Re: The End of Science

[PPARKER@TWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU]

> Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 19:33:01 -0600
> From: Jim Green <Jim.Green@Snow.edu>
>
>
> John Horgan has written a book titled "The End of Science" --- was
> interviewed by David Gergen on PBS recently. -- says that all the
> science that is discoverable is already discovered -- any further answers
> are not "provable" ie testable in a scientific method sense.  For example we
> could never get to another galaxy to test any theory regarding galaxies.
>
> 1)  Who is this guy?  Gergen is too respectable a fellow to be interviewing
> a witless soul.

He's a features writer for Scientific American. He wrote the article about
the demise of proof as the basis of mathematics not too long ago. I guess
he got more ambitious. I agree that one would usually expect those
interviewed by Gergen to be people of some substance.

> 2)  A Tom Coony (?) was mentioned -- just passes -- has ideas about "new
> paradigms" etc  Who is *he*?

Thomas Kuhn, philosopher who studied science and developed the theory of
paradigm shifts, among others. His main work is "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions," 1962. Some of his theories have held up better than others.
Sunny Auyang's "How is Quantum Field Theory Possible?" 1995, presents
incisive critiques of certain parts of Kuhn's work, amongst those of others,
that may be of more interest to physicists.

> 3)  Isn't this the same thinking as in physics circles at the turn of the
> century?  We have learned all there is to know about physics -- oh yes we
> haven't explained the thermal emission curve nor perhaps the photoelectric
> effect, but other that these trivialities, we know pretty much all there is
> to know about physics.

Yes. A letter to the NYT Book Review noted this, and gave the canonical
quote from A.A. Michaelson at the Ryerson Labs dedication in 1894, that
the future of science lay in the sixth decimal place.
    The NYTBR reviewer had tried to be somewhat sympathetic, but did not
entirely succeed. It seemed clear that the main (if not only) purpose of
the book is to stir up controversy. It may be only incidental that this
might inflate sales, and the author's royalties.

*************************
Phil Parker                          Internet: pparker@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu
Math. Dept., Wichita St. Univ.         Bitnet: pparker@twsuvm
I find [in mathematics] a wonderful beauty. This is no science, this is
art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and
where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always
of a crystalline serenity.---Turjan of Miir (Jack Vance)