My Doubts about The End of Science
Sabine Hossenfelder takes a hard look at my end-of-science thesis in this video. I have doubts about my thesis too, as I confess below.
November 20, 2023. In a new video, “Is Science Dying?”, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder gives my battered old book The End of Science a surprisingly positive review. The irony is that Hossenfelder has inadvertently gotten me to reconsider my end-of-science schtick. In May 2020 she released a video that inspired me to study quantum mechanics with the math, a project that I recount in My Quantum Experiment. In the lightly edited excerpt below, I confess that studying quantum mechanics is making me doubt The End of Science. –John Horgan
In early 2021, when I’m nine months into my quantum experiment, Jacob Barandes, a physicist at Harvard, contacts me. He runs an online philosophy-of-science salon that includes professors and students from Harvard and other schools. He invites me to talk to the group via Zoom about The End of Science, which was published 25 years ago. Do I still think science is ending, or have my views changed? Good question, one that’s nagged me lately. I start jotting down thoughts for the meeting.
In 2015, I wrote a cocky, chest-thumping preface for a new edition of The End of Science. I stood by my claim that science has become a victim of its own success. Scientists have created a “map” of reality, and a history of the cosmos and life on Earth, that is unlikely to undergo “radical revisions,” because it is largely accurate.
Scientists “will learn much more about nature,” and they will invent lots of cool gadgets, but these advances “will merely extend and fill in our current maps.” Yes, there are big remaining mysteries, like where the universe came from, how life began, how matter makes a mind, but these mysteries might be unsolvable. So I asserted in 2015.
In some ways, my predictions have continued to hold up well, especially in physics, where the quest for a unified theory looks increasingly futile. In 2002 I bet physicist Michio Kaku $1,000 that by 2020 no will win a Nobel Prize for string theory or any other unified theory. I just won the bet; physicist Peter Woit announced, “Nobel Prizes announced, John Horgan wins,” my all-time favorite headline.
In a 2018 Atlantic article, “Science Is Getting Less Bang for its Buck,” physicist Michael Nielsen and software entrepreneur Patrick Collison credit me with having foreseen our current scientific stagnation. They argue that we are “investing vastly more merely to sustain (or even see a decline in) the rate of scientific progress.”
But my ongoing quantum project has forced me to question a key premise of The End of Science, that science has given us an accurate map of reality. Yes, quantum mechanics accounts for countless experiments, and its applications have transformed our world, but it calls all our knowledge into question. Experts cannot agree on what quantum theory tells us about the nature of matter, energy, space, time, mind.
In The End of Science, I say particle physics “rests on the firm foundation of quantum mechanics.” Firm foundation? What a joke! The more I study quantum mechanics, the more physics resembles a house of cards. Floating on a raft. On a restless sea. Physics seems wobbly, ripe for revolution, for a paradigm shift that sends science veering off in unexpected directions.
Einstein hoped quantum mechanics would yield to a more sensible theory. Another possibility is that we become increasingly doubtful of all mathematical models. Forget imaginary numbers, which are crucial to quantum calculations; real numbers aren’t as real as we’d like to believe. Real numbers, which correspond to points on a line running from negative infinity to positive infinity, are mathematical beasts of burden. They help us model and track things in nature, like rockets, rainbow trout and electrons.
But most scientific measurements are approximations, which come with error bars. Real numbers, in contrast, are impossibly precise. Lying between any two integers are an infinite number of real numbers, each of which must be specified with an infinite number of digits.
Maybe we shouldn’t think of mathematical theories like quantum mechanics and general relativity as true. Maybe we should view the theories as calculating devices that predict experimental outcomes but have an obscure relation to nature.
I’ve become more sympathetic toward a philosophical outlook called pluralism. Just because a theory works does not mean it is “The Truth”; there might be many other theories out there just as effective, or more effective. In my book Mind-Body Problems, I propose that the mind-body problem has not one but many possible “solutions.”
I dump these doubts about The End of Science on the Harvard philosophy of science group. Thirty-two people, young and old, female and male, have shown up for the Zoom conversation. Several propose during the Q&A that advances in technology could propel science out of its doldrums. Artificial intelligences based on quantum computing might solve problems too hard for flesh-and-blood scientists, like unifying physics and explaining how matter makes minds. We could also boost our intelligence by getting wi-fi-linked brain chips that turn us into a super-intelligent hive mind.
I point out that I explored possibilities like these at the end of The End of Science, in a chapter titled “Scientific Theology, or the End of Machine Science.” The chapter focuses on the visions of physicists Freeman Dyson, Frank Tipler and John Barrow, who prophesied that our ancestors will evolve into a cosmic computer with godlike powers.
I predicted that this hi-tech deity in the far, far future would try to solve the mystery of its own existence, but it would fail, because there is no answer to the riddle, Why is there something rather than nothing? God, if there is a God, does not know where She/He/They/It came from; God is even more baffled by existence than we are.
I admit that I reached this conclusion during a psychedelic trip back in 1981, when I became the godlike computer at the end of time. Some members of the Harvard philosophy salon smile, others seem taken aback. They’re probably wondering, Is this guy kidding? Is he nuts?
I’m not sure myself. After almost two hours, I’m in a state of manic exhaustion tinged with derealization. Before signing off, I reiterate my main point: My quantum experiment has me questioning not just my end-of-science thesis but everything, including my faith in human reason and progress. The world seems more baffling and frightening than ever.
Further Reading:
The End of Science, 2015 edition
Huge Study Confirms Science Ending! (Sort Of)
Is Ultimate Truth an Equation? Nah
Pluralism: Beyond the One and Only Truth
Sabine Hossenfelder, The End of Science and My Quantum Experiment
See also the free, online editions of My Quantum Experiment and Mind-Body Problems.