The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age

by John Horgan

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201626799
• ISBN13: 9780201626797
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

And why not?

In support of a daring postulate, certain to enrage a myriad of scientists, the author harvested a cohort of interesting interviews that provide interesting perspectives. Given what's at stake, one would have expected little support for such a subjective and aggressive proposition, but pessimists will be delighted to discover that they are in good company.

End of Popular Science?

Each chapter of Hogan's book decrees "The End Of". Astronomy, Physics, Cosmology, Biology, Chemistry... all branches of science and logic have their end in sight. Even Limitology will progress no further! In his amusing interviews with leading scientists and intellectuals Hogan reviews the great accomplishments of twentieth century science. But he reckons progress is stalling and will come to a halt. As Hogan points out, each discovery made by scientists is one less that can be discovered in the future! With hindsight, it seems that the theory of gravity, now taught to every school kid, was a pretty straight-forward thing for Newton. It was do-able science just waiting to be discovered. All that remains is for scientists to experiment in scales of the ridiculously small (nano) and large (astronomic) in attempt to discover new avenues for science. The natural world in which we live is seemingly all accounted for. Hogan doesn't think we have a Theory of Everything just yet. Rather he feels we're about as close as we're ever going to get. All this makes an interesting read. It's true that the scientific community has mushroomed in size over the past 50 years. But progress is now slow and hard; no big revolutions to rival those of the past. The impact of the individual scientist has certainly diminished; although there are exceptions. However I doubt that through history of science it has always been obvious what is not known. What gets solved by science isn't a simple list of the known unknowns. It is more than often the unexpected unknowns! For example, the discovery of the acceleration of the universe's expansion - a complete surprise! I have heard one cosmologist suggest that Hogan's book needs to be updated. But despite my reluctance to accept Hogan premise, I do really recommend this book. It's a great read and Hogan argues his points well.

One of my favorites

Listen, I'm a layman, although I enjoy many science-related books, and I don't agree with everything Horgan says. That being said, I find myself re-reading bits and pieces of this book all the time. If anything else, it is lively and entertaining, with really great looks at modern science's most intriguing characters. There are people behind the ideas, with all the accompanying pettiness and backstabbing and pride associated with them. If nothing else, that's a refreshing lesson, is a world in which scientists are presented as having had their theories handed down from on high. Give this book to a high school senior, which is when I first read it, and watch their interest in science bloom, not falter.

Is it heresy to ask questions now?

The wrong time to have published this book was before the close of the twentieth century. Consequently, the title alone will have attracted the attention of those critics determined to demonstrate it as yet another fin-de-siecle harbinger of doom. Perhaps if the title had had a question mark, it would have received fairer treatment. John Horgan writes for "Scientific American", so one can assume his knowledge of science is fairly extensive. That particular journal produced an issue in December 1999 in which scientists from various fields of enquiry were invited to write articles on the direction their various specialisms were taking them. It would appear that each writer was either given a brief, or selected for their positive outlook. The desired effect was precisely the effect it was designed to have, to combat just the kind of doom-mongering that John Horgan is accused of expounding. Now that we are in the new millenium, this might have been a more appropriate time to have published. The question that is being asked is not "Is science reaching a point of redundancy?" but is attempting to discover the limits of objective knowledge. That is the question at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition and is also the reason why science came into being. The book is therefore not concerned with explaining any particular theory which would be a redundant enterprise anyway. There are literally hundreds of books written by scientists who see this as their task and for which organisations concerned with the advancement of science were brought into existence. More to the point is that John Horgan is interested in hearing what the practising scientists who have helped mould the world into its present shape have to say concerning this very serious serious question of limitations. That in itself is not a scientific question, but it has ramifications for science, and so who better to attempt an answer to it than practitioners of science. What emerges is not the high-gloss confidence engineered by a science journal whose interests are self-served by it, but a counterpoint that is an astonishing dialectic that makes one wonder how anything at all ever came out of science. The fact that so much has, and continues to do so is a credit to it, but in the process a certain prejudice underlies it constantly which is the fear of inclusion of any elements of subjectivism. Behind-the-scenes documentaries are becoming very popular ("The Making Of.....","The Larry Sanders Show" etc) it is clear that there is a growing interest in the subjective states which give rise to objective knowledge which is ever on show. Practising scientists are well aware of this dichotomy, and even hint at it in this book. At one point during a meeting, "Lee Segel, an Israeli biologist, warned them to be careful how they discussed these issues publicly, lest they contribute to the growing anti-science movement in society". Virtually every scientist

Stimulating and entertaining

I know this book irritates many scientists, but I found it the most stimulating book on science I've read in years. The critical reviews I've read seem to be more on the order of attacks on the person of the author, than the ideas presented here. The book has a strong focus on the basic question of whether pure science has reached an apex and is now going down hill. But while this question interested me, I was more intrigued by the opinions expressed on a variety of subjects in the many interviews with the biggest names in science of the past half century. I was mildly irritated by the author's attempt to coin a term - ironic science - and although he defined it several times in different ways, I never did feel it added anything to the book. I love science and have nothing but respect for the disciplined approach to truth embodied in it. I think Horgan asks tough questions here and they should be honestly and dispassionately tested against reality. This doesn't mean Horgan has all the right answers - but he is an excellent interviewer and writer and he's asking the right questions, and that's more than half the battle. The reaction of some scientists to Horgan sounds more to me like church leaders defending orthoxy - and perhaps their sources of income and power - than like individuals interested in the pursuit of objective truth. Now that's ironic science!