Many scientists make extravagant claims as to the scope and power
of scientific thinking, claiming that ultimately it will provide a
complete understanding of everything. But Russell Stannard, himself
an eminent high-energy physicist, strongly disagrees with this
grandiose claim. Indeed, in The End of Discovery, Stannard argues
that eventually--perhaps in a few decades, perhaps in a few
centuries--fundamental science will reach the limit of what it can
explain. On that day, the scientific age, like the stone age and
the iron age before it, will come to an end.
To highlight the boundaries of scientific understanding, Stannard
takes readers on an engaging tour of some of the deepest questions
facing science today--questions to do with consciousness, free
will, the nature of space, time, and matter, the existence of
extraterrestrial life, and much more. For instance, from his own
research field, he points out that to understand the subatomic
world, scientists depend of particle accelerators, but to
understand the very smallest units of nature, it has been
calculated that we would need an accelerator the size of a galaxy.
Clearly, unless a new approach comes along, we might never
understand fully the most basic building blocks of the universe.
As a scientist, Stannard remains hopeful that several of the
questions addressed will one day be answered. But other puzzles
will remain for all time--and we may never even realize it when we
have hit an insuperable barrier in those directions.
He assures us that there will always be new uses of scientific
knowledge. Technology will continue. But fundamental science
itself--the making of fresh discoveries as to how the world
works--must ultimately grind to a halt.
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