Good article on "End of Science"

This article has some excellent points.

Do you agree with the fact that almost all profound, big discoveries have already been made?

If for example we notice that some law of physics can be applied to explain our mind, we are not discovering that law again. We are applying it. All such *laws* have already been found and that what isn't, cannot be found. Such is implication of chaos theory.

no, i do not agree. I believe we just started to discover how the world works , and I believe we will discover at least 10 x times the amount we already know worth of science, within the next 50 years . Possible there is a limit on how much can be known , but we just started - so , not in our life time. Actually the number of important discoveries is increasing on an exponential scale as new discoveries often create tools for next discoveries. See the mapping of the human Genome for example..

I admit we have just got a map of human genome. But that isn't a discovery, nor it does not have anything at all to do with a law. It is just work, not a discovery. They worked hard on what they knew they could do, but they didn't discover anything.

We can obviously find new things from genome, but we are not discovering a foundation.

That I am asking is whether foundations have already been found. Using those in another thing.

We are, indeed, lacking a working model of human brain. That's all there is left, or is it?

[edit on 10/9/08 by rawsom]

Here's another thing.

If I ask whether we have discovered all foundations or not, I will get an answer that will deny this. That cannot be for some reason.

If however I ask whether we have enough data and a foundation to do what we want to do, I will get an answer that yes, we do have such information available. We can do whatever we want if we are given the money. The question then reverses itself.

In all other questions we obviously have all needed fountations, but question is always whether we know have to use it to achieve. But, if I ask whether we know those foundations already, most just deny this.

Can somebody explain this paradox to me?

no,I don't believe the article at all. This is the begining of science. As pretty much all of science thus far,is wrong.

Didn't the victorian idiots try this a couple of hundred years ago?

No, we have not reached the end of science, we have barely a glimpse of the infinite fractal that is reality.

But hey, if thinking we know it all makes you feel smarter, go for it...

I don't think we know it all. Not at all. What I am still saying is that we have foundations of sciences already figured out. We cannot discover table of elements again. What we have is a possibility to reach the skies, so to say.

I'm also not thinking to be any smarter because of this. I put that end of science in quotation marks for a purpose. It doesn't end science if we have foundations. What it does end is the possibility of making a major discovery in context of DNA, table of elements, elementary chemistry, alkaloids and so on.

Well, science, at least popular science, still has to make the discovery that matter comes from energy, and that everything is vibrational frequency, just to give an example.

Then there's the whole philosophical issue of assuming there are no more unknowns. They are called unknowns for a reason...

My opinion is we have a probabilistic knowledge system, where everything we think we know is only a probability. Reality itself is bigger and probably more complex than we can see, so our knowledge, our probabilities, will change to adapt over time.

Originally posted by Zepherian
Well, science, at least popular science, still has to make the discovery that matter comes from energy, and that everything is vibrational frequency, just to give an example.

Yes. But this may well belong to realm of chaos theory, where we must have an infinite precision of known variables to actually create a foundation.

reply to post by rawsom



No i do not agree.

I would say that the discoveries we've made would be the equivalent to a grain of sand on a beach...in (if we're still here) 3-400 years time, people will look back and laugh, just as we do know, at the knowledge and theories that we swear by today.

Ah the rhetoric of a linearalist. They usually pop up in droves just before big discoveries happen and they all look like asses after the fact.

Hrm. I don't actually believe that we have found everything there is to found. There is though a certain limit of different spheres of knowledge. Biology, physics, mathematics and so on.

Then there are hundreds of different areas of expertice on algorithms, cellural decay, astrophysics, ballistics and so on. These hundreds are all covered by some basic fundamental level of science. In these fundamental levels we have not much to find except applied theories.

I'm certain there are some findings left, obviously. Biology in particular cannot yet explain its own holy grail. I just wrote what I wanted because I wanted a discussion about it. I believe I made it clear but propably not, then.

Originally posted by rawsom
This article has some excellent points.

Do you agree with the fact that almost all profound, big discoveries have already been made?

An amazingly shallow article which contravenes the facts... We are only now getting the power to do a proper sky survey, determine whether the dark matter indeed exists and what it is, and it's pretty darn fundamental.

no, the discovery of the genome is not the end of genetics! we have to understand so many things we did not know they even exist only 10 years ago. Within 30 years we could be able to reprogram all the genome - and this will only be the result of a chain of discoveries. I am serious - we just started to understand science!

The "big" boom of the next 10 years will come from nano technology and Bio Engineering. Yes, you could say that we know about integrated circuits for 50 years - however , I would still consider that a processor with nearly 1 billion transistors is not only hard work but a chain of discoveries to help us go faster and faster with our processors for example.

Take the CD-Rom - yes, you can say the invention is old. However now Phillips is working on a 500 GB DVD . This would look like just hard work but it is far more..

greetings,
STY

Hmm..

It is not end of genetics, far from it. But what we have discovered is a fundamental structure which is never again discoverable by anyone. To this structure it is possible to apply numerous different approaches, one or more of them leading to a level of understanding so great that we can achieve immortality, end of diseases and maybe even end of syndromes. End of syndromes in particular is hard to believe, because those will propably go as preventable first. Those already do.

I can understand that there can be a mechanism in genome that we have not yet figured out, which in turn can become a fundamental source of thinking when we deschiper it. In that, we have a language to learn.

Any other science has not ended yet either, but in almost every single one of them we already do have that fundamental driving force in which everything is based on. That is something we cannot discover again.

We can, though, find a new science. But for applied science, end is there in terms of fundamentals, unless we take context out of these basic sciences and apply it into what these derived sciences are deduced from.

lol, how many times have I heard this?

Too many times, I'll say that for sure... there's plenty of examples of people through history declaring that all that can be invented has been invented, and that all major concepts have already been thought of, and there's nothing more to discover.

I'm not sure what causes people to think like this...

My guess is this is nothing more than someone with an enlarged ego, who can't deal with the fact that he can't come up with the next big concept himself... so instead of dealing with it, he makes up an excuse, like, "If I can't think of anything else, then there's nothing else that can be thought of". "If I can't do it, no-one can."

It's a very shallow mode of thought, and pretty weak minded IMO.

You can't make declarations like this without having been to the future... seeing as that can't be done... YOU CAN'T MAKE DECLARATIONS LIKE THIS.

Corporations pay science to do nothing while they
get rid of industrial waste.

They pay science liars to prevent global warming by polluting
the skies with industrial waste.
Fluoride, which is a by-product of aluminum refining.
Sulfur dioxide, they will find a job for it and we will suffer.
Would they dump nuclear waste in the high altitudes for better
communications?

They are full of science.
Platinum must be used somewhere and then put into cars by law.

Tesla, the electrical engineer, made the plans for power plants
and electrical grid for GE and other corporations the rest of his
atomic science was not required. Isotope power of Dr Moray
faired no better. A wind power generator in New York City right
next to a Con Edison Power Plant went all the way to the City
Console to get approval that said Con Ed should comply with
the hookup requirements.

Imagine atomic power plants that you can get extra power into
your house by plugging your car into the house.

You will not get that science but you will get more wars.
War: cheap and easy way to keep people busy and off the backs
of the Illuminati to make profits.

Originally posted by johnsky
lol, how many times have I heard this?

Too many times, I'll say that for sure... there's plenty of examples of people through history declaring that all that can be invented has been invented, and that all major concepts have already been thought of, and there's nothing more to discover.

I'm not sure what causes people to think like this...

I am not sure what causes people to continuously misunderstand what I am saying. Have you perhaps become so allergic to "end of all science" that you cannot read what I am actually saying?

My guess is this is nothing more than someone with an enlarged ego, who can't deal with the fact that he can't come up with the next big concept himself... so instead of dealing with it, he makes up an excuse, like, "If I can't think of anything else, then there's nothing else that can be thought of". "If I can't do it, no-one can."

You opened door for this, but I would rather want to avoid it. What makes you think I cannot deal with it? I live an ordinary life and have been quite happy for a long time, give or take a few downhills at times. That happens, I can't much help but to discover that it is in existence in life, no matter where or what you live.

It is this thing called "there is nothing else" compared to what I am actually saying that you cannot yourself understand. Of course there will be a lot of celebrated scientists for times to come.

It's a very shallow mode of thought, and pretty weak minded IMO.

You can't make declarations like this without having been to the future... seeing as that can't be done... YOU CAN'T MAKE DECLARATIONS LIKE THIS.

Did you at all read what I wrote or did you just jump at end and hit reply-button?

Btw "End of all science" was in blockquotes or whatever, and still is.

Science ended before 1914 as far as I'm concerned.
Atomic science died when America refuse to fund
Tesla's advance electrical knowledge, not just theories.
Tesla sold the devices to Germany in 1914 and the Free Energy
Scientists came to New Mexico in 1945 thanks to Truman.