# what if one day scientists have already discovered everything there is to discover? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 13, 2006, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917 "2006-12-13T02:59:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/21 "2006-12-13T17:51:35Z")
Wouldn’t you have to be omniscient to know if life was worth living if you were omniscient? Maybe that’s what happened to God. He couldn’t take it and snuffed himself. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/22 "2006-12-13T17:53:14Z")
If you were omniscient, could you make yourself not know something? Just for the sake of surprise? (We are getting dangerously theological here. 😃 ) ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/23 "2006-12-13T18:17:38Z")
> [@](#): > > If you were omniscient, could you make yourself not know something? Just for the sake of surprise? (We are getting dangerously theological here.) If you were omniscient, you would know how to make yourself dumb again. But then, you would also know what being surprised feels like, so what is the motivation for being dumb again? Hmmm. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2006, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/24 "2006-12-14T02:24:59Z")
The greater the circle of light, the greater the circumference of the darkness surrounding it. Next question? ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/25 "2006-12-15T11:40:23Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] But we’ll never find out everything. One of the things we like to find out is history, and how natural events happened. History will still be happening in the future (duh) so historians will always have a job. [/QUOTE] [Criswell]\*Future Events such as these will affect you in The Future![/Criswell] Think about how little we really know about life 2,000 years ago. Imagine now that, in the year 4006 AD, historians are arguing over whether or not Queen Victoria and Chairman Mao ever met in person, based only on a fragment of a recording of a Stand Up Comedian’s act. Or perhaps there’s some debate as to whether or not Norwegian Blue parrots really did Pine For The Fjords? It was in a TV show, so it must be true… Even if Scientists eventally discover everything (and I don’t believe they will- the universe isn’t like a game of _Civilisation_, with a Tech Tree and victory to whoever gets to Alpha Centauri first), there will always be millenia of human history to discover again… ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/26 "2006-12-15T12:08:49Z")
[QUOTE=Martini Enfield] Even if Scientists eventally discover everything (and I don’t believe they will- the universe isn’t like a game of _Civilisation_, with a Tech Tree and victory to whoever gets to Alpha Centauri first), there will always be millenia of human history to discover again… [/QUOTE] Damn, so no chance of ploughing all our tax into maintenance and happiness then? Isn’t it gutting when you speed to the end of a thread to post a reference and find someone has pipped you to it? ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/27 "2006-12-15T12:23:46Z")
[QUOTE=Pushkin] Damn, so no chance of ploughing all our tax into maintenance and happiness then? [/QUOTE] I think the best we can hope for is that they successfully clone Elvis and employ him as the Entertainment Advisor. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/28 "2006-12-15T16:16:03Z")
[QUOTE=tgan3] Even more unthinkable, they could predict when and how you will most likely die by again looking at your genes and analysing your long family tree on the possibilities of you developing any kind of dieseases.Then will life REALLY be worth living?? [/QUOTE] We can already predict which cards are most likely to be in the dealer’s deck, and which die roll is most likely to occur. Has this made people stop to consider whether gambling is really worth doing? Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/29 "2006-12-15T17:50:34Z")
Aw, squirrel nuts! Once again **Lemur866** beats me to the punch (we didn’t do a Vulcan Mind Meld once, did we?). I can add only that, if everything were figured out, this limitation in any one person’s ability to grasp that much information would make it impossible for anyone to be sure that everything is known. (I’m talking about _sensible_ people, not those flapdoodles we’ve all known who already know everything.) ---
**Author:** ![Tyrrell\_McAllister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tyrrell_mcallister/32/16772_2.png) [@Tyrrell\_McAllister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tyrrell_McAllister)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917/30 "2006-12-15T23:55:20Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] Most scientists take it on faith (yes, I used the F-word, there) that we’ll never have everything figured out. But a colleague of mine has pointed out that this is actually a direct consequence of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Any structure of knowledge that we can have must be a formal system of some sort. But as Gödel proved, any formal system must contain statements which cannot be proven nor disproven within that system. [/QUOTE] Not quite. Gödel showed that any consistent formal system _that contains arithmetic_ must contain statements that it can neither prove nor disprove. Physical theories need not contain all of arithmetic within them. In fact, I would expect that they usually don’t. If that’s true, then physical theory could be complete in the Gödelian sense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-one-day-scientists-have-already-discovered-everything-there-is-to-discover/383917.md?page=1)