When Will Science End?

Use this forum to discuss the philosophy of science. Philosophy of science deals with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science.
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Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Science can't end. For one thing, a theory can always be tested and be more validated. In that way, reaching the end of science is like reaching the end of counting in math. You can further test and validate theories forever just as you can count forever.
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Typist »

Thanks for the ongoing discussion guys. We've come to the most important question all..... When Will This Thread End??? Personally, I see it stretching out for thousands of years in to the future. :D
Hypedupturtle wrote:Humanity is cynical - it always looks for proof, and only reverts to faith if it can find none or its proof is consistently attacked for being unreliable yet still wants to believe. That may possibly change, I don't pretend to know enough to state that it definitely won't, but I personally believe it's ingrained upon our genetic make-up.
You are describing the human being of today. And, you are using a mindset of the past, which assumes our genetic make-up is a fixed factor.

Imho, this is a good example of what all of us are doing. We are prisoners of the known, to a great degree. We assume that what we currently think we know is solid and permanent, and that assumption forms the boundaries of our world view.

Within the walls of this worldview, we take things very seriously. As just one little local example, we come to forums and debate vehemently. This debate seems to rest upon the assumption that we know things.

Is this a good summary?

1) Humans will die out by some method, thus the story is over and irrelevant.

2) Science will go on forever or a very long time, which means we currently know little to nothing.

3) Science will end at some point, to be replaced by something else, which can't be imagined now.

Option #1 isn't hard to imagine. It could happen next week.

But, if we pick either Option 2 or 3, we are pulled in to a great mystery.
Frankly the idea of reaching the end of that quest is a sad proposition, for where would the adventure be? :)
The best I can do here is compare this to a normal human life. Given how far in to speculation we are, I have no idea of the relevance of this example.

I'll be 60 in February. The drive I had when I was younger to discover and conquer the world is gradually being replaced with a growing interest in just experiencing the world. It doesn't feel sad. It's more like this...

Imagine you've been having a big argument with your girlfriend. It's been going on for months, and you're all wrapped up in it. You finally exhaust yourself, sit down and shut up, and and in this quiet space really look at her for the first time. And you discover, "Holy cow, she's beautiful!' Something like that.

It's possible that as mankind matures, some kind of process like this might unfold. Maybe the need to know everything will just melt away over time?
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Cyanse
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Cyanse »

When there is no little Einstein and Galileo to be followed and when people gone out of interest on it. And of course when we got contented on what we had.
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Hypedupturtle
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Hypedupturtle »

I actually meant to reply to this and totally forgot - sorry Typist.

Option 1 is I believe a given eventuality. Perhaps we may escape through some combination of chance and ingenuity, but in general I tend to think of that as correct. However, it's somewhat trivial as there's little we can presently do, other than plan.

Then I'm left with a choice between options 2 and 3. I recognise the validity of your argument for option 3, which I originally didn't. However the chance? I can't see it happening. We've arrived where we're at because it's the best way we've come across. To say that that could change is of course totally correct in terms of possibility, but is somewhat impossible to predict. If it was imagineable that we would entirely alter the ways in which we percieve and understand the universe, then I could give you an accurate answer, but it's so distant in terms of probability that I can't imagine it at all.

Therefore I have to stand by my original proposition that science will never end, or at least the process of science (searching for knowledge/truth) won't.
Typist
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Typist »

Hypedupturtle wrote: I recognise the validity of your argument for option 3, which I originally didn't. However the chance? I can't see it happening.
Well, just a few centuries ago, people believed pretty much whatever the church told them to believe. That was the primary knowledge development system. Obviously, that's changed quite a bit. Have we arrived at the last such change? Thousands of years ahead, and no more fundamental changes?
We've arrived where we're at because it's the best way we've come across. To say that that could change is of course totally correct in terms of possibility, but is somewhat impossible to predict. If it was imagineable that we would entirely alter the ways in which we percieve and understand the universe, then I could give you an accurate answer, but it's so distant in terms of probability that I can't imagine it at all.
Perhaps knowledge development will be outsourced to machines? It seems we're increasingly handing the job off to them.

Don't forget, in the coming century we're going to be diving in to genetic engineering and other technologies for actually changing human beings. Who we are now isn't who we'll always be.
Therefore I have to stand by my original proposition that science will never end, or at least the process of science (searching for knowledge/truth) won't.
It's trippy any way we look at it, isn't it? Either science never ends, and never is a very long time. Or, science does end, to be replaced by what?? That's what I like about this question, we arrive at wonderment whatever path we prefer to take.
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Belinda »

By 'science ends' I take to mean that it will cease to progress as it does at present. This will happen when the bounds of human comprehension have been reached.
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by stormy phillips »

The comprehension of future atom computing may continue beyond that, and simplify in human terms what otherwise could not be known, nor understood. They like science today may just ask us to believe what otherwise may have for some; remained unbelievable.
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Automaton
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Automaton »

I think there's a few ways you could consider science to have ended. One option would be an end to human curiousity. This would pretty much require either through humanity going extinct, or changing to something else entirely. Another option would be for us to somehow create a complete model of the Universe. It seems I can't post a link to it, but if you Google "Electron's Negativity Cut in Half by Supercomputer", you'll find a story about how physicists at Duke University have created a simulation which predicts what would happen if an electron were split in half, although it's not something which could physically be done. That gives me hope a model of everything could be created -- at least in parts -- but even if it is, it's hella far off.
stormy phillips wrote:The comprehension of future atom computing may continue beyond that, and simplify in human terms what otherwise could not be known, nor understood. They like science today may just ask us to believe what otherwise may have for some; remained unbelievable.
That's an interesting possibility. Science advancing so far that humans can no longer really comprehend it, is certainly a possibility, but I'm willing to bet we'd be able to develop mental augmentations to allow us around that.
Typist
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Typist »

I propose that some other system of discovery may replace science, just as science has been replacing religion over the last 500 years.

No, I can't really imagine what either, but then in the year 734 AD folks might have had a great deal of difficulty imagining the church losing it's central importance.

It doesn't seem reasonable to assume science is eternal. Everything comes and goes, and is replaced by something else.
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by dparrott »

If we ever found out all that there is to know it would take a lifetime to read it all.
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by James S Saint »

"When one wants to preserve a flower forever, one forms plastic in the likeness of the real thing."

Throughout the history of homosapian, that has been the rule. When Truth is being seen and sought, it is called Day. When the light of that Day has reached its height, a fake reflection of it is formed so as to give guidance during the Night.

All matters concerning the life of Man have been governed by that light. Every religion and science and every governance does the same. In science it was declared that all had been seen, the light of the Day of Science could get no higher. Thus a plastic fake version was intertwined into it to keep it going beyond the truer life that it was. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are the Moon of Science.

Rational Metaphysics is the next Day, a Day that will not fade fore its morning, its noon, and its night are the same encompassing all before it.

My only question is whether homosapian will exist at all to see that dawn.
Clarify, Verify, and Instill the Hopes and Threats that lead to the Maximum Momentum of Self-Harmony for the Living - Measure your Progress.
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From THIS age of sleep, Homosapian shall never awake.
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Steve3007 »

Here's an interesting topic whose rotting corpse it might be fun to exhume and play with.

Some people think that the laws of physics, as currently understood, are imperfect reflections of the "real" laws of physics which, in some sense, exist as more than just ideas in human minds. Those imperfect reflections are gradually improved/replaced such that they get closer and closer to "the real thing". I presume people who think that also think that it's possible that Science will one day end? Just as Lord Kelvin did at the end of the 19th Century (See 2nd post in this topic).
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Buzzard3 »

How long is a piece of string?
Raymond
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Re: When Will Science End?

Post by Raymond »

Somehow, it feels disappointing that my search has ended. At the same time its liberating!
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