I think you overestimate what we really know, versus what we *think *might be so. Hell, no one even knows what the yolk sac in the early weeks of pregnancy is for, much less how every protein in the body functions.
Unless I’m not clear on what you mean by “fundamental”, I suppose.
It would seem to be quite foolish to take the position that we understand it all, now. Even if no new fundamental, basic understandings have emerged in the last 50-100 years, and I’m not sure that’s true, it’s the height of hubris to suggest that there can be no new understandings to be gained, no new major insights, no discoveries. Suppose, just for an example, that it was discovered that contrary to our understanding of mathematics and nature, it might be possible to exceed the speed of light. Could that type of insight occur? Why not? Because it wouldn’t fit with any of the mathematics we work with today? So what? Would it open up other possibilities? You bet. We basically know it all? Danger, Danger, Will Robinson.
No, we don’t. Really. Not even close.
Biology is a long ways behind physics in what is known. We’re barely beginning to assimilate genetics, and nobody actually understands the implications. Besides, the study of all of life is hardly innately limited, unless you also say the same for the universe as a whole.
The notion that we know nearly everything is a trope of some popular science books, but I don’t see any such certainty out in the scientific community. The consensus there is that we’re still at the beginning stages of knowledge and that what we have learned in recent years makes our previous certainties of understanding obsolete.
Scientists know much, much more than ever before, to be sure, and understanding of many aspects of the world and universe is sounder than ever. But we don’t understand “damn near everything.” Every new discovery just opens up a door to a much bigger room. It’s also likely that reaching those new understandings will be as much more difficult than relativity and quantum mechanics was compared to Newtonian mechanics and that scientists will require time to climb that huge and steep mountain. But we are almost certainly near the base of that mountain, and nowhere near the peak.
No new species? In arachnology alone, they discover new species almost daily.
The World Spider Catalog is online so everyone can check it - because it changes so often not even the arachnologists can keep up. Every single one of the 108 families was updated in the six months up to the current version. Over 2000 species have been added since I started monitoring it only a few years ago.
http://research.amnh.org/entomology/spiders/catalog/
The behavior of spiders is virtually undocumented - the behavior is so variable. Over 40,000 species, but you can’t assume one species will behave as another does. Especially in their sexual ways! The spiders I am watching on the outside of my glass door where they build their webs have almost no behavioural studies done on them, and they are an extremely common spider for much of Australia’s east coast. Badumna insignis, the black house spider and Badumna longinqua, the brown or grey house spider. Spiders are right in the middle of the food chain, and are recognised as one of the best indicators of the health of an environment. Yet so little is known. And they are fascinating.
And we have no idea really on how a spider knows how to build a web. We might know that the DNA codes for it, mostly, but as to how the DNA coding is enacted - we have no idea.
I could write a book on spiders alone! Oh, yes, I just did. And it will be out of date before it is published because so much is being discovered. Then there’s the other millions of species we know about and millions more that we don’t. We have barely started understanding the animals on out planet. My last book was on crocodiles. There’s only 23 species of them (including true crocs, alligators, caimans and the gharial) yet new things are being discovered like the way they can recover from massive wounds due to a phenomenal protein in their blood - so they virtually never get infections. They’ve called it crocodilin.
As for losing the interest as you delve deeper - the reverse is true. The more I observe a single spider, the more intrigued I become. I became more and more obsessed with one wolf spider, Theresa, over the six months I watched her every day, than I could have believed possible. And I was once an arachnophobe!
I believe that knowledge is fractal. The deeper you delve, the more you reveal, at the same, or greater, level of complexity. The natural world is awesome. I would hate to be as bored with it as you seem.
I suspect you are seeing research through the lens of some examples of very narrow fields. Some of the topics wihtin my own faculty seem very dull to me because they are so specific. I assure you that I can barely sleep at night because I am being kept away from my studies. I have chosen my topic because it fascinated me, and have discovered something I think is very new and very very exciting. You may be bored, but many of us don’t know what boredom is.
It’s tied into a lot of things, and there isn’t a ton of stuff yet published, but if you have access to a journal database (I don’t know of any books written on the topic, yet), look up “Jewish male menstruation.” Jews, as outsiders, were especially prone to being cast as menstruating. When it was other people doing it, though, the logic went something like this: women get out their excess blood by menstruating. Men usually get theirs out by sweating, but scholars don’t do any physical activity. They do get hemorrhoids, though, which bleed–male menstruation!
That’s just one thread, though. There’s other information on a sailor/scurvy/menstruation connection, too. The professor I know who’s researching the topic is trying to discern whether the idea was generally an academic one, or one believed by actual practicing physicians.
This has to be coming from a position of ignorance about the course of modern biology. Others have already pointed out that we discover a truly astounding number of species almost daily. We also discover entirely new biomasses of species on a fairly constant basis such as the deep ocean dwellers living near thermal vents, enormous numbers of bacteria that live deep within the earths crust apparently surviving on byproducts of radioactive decay, and other novel types of extremophiles with amazing adaptations to most any type of condition almost everywhere we look.
If you’re bored with the current state of biology, I suggest you tackle just a few of the remaining fundamental problems in biology and then report back to us: elucidating the mechanisms and organizing principles of protein folding, means of epigenetic regulation, cancer biology, and developmental biology.
Doing compelling projects in biology doesn’t require revisiting well-supported prior results and reassessing them from a novel epitemological viewpoint.