age of Spiritual Machines

19

I get the feeling though, that you’re saying ‘limited’ in the sense that we will hit some sort of boundary beyond which we know there are discoveries to be made, but will be powerless to make them, why should that be?

OK, quarks and so on may be too small to see, that may always remain the case, but we can deduce a lot about them by the way that they affect other things (in much the same way as we can deduce things about the nature of air molecules by the way that they knock smoke particles about -the classic school experiment to observe Brownian motion).
Of course if the object of our speculation remains beyond visibility for whatever reason, sure, we might be wrong, but science isn’t about ‘proving’ things, only refining theories in the light of what can be observed.

IMHO Science is a long way from running out of steam; the sciences of Genetic Engineering and Artificial Intelligence, for example are really only in their infancy, who knows how big a field they will blossom into?
Then there’s Medicine, Psychology, Materials Engineering, all of which have plenty of work left to do.
Even things like Music Theory and Construction contain elements of science that need more work.

I don’t see any sign of the ‘brick wall’ yet and frankly I doubt that there is one.

20

Good name for a band I reckon