THE END OF SCIENCE.

Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age.

By John Hargon, A Staff Reporter (Former), Scientific American. Addison Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. 1996. Pages : 308

A Book Review.

-- By Dr. ARUN DIXIT.

John Horgan is a Science Journalist, who worked with the Scientific American. Now he is working as the Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey. He has written four books: ‘Rational Mysticism’, ‘End of Science’, ‘The Undiscovered Mind’, and ‘Where Was God on Sept 11?’ The End Of Science is his first book which was the US bestseller and was translated into 13 languages. It has been a controversial book.

Hargon contends in this book that ‘science, particularly pure science, is coming to an end.’ This contention seems to be his conviction. He has tried to prove his conviction through this book.This book is in the form of interviews, which Horgan has taken. He takes the reader on the tour of scientists’ homes, laboratories and their conferences including their personal histories and theories. He has interviewed prominent scientists of the 20^th century from different areas of pure science. Many of them are Nobel laureates. He takes the reader on a tour with him in different areas of science, such as physics, cosmology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, philosophy,limitology --- in short, nearly every aspect of basic science. All interviews he has taken, have two central questions: Will scientists find The Answer (the ultimate reality)? Has the science come to end?

Was it possible that science could come to an end? Could scientists, in effect, learn everything there is to know? Could they banish mystery from the world? What are the limits of science, if any? Is science infinite or is it as mortal as we are? If the latter, is the end in sight? Why is there something rather than nothing? These were some of the questions he started asking himself. In its effort to find The Answer to The Questions, he thought that the universal mind may discover the ultimate limit of knowledge. He, therefore thought of knowing the views of other scientists on these questions. While focusing on individual scientists and philosophers, the book also represents his own views. Thus, the book is a composite mixture of the views expressed by the scientists and his own views.

Summary of the Book:

While giving the summary, I have tried to give the excerpts of the interviews the author has taken. In addition to that, I have tried to add the views of the author, wherever needed. There are total ten chapters in addition to ‘Introduction’ in the beginning and ‘Epilogue’ at the end. I have not included chapter six (the End of Social Science) and chapter eight (The End of Chaoplexity) in to this summary.

Chapter 1: The End of Progress:

In this chapter, the author gives an account of his interviews with some scientists who had come to attend the symposium in Minnesota, which had the title ‘The End of Science?’

Gunther Stent, is a bacteriophage biologist at the Uni. of California at Berkeley. He has written a book, ‘ The Coming of the Golden Age : A View of the End of Progress,’ in which he contended that science – as well as technology, the arts, and all progressive enterprises- was coming to an end. The dizzy rate at which progress is now proceeding makes it seem very likely that the progress must come to a stop soon, perhaps in our lifetime, perhaps in a generation or two. Certain fields of science like human anatomy, geography are limited simply by the boundedness of their subject matter. According to the Darwinian theory, he explained, science stems not from our desire for truth per se, but from our compulsion to control our environment in order to increase the likelihood that our genes will propagate. When a given field of science begins to yield diminishing practical returns, scientists may have less incentive to pursue their research and society may be less inclined to pay for it. Bentley Glass, an eminent biologist argued that not only is science finite, but its end is in sight. Leo Kadanoff , a prominent physicist at the Uni. of Chicago, writes that nothing we do is likely to arrest our decline in numbers or support for science.

Chapter 2: The End of Philosophy:

In this chapter, the author discusses the views of some philosophers on science..

Karl Popper: is a British philosopher and most influential philosopher of science of the 20^th century. Popper believed that science could never answer questions about the meaning and purpose of the universe. The origin of life will forever remain untestable, probably. Even if scientists create life in a laboratory, they can never be sure that life actually began in the same way. According to his theory of ‘ Falsification,’ scientists can never prove a theory is true; they can only falsify it, or prove it is false. Thomas Kuhn, an American intellectual, wrote his best known and most influential work ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolution’. The keynote of his model was the concept of a paradigm, which he defines as a collection of procedures or ideas that instruct scientists, implicitly what to believe and how to work. Most scientists never question the paradigm. Most scientists yield to a new paradigm reluctantly. In his book, he has called most of the scientists as ‘paradigm addict’. Paul Feyerabend is an Austrian-born philosopher of science. ‘Against Method’ is his influential book, which is translated in 16 languages. The book argues that philosophy cannot provide a methodology or rationale for science, since there is no rationale to explain. He sought to show that there is no logic to science; scientists create and adhere to scientific theories for what are ultimately subjective and even irrational reasons.He stressed one point that other professionals earn their living, whereas most modern scientists are supported by taxpayers. The public is the patron and should have a say in the matter.

Chapter 3: The End of Physics:

Even though the title of the chapter is regarding physics, the author has concentrated his discussions around particle physics. There are no more dedicated seekers of The Answer than modern particle physicists, the author remarks. They want to show that all the complicated things of the world are really just manifestations of one thing. Einstein was the first great modern seeker of that ‘one thing’. He spent his later years trying to find out a theory that would unify quantum mechanics with his theory of general relativity - Theory Of Everything (TOE). But he also suggested that no theory could be truly final. He once said of his theory of relativity, “ It will have to yield to another one, for reasons which at present we do not yet surmise. I believe that the process of deepening the theory has no limits.”

But in 1970s, the dream of unification was revived by several advances. First, physicists showed that just as electricity and magnetism are aspects of a single force, electromagnetism, so electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are the manifestations of an underlying ‘electroweak’ force. Researchers also developed a theory for the strong nuclear force, which grips protons and neutrons together in the nuclei of atoms. The theory, called quantum chromodynamics, posits that protons and neutrons are composed of even more elementary particles, called quarks. Together, the electroweak theory and quantum chromodynamics, constitute the standard model of particle physics. Emboldened by this success, workers forged far beyond the standard model in search of a deeper theory. Their guide was a mathematical property called symmetry. In constructing the standard model, physicists were able to sweep some problems which they encountered, under the rug. But Einsteinian gravity, with its distortions of space and time, seemed to demand an even more radical approach. In 1980s, many physicists came to believe that superstring theory represented that approach which is an extension of the quantum theory. The theory replaced point like particles with minute loops of energy that eliminated the absurdities arising in calculations. The theory suffers from several problems, however. There seems to be countless possible versions, and theorists have no way of knowing which one is correct. Moreover, superstrings are thought to inhabit not only four dimensions in which we live (space-time), but also six extra dimensions. Finally, the strings are as small (Plank’ length = 10^-33 cm) in comparison to a proton as a proton is in comparison to the solar system. To probe the realm of superstrings are thought to inhabit, physicists would have to build a particle accelerator 1,000 light-years around ( the entire solar system is only one light-year around). And not even an accelerator of that size could allow us to see the extra dimensions, where the superstrings dance. With this background of the recent theories in physics, the author interviewed some prominent physicists.

Sheldon Glashow, who along with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam, was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was once a leader in the quest for a unified theory. But with the advent of superstrings, he became disillusioned with the quest for unification. ‘Those working on superstrings and other unified theories were not doing physics at all any more’, he contended, ‘because their speculations were so far beyond any possible empirical test’. Physics cannot proceed on pure thought alone, in spite what superstring enthusiasts said. “There will be the standard theory and that will be the last chapter in the field of elementary physics story,” he answered. “Physicists would continue to seek some little interesting small thing , but it’s not the same as the quest as I was fortunate enough to know it in my professional life.”Glashow noted that several promising graduate students had just left Harvard for Wall Street.

John Barrow, the British cosmologist, argued in his book, ‘Theory of Everything’, that Godel’s incompleteness theorem undermines the very notion of a complete theory of nature. Godel established that any moderately complex system of axioms inevitably raises questions that cannot be answered by the axioms. David Lindley, a physicists turned journalist, in his book, ‘The End of Physics’, contended that physicists working on superstring theory, were no longer doing physics because their theories could never be validated by experiments. Steven Weinberg, admits that neither the superconducting supercollider nor any other earthly accelerator could provide direct confirmation of a final theory. He reiterated a comment ‘The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.’

Hans Bethe , German-American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics(1967) for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, said that there were still many open questions in physics, including ones raised by the standard model. But none of these advances would bring about revolutionary changes in the foundations of physics.

John Wheeler, an eminent American theoretical physicist who was the later collaborator of Albert Einstein,coined the terms black hole and wormhole and the phrase “it from bit”. “Never run after a bus or woman or a cosmological theory, because there’ll always he another one in a few minutes,” was his assessment about the scientific theories.He once remarked,” I do take seriously the idea that the world is a figment of the imagination.” Where was the mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be? Answers to these questions, he offers as, “at the heart of everything is a question, not the answer.”

David Bohm, an American-born quantum physicist who made significant contributions in the fields of theoretical physics, philosophy and neuropsychology. As physicist-philosopher, he developed an alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bohm seemed to intent on making physics even more philosophical, speculative and holistic. He went much further than Wheeler in drawing analogies between quantum mechanics and Eastern religion. He developed a philosophy, called implicate order, that sought to embrace both, mystical and scientific knowledge. Bohm rejected the possibility that scientists could bring their enterprise to an end by reducing all the phenomena of nature to a single phenomenon, such as superstrings. What underlines it all is unknown and cannot be grasped by thought, he remarked. He had been a friend and student of the Indian mystic, Krishnamurthy, who was the first modern Indian sages to try to show westerners how to achieve enlightenment. Bohm was desperate to know, to discover, the secret of everything, either through physics or through meditation, through mystical knowledge. Richard Feynman, an American physicist who was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. He is of the view that after the fundamental laws are discovered, physics will succumb to second rate thinkers, that is, philosophers.

Chapter 4: The End of Cosmology:

Stephen Hawing, a British theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. His key scientific works include theorems regarding singularities in the framework of general relativity, and Hawking radiations. He is paralyzed physically but have a powerful brain in paralyzed body, still imagining realities with infinite degrees of freedom. Hawking was the first prominent physicist of his generation to predict that physics might soon achieve a complete, unified theory of nature and thus bring about its own demise. The final theory would exclude God from the universe and with him all mystery. In 1994, Hawking admitted as much when he told an interviewer that physics might never achieve a final theory after all.David Schramm of Fermi lab is a strong advocate of the Big Bang Theory. He describes three evidences of this theory as three pillars : 1. The Red Shift of galaxies, 2. the microwave background, and 3. the abundance of lighter elements. He admits “as cosmologists venture further back toward the beginning of time, their theories become more speculative. Cosmology needs a unified theory of particle physics to describe processes in the very early universe, but validating a unified theory may be extremely difficult. Even if somebody comes up with a really beautiful theory, like superstring theory, there’s not any way it can be tested. So you are not really doing the scientific method where you make predictions and then check it. There’s not that experimental check going on. It’s more just mathematical consistency. It is always possible that theoretical explorations of black holes, superstrings, Wheeler’s ‘it from bit’ and other exotica might yield some sort of breakthrough. But until someone comes up with definitive test, we’re not going to have that kind of ‘Eureka’ where you’re really confident you know the answer.”

Howard Georgi, a particle physicist at Harvard University said,” I think you have to regard cosmology as a historical science, like evolutionary biology. You are trying to look at the present-day universe and extrapolate back, which is an interesting but dangerous thing to do, because there may have been accidents that had big effects. The fate of particle physics and cosmology, are to some extent intertwined. Cosmologists hope that a unified theory will help them understand the universe’s origin more clearly.” He found papers on quantum cosmology, with all their talk of wormholes and time travel and baby universes, ‘quite amusing.’ It’s like reading Genesis, he quipped. Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer and physicist, who rejects not only inflation, baby universes and other highly speculative hypothesis, but the big bang theory itself. He has coined the term ‘ big bang’ on a BBC broadcast for the theory in which he does not believe. His fundamental objection to the Big Bang is philosophical. ‘It does not make sense to talk about the creation of the universe unless one already had space and time for the universe to be created in.’ If we accept this theory, then you loose the universality of the laws of physics, he explained, and suggested that space and time must have always exited, even before the big bang. He, Gold and Bondi invented the Steady State Theory, which posits that the universe is infinite both in space and time and constantly generates new matter through some still-unknown mechanism. Since 1970s, he has argued that the universe is pervaded by viruses, bacteria and other organisms. These space-faring microbes supposedly provided the seeds for life on earth and spurred evolution thereafter; natural selection played little or no role in creating the diversity of life.

Chapter 5: The End of Evolutionary Biology:

The discipline of evolutionary biology can be defined as the study of evolution of the life on the earth to this date. The author, in the beginning, gives a short account of the principles of the evolutionary biology.

Darwin based his theory of natural selection, the central component of his vision, on two observations: 1.Plants and animals usually produce more offspring than their environment can sustain, 2. These offspring differ slightly from their parents and from each other. Darwin concluded that each organism, in its struggle to survive long enough to reproduce, compete either directly or indirectly with other of its species. Chance plays a role in the survival of any individual organism, but nature will favor or select those organisms whose variations make them slightly more fit, that is, more likely to survive long enough to reproduce and pass on those adaptive variations to their offspring. Lamarck , French Biologist, proposed that organisms could pass on not only inherited but also acquired characteristics to their heirs. But Darwin did not approve Lamarck’s view of self directed adaptation. Gregor Mendel, Austrian monk, recognized that natural forms can be subdivided into discrete traits, which are transmitted from one generation to the next by what Mendel termed hereditary particles, which are now called as Genes. Ernst Mayr of Harvard University and other evolutionary biologists fused Darwin’s ideas with genetics into a powerful restatement of his theory, called the New Synthesis, which affirmed that natural selection is the primary architect of biological form and diversity.Crick and Waston, 1953, discovered the structure of DNA, - which serves as the blueprint, from which all organisms are constructed - confirmed Darwin’s intuition that all life is related, descended from a common source. Waston and Crick’s finding also revealed the source of both, continuity and variation that makes natural selection possible. Richard Dawkins, a British ethologist(A zoologist who studies the behavior of animals in their natural habitats), from the University of Oxford. In his 2006 book ‘The God Delusion’, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion. He was called as ‘more Darwinian than Darwin.’ While dismissing the idea of God, he insisted on his views, “All purpose comes ultimately from natural selection.” It is a cosmic principle; wherever life is found, natural selection is at work.”

Stephen Jay Gould, a prominent American paleontologist. Gould’s greatest contribution to science was his theory of punctuated equilibrium which he developed with Niles Eldredge in 1972 which is an alternative to Darwin’s gradualism that might someday supersede it. He called it an extension or complement to Darwin’s basic model. Punctuated equilibrium states that speciation (evolution of biological species) occurs in single large steps. Rather, punctuated equilibrium states that populations remain stable for long periods of time, evolving little or not at all; these periods of time are called stases. According to punctuated equilibrium, small, isolated populations evolve rapidly, so that speciation takes place over about ten thousand to a million years. When he was asked if he thought biology could ever achieve a final theory, he twisted and said Darwin’s theory is only a beginning, it has just started. Gould proposed that the evolution of life on this planet may turn out to be a very small part of the phenomenon of life. Life elsewhere may very well not conform to Darwinian principles. By considering the immensity of the universe and the improbability of absolute uniqueness of any part of it, leads to the immense probability that there is some kind of life all over.

Lynn Margulis, an American biologist, best known for her theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles, and her contributions to the endosymbiotic theory—which is now generally accepted for how certain organelles were formed. She has challenged the Darwinian orthodoxy. She proposed the concept of symbiosis, which was most successful. Darwin emphasized the role of competition between individuals and species in evolution. But she proposed that symbiosis had been an equally important factor – and perhaps more important- in the evolution of life. One of the greatest mysteries in evolutionary biology concerns the evolution of prokaryotes, cells that lack a nucleus and are the simplest of all organisms, into eukaryotes, cells that have nuclei. All multicellular organisms, including we humans, consist of eukaryotic cells. She proposed that eukaryotes may have emerged when one prokaryote absorbed another, smaller one, which became the nucleus. She suggested that such cells should be considered not as individual organisms but as composite. Margulis supported the idea of Gaia (Gaia was the Greek goddess of the earth) which means that the biota ( all the life), the sum of all life on earth, is locked in a symbiotic relationship with the environment, which includes the atmosphere, the seas, and other aspects of the earth’s surface. The biota chemically regulates the environment in such a way as to promote its own survival (Gaia Hypothesis). She rejected the idea that the earth is in some sense a living organism. (this notion is often associated with Gaia). Stuart Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist who argues that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection. He challenged the Darwin’s theory. He even challenged the central tenet of biology: natural selection. He feels that accident alone cannot have created life; our cosmos must harbor some fundamental order- generating tendency. He called his theory as anti-chaos theory. Stanley Miller, a professor of Biochemistry, tried to create life in the laboratory in 1953. He mixed ammonia, methane, and hydrogen and some water and sparked the mix with electric spark. After the analysis, he found that it contained some amino acids, the building blocks proteins, the basic stuff of life. He had made a prediction that within 25 years, scientists would ‘surely’ know how life began. Millar told that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned. He acknowledged that scientists may never know precisely where and when life emerged. Francis crick, the inventor of DNA, in his book, ‘Life Itself’, wrote that “the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going.” He proposed that aliens visiting the earth in a spacecraft billions of years ago may have deliberately seeded it with microbes. Society seems increasingly reluctant to underwrite such investigations. In 1993, American congress hut down NASA’s SETI program (search for extraterrestrial intelligence).

Chapter 7: End of Neuroscience:

Mind, not space, is science’s final frontier. Most of the scientists consider the mind, a potentially endless source of questions. Modern neurologists are interested less in how and why our mind evolved, than in how they are structured and work right now. The distinction is similar to the one that can be made between cosmology – which speaks to explain the origin and subsequent evolution of matter -- and particle physics -- which addresses the structure of matter as we find it here, in the present. Consciousness, our subjective sense of awareness, has always seemed to be a different sort of puzzle, not physical but metaphysical. Francis Crick , an English molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist, was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for DNA structure. Finally he turned his attention to the most elusive and inescapable of all phenomena: ‘Consciousness’.He along with Christopher Koch insisted that it was time to make consciousness a subject of empirical investigation. Only by examining neurons and the interactions between them could scientists accumulate the kind of knowledge needed to create truly scientific models of consciousness. Gerald Edelman, an American biologist who won the 1972 Nobel for his work on the immune system. He has a grand project of creating a Theory of Mind to his credit. The gist of the theory is that ‘just as environmental stresses select the fittest members of a species, so inputs to the brain select groups of neurons - corresponding to useful memories, for example – by strengthening the connections between them.’ He realized that a theory of the human mind would represent the ultimate closure for science for then science could account for its own origin. The mind, he sounded, can only be understood from a biological standpoint, not through physics or computer science or other approaches that ignore the structure of the brain. He saw it curious that people who worked in neuroscience always talked about brains as if they were identical. Even identical twins, show great differences in the organization of their neurons.

Quantum Dualism : There is one issue on which Crick, Edelman and indeed almost all neuroscientists agree, that the properties of the mind do not depend in any crucial way on quantum mechanics. Physicists and philosophers have speculated about links between quantum mechanics and consciousness since at least the 1930s. Such efforts have ulterior philosophical or even religious motives. Christopher Koch summed up the quantum – consciousness thesis in syllogism (deductive reasoning in which conclusion is derived from two premises): Quantum mechanics is mysterious and consciousness is mysterious and therefore, quantum mechanics and consciousness must be related. John Eccles, an Australian neurophysiologist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on the synapse. He was the most prominent modern scientist to follow quantum mechanical dualism, which holds that the mind exists independently of its physical substrate. He was a religious person who rejected “cheap Materialism.” He thought it’s a divine creation. Roger Penrose, a British Physicist from Oxford is a well known mathematician and profound advocate of the dualism. In his book “The Emperor’s New Mind,” he refutes the claim of artificial intelligence proponents that computers could replicate all the attributes of humans, including consciousness. The Key to his argument is Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. According to Penrose, the theorem implies that no ‘ ‘computable’ model – that is neither classical physics, computer science, nor neuroscience, as presently construed—can replicate the mind’s creative or rather intuitive power. He was very confident on his theory of “, Quasi – Quantum Consciousness.” In his above book, he argues against the assumption that the mystery of consciousness, or of reality in general could be explained by the current laws of physics. A new theory has to be devised which would eliminate the paradoxes of quantum mechanics and its disconcerting subjectivism. Neither superstring theory – which is after all a quantum theory – nor any other current candidate for a unified theory has the qualities that he feels, are necessary. In his next book, ‘The Shadows Of Mind,’ that he conjectured(To believe especially on uncertain or tentative grounds) that microtubules -- the minute tunnels of protein that serve as a kind of skeleton for most cells, including neurons – perform nondeterministic, quasi-quantum computations that somehow give rise to consciousness. Each neuron is thus not a simple switch, but a complex computer in its own right. Penrose’s microtubule theory was ridiculed by many. Some critics have accused him of being a vitalist, who secretly hopes that the mystery of the mind will not yield to science. The author observes that Penrose is a true scientist; he wants to know. He sincerely believes that our present understanding of reality is incomplete, logically flawed and well, mysterious. He is looking for a key, an insight, some clever quasi- quantum trick that will make everything suddenly clear. He is looking for The Answer.

Thomas Nagel, an American philosopher who assumed that subjective experience is a fundamental attribute of human and many higher – level animals, such as bats. He feels that philosophy and or science might one day reveal a natural way to bridge the gap between our materialistic theories and subjective experiences. He, therefore is called as a weak mysterian. Colin Mc Ginn, is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. He is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind. He believes that most major philosophical questions are unsolvable because they are beyond our cognitive abilities. We cannot solve our mind-body problem. David Chalmer, a famous Australian philosopher, echoing the above view differed in one aspect that although science could not solve the mind- body problem, philosophy still might. Matter and energy were present at the dawn of creation, but life was not , as far as we know.

Chapter 9: The End of Limitology:

The author, in this chapter, describes the discussions took place in a workshop, “The Limits of Scientific Knowledge”,held in 1994. Scientists from different fields discussed ‘whether there were limits to science, and if so, whether science could know them.’ John Casti, a mathematician ,opened the meeting by asking a question –‘Is the real world too complex for us to understand?’ He implied that Godel’s theorem of incompleteness tells that some mathematical descriptions would always be incomplete; some aspects of the world would always resist description. Alen Turing, similarly, showed that many mathematical propositions are ‘undecidable.’ Joseph Traub, a theoretical computer scientist from Columbia Univ. tried to rephrase Casti’s proposal, “can we prove there are limits to science, in the same way that Godel and Turing proved there are limits to mathematics and computation?” Gregory Chaitin, an Argentine-American mathematician and computer scientist said, “ Now incompleteness seems so natural, you can ask how we mathematicians can do anything.” He has also established that just as nature seems to harbor fundamental uncertainty and randomness, so does mathematics. He proposed that mathematics was dead. In the future, mathematics would be able to solve problems only with enormous computer calculations that would be too complex for anyone to understand. Many accused Chaitin for his pessimistic exaggeration. But he said he was not a pessimist. He could not have pursued his work on the limits of mathematics if he was not an optimist. Piet Hut, a Dutch astrophysicist, added that astronomers face other limits that seem insurmountable. They have only one universe to study, so they cannot do controlled experiments on it. Cosmologists can only trace the history of the universe so far back and they can never know what preceded the big bang or what exists beyond the borders of our universe. Moreover, particle physicists may have a hard time testing theories ( such as superstring) that combine gravity and all the other forces of nature, because the effects only become apparent at distance scales and energies that are beyond the range of any conceivable accelerator. Otto Rossler, theoretical biochemist from Germany. (Contributed to chaos theory – Rossler’s attracter). He has written a book ‘ Endophysics’, which describes the physics, by considering observer inside the system. It is an outgrowth of chaos theory.( Exophysics- when observer is outside the system.) He said “if we could stand outside the universe, we would know the limits to our knowledge, but we are trapped inside the universe and hence our knowledge of our own limits must remain incomplete. There exist situations where you are unable to find out about the truth from the inside”. He was asked, in that workshop, whether the intelligent computers might transcend the limits of human science. He said “No, that is not possible.

Chapter 10: The End of Machine Science:

Humanity, Nietzsche told us, is just a stepping stone, a bridge leading to the Superman. If he were alive today, he would definitely have entertained the notion that the Superman might be made, not of a flesh and blood, but of silicon. Only machines can overcome our physical and cognitive weaknesses and our indifference.

Hans Moravec, a robotic engineering said that Science desperately needed new goals. Most of the things that have been accomplished in this century were nineteenth century ideas. It’s time for fresh ideas now. Intelligent machines are capable of feats, we cannot even imagine. He convinced that future belongs to machines. By next century, robots will be as intelligent as humans and will essentially take over the economy. Machines will generate so much wealth that humans might not have to work, machines will eliminate poverty. “Will machines pursue science for its own sake?” He replied “Absolutely. That is the core of my fantasy: that our non-biological descendants, without most of our limitations, who could redesign themselves, could pursue basic knowledge of things. In fact, science will be the only motive worthy of intelligent machines.” Along with Moravec, Marvin Minskky also proposed the notion that machines might merge into one metamind. It is always possible that super intelligent machines will be infected by some sort of religion that makes them abandon their individuality and merge into a single meta mind. Freeman Dyason, suggested that we cannot solve all our problems, we cannot create heaven, we cannot find the Answer. Life is an eternal struggle. But he did not suggest that organic intelligence would soon will give away to artificial intelligence. He said that he does not make any distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.

Omega Point : Frank Tipler, a physicist at Tulane University has proposed a theory called the ‘Omega Point,’ in which the entire universe is transformed into a single, all powerful, all knowing computers. He stated that Omega Point created the universe, even though the omega point has not itself been created yet. He assumed that the end of the universe, the Omega Point, is also, in a sense, its beginning. But it is pure teleology ( a doctrine explaining phenomenon by their ends )

Epilogue (Terror of God):

Paul Davis, the theoretical physicist, in his book – The Mind of God - pondered whether we human could attain absolute knowledge – The Answer – through science. He concluded that such an outcome was unlikely, given the limits imposed on rational knowledge by 1. Quantum mechanics. 2. Godel’s theorem. 3. Chaos theory and likes. Mystical experience might provide the only avenue to absolute truth.

It is considered bad form to imagine being God, but one can imagine being an immensely powerful computer that pervades the entire universe. As the Omega point approaches the final collapse of time and space and being itself, it will undergo a mystical experience. It will realize that there is no creator, no god, other than itself. The Omega point must also realize that its lust for final knowledge and unification has brought it to the brink of eternal nothingness and that if it dies, everything dies; being itself will vanish.

At the heart of reality lies not an answer, but a question: why is there something rather than nothing? The Answer is that, there is no answer, only a question. Wheeler’s suspicion that the world is nothing but “a fragment of imagination” was also well - founded. The world is a riddle that God has created in order to shield himself from his terrible solitude and fear of death.

Freeman Dyson gave the author one possible lead. He proposed that God is not omniscient, not omnipotent but grows and learns as we humans grow and learn. Socinians (Italian theologician, who argued against trinity- god, Jesus and the holy sprit) believed that God changed, learned and evolved through time, just as we humans do. The general idea is that super intelligent machines created by humans spread throughout the entire universe …… similar something to Omega Point. Therefore, Omega point ≡ God

The views of the prominent scientists can be summarized as :

For Crick or Dawkins - who harbor a profound ambivalence (mixed feelings or emotions) concerning the notion of absolute truth.

For Roger Penrose - who could not decide whether his belief in a final theory was optimistic or pessimistic.

For Steven Weinberg - who equated comprehensibility with pointlessness.

For Edward Wilson - who lusted after a final theory human nature and was chilled by the thought that it might be attained.

For David Bohm - who was compelled both to clarify reality and to obscure ( to make it less visible or unclear ) it.

For Marvin Minsky - who was so aghast (stuck with fear) at the thought of single mindedness,

For Freeman Dyson - who insisted that anxiety and doubt are essential to existence.

The ambivalence of these truth seekers toward final knowledge reflects the ambivalence of God – or the Omega Point, if you will - toward absolute knowledge of his own predicament.

My comments :

1.Ordinary man gets astonished by seeing the present developments in science and technology. Everyday, he sees that the technology is bringing something new, something innovative in the market. He is taken aback by the advanaces taking place in the fields of computer, tele-communication,medical and many other. He believes that science can do anything, perform any miracle. It may create life, it may take man to other galaxies, it may make man immortal --anything is possible for science.

On this background, when he reads the title like " The end of Science," he gets aback. The title of the book itself gives him a shock.With this bewilderedness, he starts reading this book.

2. In Sept. 2008, the scientific community around the world was very much enthusiastic and thrilled about the launching of the experiment of Large Hadron Collider, at the CERN Laboratory ( European Organization for Nuclear Research ), near Geneva, Switzerland. They were expecting the evidence for the fundamental particle- Higg’s Bosons, which are also called as the God’s Particles, through this experiment. The scientists were expecting a major breakthrough in the understanding of the universe. On the background of this gigantic revolutionary experiment, I emailed John Horgan, asking whether he still held his views regarding the end of science. He replied promptly and send me a link of his article which he had published in EDGE ( 15.6.97).In this article, he reiterated his earlier views and pleaded them vehemently.

In the issue of ‘ Discovery,’ Sept. 2006, after the decade of publication of his book, Horgan wrote an article in which also, he has reiterated his views that “A broader view of history suggests that the modern era of explosive progress( in science) is an anomaly—the product of a unique convergence of social, economic, and political factors—that must eventually end. Science itself tells us that there are limits to knowledge. Scientists' attempts to solve these mysteries often take the form of what I call ironic science—unconfirmable speculations more akin to philosophy or literature than genuine science.”

The author seems to be very firm on his convictions.

3. Because of his strong conviction about the future of science, he has asked ‘leading questions’ to scientists, and in many cases, he got the answers which were near to his views. In some interviews, I felt, the interviewee was ‘forced’ to give the desired answer.It appears to me that he has 'stressed' only that portion of the interview which, in his opinion, was supporting his views about the future of science.

4. In spite of some of the ‘ drawbacks’, the book is interesting. The author takes the reader on a long tour in a vast area of science, from particle physics to cosmology. Even though the book refers to many scientific theories, the author has avoided the mathematical equations and other complicated details. He has made the things simpler.

4. The reader gets acquainted with many latest theories and inventions in different fields of science through this book.

5. Chapter 3, deals with only one area of physics i.e. particle physics, and therefor the heading ‘End of Physics’ seems to be misnomer. This chapter gives a brief account of different theories from particle physics. Particle physicists want to show that all the complicated things of the world are really just manifestations of one thing. Protons and neutrons are composed of even more elementary particles, called quarks. The basic forces governing the universe are electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces.

The modern theories suggest that all the three forces must be of the same nature. The scientists have proved that the electromagnetic and weak forces are same aspects of the single force, ‘electroweak’ force. They are struggling to show that the electroweak and strong force to be the aspects of the ‘one unified’ force. The scientist are proposing that the matter particles and the forces are the manifestations of the same reality. This model is called as the “ Standard Model."It is a mathematical machine, which is a set of equations that describes every known form of matter, from individual atoms to the farthest galaxies. The fourth force, gravity, is not explored to that extent. Einstein has spent his life in trying to find a theory which would unify quantum mechanics and his general theory of gravity. But he could not prove it and it has not been proved convincingly yet. The superstring theory goes one step further and suggests that all the particles and forces are the manifestations of only one reality – Superstring – which is a ten dimensional minute loop of energy and have a very very small length, of the order of Planck’s length ≈ 10^-33 cm.

These latest theories from particle physics posit to show the unification of all forces and matter – Theory of Everything (TOE). But they are not near the success. There are only theories and ideas which seem to be far away from the theory of ultimate reality which can be tested empirically. To probe the realm of superstrings, physicists would have to build a particle accelerator of 1000 light years, which seems to be beyond the reach of scientists, since we know the tremendous efforts scientists took to build up a CERN accelerator of 54 km length. No one country could do it and therefore it came into existence because of the collective efforts of majority of the countries of the world.

6. The interview of the author with David Bohm - who developed an alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation of the quantum mechanics – spells out Bohm’s view that Unified Theory is not possible. He was desperate in discovering the ultimate reality either through physics or through meditation.

After reading the views of the leading scientists and the logic behind them, the reader may tempt to agree to certain extent, with the author’s premise that Standard Model is the limit beyond which Physics can not proceed, except developing some beautiful theories whcih are difficult to prove experimentally. In author's view, it would only be a 'ironic science'.

7. Cosmology is another area where the limits of scientific progress can be imagined. Majority of the scientists agree that the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe is the only possible model which is evidenced by practical observations like, red shift of galaxies, microwave background radiations and the abundance of lighter elements. But this model is challenged by some basic questions : What was there before big bang? What exists beyond the borders of our universe? If there was no space before the big bang, then in to what the universe is expanding? Scientists are unable to answer these questions, rather some of them feel that these are not the questions in real sense. The concepts of wormhole, which is a theoretical tunnel which joins one end of the universe to the other end or which joins one universe to the other, also seems to be a fiction. One can agree with David Schramm, who says that as cosmologists go further back towards the beginning of time, their theories become more speculative. Fred Hoyle rejects the idea of the big bang and expanding universe. After considering all these observations, the reader can inclined to think that the cosmological theories, after a limit, would be speculative or theoretical rather than empirical.

8. Origin of life has been an area of interest for the human being since centuries. Evolutionary biology gives us an account of how life has evolved on this planet. Darwin’s theory of natural selection has been at the centre of this branch of biology. But this theory is also challenged by many scientists. Gould’s Punctuated Equilibrium, Margulis’s idea of Gaia hypothesis, and others have proposed alternative theories, as they found that Darwin’s theory is insufficient to explain the observed behaviour of the living organisms.

The basic question in Biology is how life has originated on the earth. Millar and Uray in 1950s did an experiment in which they showed that by a spark of electricity in a mixture of ammonia, methane and hydrogen in water ,amino acids , which are the building blocks of proteins, the basic stuff of life, were produced. Millar told the author that he expected that within 25 years, life could be created in the Labs. But he was disappointed that no progress was done in next 50 years and he admitted to the author that the riddle of life had turned to be more difficult than any one has envisioned. He acknowledged to the author that scientists may never know precisely where and when life emerged.

There are many scientists including the cosmologist Fred Hoyle, who believe that life must have originated form outer universe. Francis Crick, the inventor of DNA, has proposed that aliens visiting the earth in a spacecraft billions of years ago may have deliberately seeded it with microbes.

All these discussions show that when it comes to the basics of the fundamental questions regarding life,the things are not clear, rather it appears that instead of converging to a common answer, we get a blurred view of the reality.

9. Neuroscience is an area which is still under mystery. Modern neurologists are interested less in how and why our minds evolved than in how they are structured and work right now. Consciousness is another area related to mind, the development of which is still in its childhood. ‘Neurons must be the basis for any model of the mind’, Crick told the author. Eccles a British Neurologist, a Nobel Laureate, holds the view that mind exists independently of its physical substrate. Roger Penrsoe tells the author that the present theories of quantum mechanics are insufficient to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. A new set of laws have to be investigated to explain the phenomenon of consciousness.

10. After reading the views of the scientists and the arguments of the author, the reader gets confused. He has been witnessing many advances taking place in all the areas of science today and till the inference from the book is that the science is facing its end, which confuses him.

The author has the premise that 'the fundamentals science is coming to an end'. He has explained in his article in ‘Edge’ what he meant by the term ‘ fundamental’. He explains that ‘a fact or theory is fundamental in proportion to how broadly it applies both in space and in time. Both quantum mechanics and the theory of general relativity apply, as far as we know, throughout the entire universe at all times since its birth’. That makes these theories truly fundamental. Technically , all biological theories are less fundamental than the cornerstone theories of physics, because the biological theories apply only to particular arrangements of matter that have existed on our little planet for the past 3.5 billion years.It appears to me that when the author speaks that science is reaching its limit,he refers to the 'fundamental' science in above sense.

The author, in his article from Edge, explains that all the other scientific developments are included in ‘normal science,’ which solves puzzles that are posed by the prevailing paradigm but does not challenge the paradigm’s basic tenets. In a way, all biology since Darwin has been a normal science. Even Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix, although it has had enormous practical consequences, merely revealed how heredity( Mendel's theory) works on a molecular level; no significant revision of the new synthesis was required.

The author surmises that science has reached or reaching its limits and no fundamental discoveries are expected to be taking place. For most part of the science, the scientists have only one option that is to pursue science in a speculative, non- empirical mode that the author calls as “ Ironic Science’, which offers points of views, opinions, which are, at best, interesting which provoke further comment. But it does not converge on the truth.

The author tells us that there will be no ‘great’ discovery in future, in the field of science. The correctness of this premise is hidden in the future. In spite of the limitations spelt out by Horgan, we will have to pursue the science with a hope that we may cross the present paradigm and establish new paradigms which might reveal the true nature of the reality.

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