The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books) by John Horgan (PDF)

Description

As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts?In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, ”are rarely so human…so at ther mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge.”This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final ”theory of everything” that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories?Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx’s view of progress, Kuhn’s view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindles Horgan’s smart, contrarian argument for ”endism” with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise.Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights acitivists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike.As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls ”ironic science.” Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world’s leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Amazon.com Review John Horgan makes the powerful case that the best and most exciting scientific discoveries are behind us. He states that many scientists today, particularly those he interviewed for the book, are “gripped by a profound unease,” due partially to dwindling financial resources and vicious competition, but increasingly due to the sense that “the great era of scientific discovery is over.” In other words, he argues, the big problems that can be solved have been, and the big ones that haven’t been solved can’t be. Among the celebrated thinkers quoted in this ambitious book are Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, and John Archibald Wheeler. A concise history of the last 20 years of scientific study introduces his thesis and covers such topics as superstring theory, mathematical topology, and how to distinguish chaos from complexity. From Publishers Weekly Scientific American columnist Horgan here interviews an impressive array of scientists and philosophers, who seem sharply divided over the prospects and possibilities of science. Among the pessimists, molecular biologist Gunther Stent suggests that science is reaching a point of incremental, diminishing returns as it comes up against the limits of knowledge; philosopher Thomas Kuhn sees science as a nonrational process that does not converge with truth; Vienna-born thinker Paul Feyerabend objects to science’s pretensions to certainty and its potential to stamp out the diversity of human thought and culture. More optimistic are particle physicist Edward Witten, pioneer of superstring theory (which posits a universe of 10 dimensions); robotics engineer Hans Moravec, who envisions superintelligent creative robots; and physicist Roger Penrose, who theorizes that quantum effects percolating through the brain underlie consciousness. Other interviewees are Francis Crick, Noam Chomsky, David Bohm, Karl Popper, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, Ilya Prigogine and Clifford Geertz. Despite the dominant doomsaying tone, this colloquium leaves much room for optimism. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Rich in provocative ideas and insightful anecdotes, this book investigates a serious question concerning empirical inquiry: Is there a limit to the discovery of theories about nature? The ongoing success of scientific research suggests that a final (ultimate), comprehensive, testable, and effective theory explaining the unity of all reality may soon be forthcoming. Exploring this possibility, Horgan, who writes the interview column for Scientific American, introduces the reader to a wide spectrum of opinion, from Francis Crick, Karl Popper, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Stanley Miller, Margin Minksy, Frank Tippler, and Edward Wilson, among others. His probing interviews discuss engaging themes ranging from language, neuroscience, and evolution to quantum physics, complexity and chaos, and cosmology. This celebration of curiosity and speculation as well as of science and reason is a unique contribution to appreciating the human quest for understanding. Recommended for both academic and public science collections.?H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist A Scientific American journalist, Horgan interviewed such popular scientists as Stephen Gould, Daniel Dennett, and John Wheeler and posed the tough question: Is pure science in sight of completely understanding the universe, thereby foreclosing any further revolutionary scientific discoveries? A question most resonant in physics, it provokes titles such as Steven Weinberg’s Dreams of a Final Theory (1992) and vexes theorists of cosmology, biology, and chaos and complexity. In his interviews, Horgan plays up the scientists’ personalities and demeanors to enliven particular abstractions, such as the string theory of particle physics or the inflation model of the infinitesimally young universe. That these notions are untestable doesn’t deter optimism in great days ahead, but are these smart people just having fun with unprovable ideas? Some of Horgan’s interlocutors believe yes, and the debate will ventilate best in libraries that have steadily stocked the best science books of recent years. Gilbert Taylor Review … intellectually bracing, sweepingly reported, often brilliant and sometimes bullying … — The New York Times Book Review, Natalie Angier About the Author John Horgan is a senior writer at Scientific American. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐While most reviewers focus on the argument of whether science may be coming to an end, which is suggested by the title of this book, the actual content of the book is not so much about this. Instead, Mr. Horgan spends his time searching through various different scientific endeavors on a quest for some kind of spiritual fulfillment and the search for “The Answer”, which he defines as “a truth so potent that it quenches our curiosity once and for all time”.Once past the book’s introduction, interestingly entitled “Searching for The Answer”, the author begins to present his argument that science may continue in the sense of further advancements in technology, but that it holds no more prospect for providing us with any grand, revolutionary ideals. While not spelled out explicitly, Mr. Horgan implies that this means some kind of knowledge that will deepen our understanding of the universe in the sense of bringing us closer to knowing the meaning of life or existence.The most bizarre, and perhaps revealing, part of the book is the epilogue. Here, Mr. Horgan describes his experience of “lying spread-eagled on a suburban lawn” while experiencing some kind of psychotic episode where he hurtled through “a dark limbo toward what I was sure was the ultimate secret of life” and perceiving himself to be the only consciousness in the universe who imagined all things into existence.The abrupt way that he launches into this story, with no explanation whatsoever of how he came to be lying in the middle of someone’s yard, is strange and the whole thing seems eerily suggestive of an LSD induced trip. For what it’s worth, Horgan previously comments about asking Frank Tipler if he had ever used LSD during their conversation about “the Omega Point” and whether machines may one day transform the universe into a single, giant information-processing device.After relating this strange incident, Horgan then explains that it led him to believe that he had discovered the secret of existence, namely that God’s own fear of death causes him to create other beings (people, etc.) as some kind of distraction from his mortality and singularity of being, which he dubs the “terror-of-God” idea. Just to reiterate: Horgan’s idea is that God is terrified by the thought that he alone is the single consciousness of the universe and that, if he were to die, all consciousness and hence all things would cease to exist and that God therefore orchestrates other things as a distraction from his fear. Furthermore, all of this stems from some kind of psychedelic event in which Mr. Horgan experienced these feelings during a hallucination while lying in the middle of someone’s yard.This edition of the book includes an addendum that the author wrote in 1997 to reflect on the book’s reception and to tie up loose ends. He concludes by writing, “Let me be completely frank here. My real purpose in writing The End of Science was to found a new religion, `The Church of the Holy Horror'”. While I generally regard this to be some attempt at deadpan humor, it is not immediately evident that Mr. Horgan is in fact joking.Overall, I would say the book is worth reading due to the interesting conversations with various scientists that comprise the bulk of it. However, one should be aware of the ultimate point that Mr. Horgan is getting at, which can be lost in the details of his argument.

⭐Book seems fine. Mailing envelope came somewhat torn and there was minor damage to book as a consequence. The book is more philosophy than science, talking about how discoveries seem to be getting smaller as the major pillars of science are built. Also talks about how funding for “big science” is getting harder to find. It used to be that a brilliant person like Newton or Einstein could think things through on a low budget and have great insights. Now, most science involves expensive research equipment.

⭐Horgan interviews many prominent philosophers and scientists in the early 1990’s and shows that there are almost as many theories of existence as personalities. A good read, strongly recommended.

⭐This is a great book. I do believe Mr. Horgan hit the nail right on the head with this one. If you are as fed up as I am with hearing people talk about “in the future” we will do this, have this, know this, and be able to do this (insert any ridiculous idea, like scan ourselves into a computer and live in virtual reality worlds forever) all because of advances in science, then this is the book for you.Science has limits. There is no “The Answer” to any of it. Science cannot help us see smaller things or look further into space than what we have now. And even if we could, it would change nothing.Thank you Mr. Horgan for writing a wonderful book and saying what needed to be said.

⭐This book has held up well over the years — lots here still worth thinking about. I have a (well-worn) print copy, and bought this one so I could read it on my Kindle (and search it more easily). The Kindle version is well formatted and the new intro is nice.

⭐Given some of the rave reviews and the so-called “interviews” in this book, I thought this might be an interesting read.I think enough has been said about the style of the book – if you care about the color of shirts of any particular scientist, this might be an interesting read. But content-wise, it is empty. For example, the chapter on evolutionary biology is meaningless – it’s entitled “the end of evolutionary biology” but there is no evidence to suggest that this is so. The same with “the end of sociobiology”.In the final chapter, the author describes a mystical experience he has had which seemed to have shaped his thinking profoundly, and in that chapter, the word “God” appears probably around 100 times. Fair enough, but it would have given me an idea where the author is coming from if I had known this before. A couple of examples from the last chapter:”Our plight is God’s plight.””The world is a riddle that God has created in order to shield himself from his terrible solitude and fear of death”.”One glances at an astrology column now and then, or wonders if maybe there really is something to all those reports about people having sex with alien.”I’m not interested in ad hominem attacks in general. But it seems to me that the author is not neutrally reporting on the subject, as I wish he had, but is rather trying to justify his own world view. Unfortunately, this was a complete waste of time for me.

⭐I cannot agree with some judgements. Author is not a scientist so, at times his critic of science goes down to senator’s level but in most cases it is well reasoned. The book is actually classic. I suspect it is even more interesting to read now – several decades after this book was written.

⭐it relates our current state of knowledge in the sciences – accurate and timely – limited only by some name dropping and a bit of rambling in the stories… a little more editing never hurt any of us aspiring writers.

⭐Speculating about the future of science, and even whether it has a future, has a long history. Modern interest has often focused on particle physics and cosmology; because these areas are already facing a crisis in how to test their latest theories (such as string theories and inflation) because the energies needed to do so appear to be well beyond what can ever be attained in practice. Questions have also been asked about whether some theories, such as the existence of multiple universes are even testable in principle. (Horgan calls such theories `ironic science’, i.e. theories that are not possible to verify experimentally, in principle or at least within some foreseeable time frame.) But other branches of science are not immune from such criticism and Horgan’s book is a modern attempt to address the question in the context of science as a whole, and knowledge in general. It consists of discussions with leading scientists and thinkers across a range of disciplines. The range of interviewees is very impressive, and contains many of the leading figures in several diverse fields.The discussions are not reproduced verbatim, but are edited by Horgan, with some direct quotes. We are therefore reliant on his accurate portrayal of the views of the interviewees, and some commentators (the Nobel prize winning physicist Philip Anderson, for example) have questioned whether Horgan has slanted them with an anti-scientific bias. I see no obvious evidence of this, but it is hard to prove one way or the other. We will probably never know. Because the book was first published in 1996, it is interesting to see how the views and predictions made then have stood the test of time. On the pessimistic side, inflation was considered with suspicion by many cosmologists, but is now mainstream; others expressed doubts about the possibility of ever refining the value of Hubble’s constant, and hence our knowledge of the age of the universe; another leading cosmologist expressed the view that the late 1980s and early 1990s would be seen as the golden age of cosmology, and in the future would become like botany – a vast collection of empirical facts loosely bound by theory. On the other hand, one famous cosmologists was even `willing to bet’ that the proposer of inflation, would receive a Nobel Prize before the start of the millennium (i.e. 2000), and several leading physicists confidently predicted that string theory would be experimentally tested `within a decade’. It is a sobering thought that none of these views and predictions has come true.The other fields that are considered, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, social science, and machine intelligence, have not yet hit an intellectual `wall of doubt’ in quite the same way, although even here there are mixed views as to whether knowledge will ultimately be limited. For example can we ever understand consciousness; Crick for one is firmly in the camp that believes the scientific method will eventually solve even this problem. Some of the most interesting, although pessimistic, discussions are in the chapters on chaoplexity (the amalgam of chaos and complexity theories) and machine intelligence. Once considered some of the most exciting fields of research, they have not matched their early promise of applicability to a wide range of apparently dissimilar problems and generally seem to have `run out of steam’. Even the Director of the leading chaoplexity institute, the Santa Fe Institute, is pessimistic that the field will produce anything truly fundamental.I enjoyed this book. Although it is not without errors of fact, it is a thought-provoking read. It is true that like much of the `ironic science’ he describes, his views are themselves often incapable of being verified, but I do not agree with some critics that Horgan is promoting antiscience, the rising tide of irrationality and hostility towards science. His message, that `belief in the eternality of progress is the dominant delusion of our society’, is one worthy of serious consideration, even it is eventually rejected. The book is well written and not without humour – the description of a conference in the chapter on the End of Limitology is hilarious, almost a parody of an academic conference – and the descriptions of the interviewees themselves are interesting from a human point of view. They often `expose’ a side that is not apparent from their discoveries and public pronouncements.

⭐Un utile panorama dello stato dell’arte dell’attività scientifica mondiale, anche se espresso in maniera talvolta( forse volutamente) superficiale e generico. Comunque per lo più condivisibile

⭐

⭐Si te interesa la filosofía de la ciencia, merece la pena leerlo aunque sea un libro relativamente antiguo. Da que pensar.

⭐

Keywords

Free Download The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books) in PDF format
The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books) PDF Free Download
Download The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books) 2016 PDF Free
The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books) 2016 PDF Free Download
Download The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books) PDF
Free Download Ebook The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age (Helix Books)