Will science end?

[Maximum77]

One of the biggest questions that keeps me up at night is whether science will "end" and there will be no more discoveries to be made. I fear this because I use science as a sort-of religion to keep me happy and sane. I also believe that if our society stagnates in progress, it will mean the end of us as a species.

Its of course, impossible to tell if science will end as time will continue and we will only know when that comes to an end. However, are there any clues that may lead to us concluding that the universe is infinite or finite in complexity.

Someone gave an argument for it being infinite-"Believing that science has covered most or all the fundamentals is short-sighted and probably wrong. It is similar to saying "we have come to the last number"

Someone also gave an argument for it being finite-"Yes. It is true. There will be significant details which will emerge to tweak the systems a bit but the grand narrative is coming to its end. Science had a beginning and it will have an end. We will always hit a limitation of time and space."

Who do you believe is correct. I can't decide. I am 50/50, more divided than I've ever been in life.

[NichG]

One possible outcome is that rather than ending, science becomes detached from the natural world and becomes about the world we continually make. That is to say, there are scientific fields that only make sense to exist because not just of what the universe fundamentally is, but the specific events which happened within it - the study of biology for example makes sense at least partially in the context of the specific emergence of and history of life on Earth, even if we may wonder if there are universal laws of biology. The study of medicine even more specifically depends on the particular path of evolution that led to our body plans, our organs, our biochemistry, etc. If we had thought we had finished medicine and then found (or created) life from scratch on another world, the field of medicine would suddenly double.

Even if we 'finish' fundamental physics, we can still study the physics of computational universes of our own invention, probably forever.

That sort of infinite regress into self reference may not yield scientific 'advancements' that actually change our lives anymore however. We often reach walls limiting our fundamental ability to be more efficient, to wield more control, etc given a fixed amount of resources - and those walls often are not just a matter of insufficient cleverness, but we actually become able to prove that those walls cannot be passed. The science of engines can't let us exceed the Carnot efficiency - if you want to continue to make progress, you have to look in other directions like new kinds of fuel, new natural heat sinks, etc. We could certainly hit fundamental walls like that before we achieve the things we wish were possible in the physical world, such that we instead have to change what we want or need or are rather than just study it more.

[Rynjin]

"Not in your lifetime" is really the only answer that matters.

[Ionathus]

"Not in your lifetime" is really the only answer that matters.

Echoing this. “Science” as you describe it is really better described as “discovery”. And there’s always more to discover: in almost all cases it’s nested fractally. And there’s no bottom.

[TaiLiu]

There's a book called The End of Science written by a well-known science journalist a few decades ago. You might be interested in it. I don't recall finding it persuasive.

[J-H]

Science is done by humans, which means it's going to be flawed. As a result, I think it's a pretty poor thing to put your trust in or to turn to for reassurance. I probably can't say more than that without bumping into forum rules.

I do think the "traditional" science model of the last 50-70 years where government labs and universities are the primary leaders in science has ended. The peer review process is apparently letting numerous errors through in many papers (you can look up stuff about the replicability crisis), and it's continually chasing grant dollars and funding.

As an example, where is the most "space science" being done today? I'd argue SpaceX. They are actually performing empirical testing and improvement to discover what works and to formulate new principles for affordable spaceflight. Maybe that's more engineering than science, but science without engineering is just words. Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing are making one-use spaceships with multi-year delays where changing one flawed piece requires 13 months of disassembly (one of the "crew transport" things, don't recall because SpaceX is lapping them so much).

We've also hit a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of discoveries, and it seems to require more and more super-expensive machinery to get any farther. The atomic bomb was built with a slide rule, and now it takes a few billion dollars and miles of underground tunnels to do more research into atomic physics. We do still have a lot going on the biological sciences side... whether all the genetic testing and manipulation produces good outcomes or bad, we'll see, but there's at least a LOT of room still for personalized testing and customized medication. Shoot, my wife had some testing done and they were able to identify that her body doesn't metholate or use certain B vitamins in a normal way, plus a few other issues. That's valuable information in terms of identifying specific-to-individual nutritional needs, and it's new and still growing and becoming more accessible.

[OracleofWuffing]

Science isn't here to make anyone happy, it's just here. If you get happiness and sanity from that, that's a bonus and not an intention.

The tail end of Future Challenge 3000, from the Reincarnation episode, of Futurama, tapped on what you're feeling. Maybe you'll find their five second lighthearted approach inspiring, maybe not.

Regardless, the scientific method (pun intended) isn't about being correct or incorrect, but just about learning. When it comes to beliefs, you can pick your choice off of a coin flip and it doesn't change anything. You're even allowed to change your mind, as many times as you want, for as long as your mind exists. Heck, knowing the internet, I will not be surprised at all if there's folks who believe science is simultaneously finite and infinte, or further yet, neither finite nor infinite.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Well, the good news is that our universe contains "only" around 10^80 atoms. It in fact doesn't really matter wat number it "only" is, as long as it's a number, any number. (Some types of infinity possibly excluded.) If you build a computer out of any number of atoms it will not be able to perfectly model the behavior of all the atoms it consists of, not in real time anyway. A model that perfectly simulates a thing will always be less efficient than the thing, and require more of at least one resource. Models includes things like books, and also brains. A book that describes a thing in perfect detail has to be made of more particles than the thing itself. This means the amount of data we could possibly store in the universe is not enough to perfectly describe the universe. (According to some estimates it might not even be enough to store all possible games of chess.) Even ones all of the universe has been turned into one big computer that computer will be incapable of storing everything there is to know about it, which means as long as you want you can keep discovering things, store them on the computer and/or your brain and then go: "huh, you know, the data I just erased to make room for that was actually kind of interesting too, let's go rediscover that."

Oh, by the way, hi Max(imum 77)! I didn't realize we had both washed up here again during the same time frame.

[Peelee]

As an example, where is the most "space science" being done today? I'd argue SpaceX. They are actually performing empirical testing and improvement to discover what works and to formulate new principles for affordable spaceflight. Maybe that's more engineering than science, but science without engineering is just words. Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing are making one-use spaceships with multi-year delays where changing one flawed piece requires 13 months of disassembly (one of the "crew transport" things, don't recall because SpaceX is lapping them so much).

That's a highly specific subset of space science called aerospace engineering. There's far more to space science than just making rockets. And as for science without engineering just being words the four core sciences (math, physics, chemistry, and biology) would like a few words.

[Vahnavoi]

It is more likely that science will end due to all humans dying out, than ending because we found out all there is to know.

Keep in mind: accumulation of knowledge, especially for individual humans, is not a straight linear path. You do not retain everything you've learned. Neither does society. A piece of information, once discovered, does not simly hang around forever. It takes active effort to record it, maintain it and spread it. Rediscovery and repetition are equally fundamental parts of science as finding out new things, and the need for those processes won't end until new generations of scientists cease to be born.

[Tyndmyr]

One of the biggest questions that keeps me up at night is whether science will "end" and there will be no more discoveries to be made. I fear this because I use science as a sort-of religion to keep me happy and sane. I also believe that if our society stagnates in progress, it will mean the end of us as a species.

Eventually everything ends. You, me, the species, the universe.

This may not be a pleasant thought, bur there's no particular reason to believe otherwise. You may find some comfort in the idea that many such events are very, very far away.

Additionally science is just a methodology. A useful one, to be sure, but not a way to circumvent hard natural laws such as entropy.

[gbaji]

One of the biggest questions that keeps me up at night is whether science will "end" and there will be no more discoveries to be made. I fear this because I use science as a sort-of religion to keep me happy and sane. I also believe that if our society stagnates in progress, it will mean the end of us as a species.

The good news is that if this is really what's keeping you up at night, you have nothing to worry about.

If we're taking "science" to mean "scientific method", then that does not have an end point. It's not a set of things that are counted, but a means by which we look at and make determinations about the world around us. That'll continue to exist as long as people exist. I mean, I suppose we could imagine some future distopia where all of humanity has been mentally enslaved and hooked into some kind of meaningless hive mind with no ability to think at all, but that's pretty much what it would take to "end science" (but I suppose it would have to still exist for whomever is running the enslavement).

Even if we just assume "science" to mean "scientific discovery, innovation, and implementation" that's not going to end anytime soon. Certainly not remotely in your life time, so there's no need to worry about it. We are literally discovering new things every day, and learning new ways to do new things with both new and old things (also every day). Honestly, this almost falls into the same trap as the one above. As long as human curiosity and the desire to improve one's live/environment exist, this will exist as well.

The first time someone figured out that a sharp stick worked better at keeping a hungry predator at bay than bare hands, that was "scientific discovery" (even if Mog the Caveman didn't label it as such). Every single thing we experience and then make a discovery about is "science". You walk down a path after a rain, and notice that when you walk on the side of the path, your feet stay dry, while if you walk in the center where the water from the rain is pooling/flowing, your feet get wet, guess what? You just "did science!". It's not just about people in lab coats doing things. It's every single day, all the time, as we learn things and make determinations that drive our future decisions.

And that is not going to end. Not as long as there are people to think and make decisions, and an environment in which things change and decisions have to be made.

[Maximum77]

Eventually everything ends. You, me, the species, the universe.

This may not be a pleasant thought, bur there's no particular reason to believe otherwise. You may find some comfort in the idea that many such events are very, very far away.

Additionally science is just a methodology. A useful one, to be sure, but not a way to circumvent hard natural laws such as entropy.

Well as long as the universe ends before science does; I’m fine with that.

[Maximum77]

Well, the good news is that our universe contains "only" around 10^80 atoms. It in fact doesn't really matter wat number it "only" is, as long as it's a number, any number. (Some types of infinity possibly excluded.) If you build a computer out of any number of atoms it will not be able to perfectly model the behavior of all the atoms it consists of, not in real time anyway. A model that perfectly simulates a thing will always be less efficient than the thing, and require more of at least one resource. Models includes things like books, and also brains. A book that describes a thing in perfect detail has to be made of more particles than the thing itself. This means the amount of data we could possibly store in the universe is not enough to perfectly describe the universe. (According to some estimates it might not even be enough to store all possible games of chess.) Even ones all of the universe has been turned into one big computer that computer will be incapable of storing everything there is to know about it, which means as long as you want you can keep discovering things, store them on the computer and/or your brain and then go: "huh, you know, the data I just erased to make room for that was actually kind of interesting too, let's go rediscover that."

Oh, by the way, hi Max(imum 77)! I didn't realize we had both washed up here again during the same time frame.

Hi! I remember you! Hope all is well

[Chronos]

Science cannot end. For science to end would mean that we had made a set of observations, from which we could logically predict the results of all other observations. At any given moment, the set of observations is finite, as is the set of rules of logical inference. This is therefore a formal system of inference. And it is, of course, complicated enough to encompass basic arithmetic. But Gödel proved that every formal system of inference complicated enough to encompass basic arithmetic must be incomplete: There are statements in any such system whose truth value cannot be determined within the system. At which point we will need more observations to expand our system.

[NichG]

I'm not actually sure that computable physical theories are actually capable of encompassing basic arithmetic. You can certainly make machines within them which return basic arithmetic results for certain bounded sets of input, but thats not the same thing as possessing the sort of self-reference structure that leads to Godel incompleteness.

Classical physics isn't a correct theory of our universe, but it does describe a set of universes that are completely computable. Given initial conditions, their future states for all times are strictly defined and there's an algorithm to obtain them. You can build a computer in such universes. But mathematical truths aren't physical realities in those universes, so even if you can talk about mathematics, you can't actually build 'mathematics itself' as a physical thing within those universes such that, e.g., the truth values of arbitrary statements always correspond to some measurable physical state.

[veti]

Classical physics isn't a correct theory of our universe,

Is there any such thing as a "correct" theory? The only thing we can test is whether the theory is "good enough" for whatever practical test we can put it to.

If you could come up with a theory that was "correct", i.e. perfect, I guess that particular branch of science - would have ended. I don't know if that's theoretically possible, but it seems unlikely - if a model meets all the tests we can put it to, that just means we need to get more inventive in coming up with new tests. And that might take a while - a couple generations, maybe, to develop the technologies to implement those tests. So even if the theory was perfect, it would still be subject to inquiry. And I don't see any plausible end point for that process.

[Kish]

Someone gave an argument for it being infinite-"Believing that science has covered most or all the fundamentals is short-sighted and probably wrong. It is similar to saying "we have come to the last number"

Someone also gave an argument for it being finite-"Yes. It is true. There will be significant details which will emerge to tweak the systems a bit but the grand narrative is coming to its end. Science had a beginning and it will have an end. We will always hit a limitation of time and space."

Who do you believe is correct. I can't decide. I am 50/50, more divided than I've ever been in life.

Only one of those is actually an argument. The other is a flat, unsupported assertion.

My father said, over two decades ago, that he didn't think there would be any more significant discoveries. I pointed out that people who had lived at any previous time could just as easily have made the same assertion with as much support, and there was no logical correlation between "you are past the midpoint of your life expectancy" and "the progress of science is past the midpoint of its life expectancy," and he was quickly reduced to saying "whatever," which was amazingly rare. (If he didn't have a counterargument, he at least always thought he did.)

We might run out of scientific discoveries eventually, but I think the chances of that happening in the lifetime of anyone here are negligible. (Unless, of course, one of the discoveries of the next century or so is practical immortality.)

[Mechalich]

In my experience phrases like 'the end of science' or 'the end of discovery' are generally thrown around only with regard to particle and quantum physics. What they actually mean, within this very specific field, is something more like 'at some point we will built a particle accelerator powerful enough to observe everything about particle physics and make all the observations it is possible to make with it.' As a hypothesis there may be some truth to this: the level of power necessary to push through a particle accelerator in terms of making useful observations probably does not extend infinitely, even though we are quite a ways away from reaching that point. This, however, applies only to one specific sub-field of physics. Other sciences make new discoveries and launch new sub-fields all the time. Pretty much no other field is even close to making arguments like this.

[NichG]

Is there any such thing as a "correct" theory? The only thing we can test is whether the theory is "good enough" for whatever practical test we can put it to.

I use this kind of caveat when talking about artificial universes induced by a theory to head off responses of the form 'but what if that's wrong, what if the universe isn't like that?'. In this case, that would distract from the point that you can have a physics in which you can e.g. build a finite approximation to a Turing machine, but for which something like the Halting Problem isn't actually an issue when it comes to that physics predicting definite things for all initial conditions.

Basically, you can pose questions within a universe whose subject exceeds the bounds of the universe in which they're posed. That doesn't mean that those questions have answers which can be obtained by making further observations of that universe - quite the opposite, really.

If you could come up with a theory that was "correct", i.e. perfect, I guess that particular branch of science - would have ended. I don't know if that's theoretically possible, but it seems unlikely - if a model meets all the tests we can put it to, that just means we need to get more inventive in coming up with new tests. And that might take a while - a couple generations, maybe, to develop the technologies to implement those tests. So even if the theory was perfect, it would still be subject to inquiry. And I don't see any plausible end point for that process.

At a certain point you tend to hit barriers of the form 'no experiment that can be performed within the universe can distinguish between these two theories'. At which point you've got a philosophical choice to make - do you care, even if the only way for the answer to be meaningful is for you to choose to give it meaning?

I think you can extend that more or less infinitely - well, at least to the bound of the total information storage possible using the entirety of the mass energy of the universe - but I would say its up to personal taste whether it still qualifies as science. Basically the same question as 'is mathematics a science?'.

[halfeye]

In my experience phrases like 'the end of science' or 'the end of discovery' are generally thrown around only with regard to particle and quantum physics. What they actually mean, within this very specific field, is something more like 'at some point we will built a particle accelerator powerful enough to observe everything about particle physics and make all the observations it is possible to make with it.'

If your particle accellerator is less powerful than a supernova, you aren't done yet.

[Ionathus]

If your particle accellerator is less powerful than a supernova, you aren't done yet.

Challenge Accepted

[Peelee]

If your particle accellerator is less powerful than a supernova, you aren't done yet.

Challenge Accepted

If we define the galaxy as my system, and a star as a particle, then I have achieved supernova power a great many times. My work is elegant in its simplicity.

[Quizatzhaderac]

One of the ways I'd define "scientific progress" is that certain questions become settled. Yes, each answer raises two new questions, but those questions aren't equal to the first one, they're harder to answer and less important. Like partially filling a hole so there are two gaps on the sides; yes you have a larger number holes, but you have less hole.

Eventually, we will reach limits. The next experiment will expensive. The knowledge gained too niche. As others have said, this won't happen in our lives.

When the next dark age comes(assuming we're not completely wiped out) we'll go through it knowing much more that we did in the last dark age, and probably more than we do now.

[Maximum77]

One of the ways I'd define "scientific progress" is that certain questions become settled. Yes, each answer raises two new questions, but those questions aren't equal to the first one, they're harder to answer and less important. Like partially filling a hole so there are two gaps on the sides; yes you have a larger number holes, but you have less hole.

Eventually, we will reach limits. The next experiment will expensive. The knowledge gained too niche. As others have said, this won't happen in our lives.

When the next dark age comes(assuming we're not completely wiped out) we'll go through it knowing much more that we did in the last dark age, and probably more than we do now.

That seems logical but what do humans do after that. Descend into hedonism?

[Chronos]

Quoth NichG:

I'm not actually sure that computable physical theories are actually capable of encompassing basic arithmetic. You can certainly make machines within them which return basic arithmetic results for certain bounded sets of input, but thats not the same thing as possessing the sort of self-reference structure that leads to Godel incompleteness.

There are analogues to Gödel's theorem (and the Halting Theorem and other related theorems) for finite systems, though. What it fundamentally comes down to is that even though a part of a system can, to a degree, model the whole system, and a system can sometimes completely model a smaller system, no system, whether finite or infinite, can completely model itself. And we, the ones who are doing the modeling, are a part of the entire Universe.

In particular, psychology is one scientific field that will never end. One might imagine that a "perfect science of psychology" could exactly predict how a person would act. But a person with knowledge of that perfect science of psychology could determine what the science would say about how they would act, and could then choose to deliberately act in a different way. There might be some superhuman entity that's capable of a more detailed science that any mere human can comprehend, who could perfectly predict mere humans, but then that opens up an entirely new field of study, the psychology of those superhumans.

[NichG]

There are analogues to Gödel's theorem (and the Halting Theorem and other related theorems) for finite systems, though. What it fundamentally comes down to is that even though a part of a system can, to a degree, model the whole system, and a system can sometimes completely model a smaller system, no system, whether finite or infinite, can completely model itself. And we, the ones who are doing the modeling, are a part of the entire Universe.

In particular, psychology is one scientific field that will never end. One might imagine that a "perfect science of psychology" could exactly predict how a person would act. But a person with knowledge of that perfect science of psychology could determine what the science would say about how they would act, and could then choose to deliberately act in a different way. There might be some superhuman entity that's capable of a more detailed science that any mere human can comprehend, who could perfectly predict mere humans, but then that opens up an entirely new field of study, the psychology of those superhumans.

I mean, I don't disagree that we can and will create new meaningful fields. I do think its reasonable to argue that such things may not be natural sciences though.

Like, we can consider the properties of a universe whose parameters we can imagine but whose instantiation would be bigger than our own. Depending on the rules we set, there may be tricks allowing us to study those questions within our own, smaller universe. But the study of that universe is no longer the study of this universe. Psychology, mathematics, etc all toe this line.

Another way to frame this is, will our investigations eventually become completely independent of the grounding of our particular universe?

[Peelee]

I mean, I don't disagree that we can and will create new meaningful fields. I do think its reasonable to argue that such things may not be natural sciences though.

Science, at its core, is the ability to predict. That's it. Chemistry predicts how substances react. Physics predicts how particles and fields interact. Psychology predicts how people will behave. Even geology is prediction - study geology long enough and you'll find a rock and predict where it came from, or see a rock on the moon and predict how the moon itself formed.

New sciences may yet exist, and probably do, just waiting to be discovered. But as long as they hold mystery, as long as we cannot predict everything, they're still inherently sciences. "natural" sciences they may not be, but that seems a bit arbitrary to me. Thr point is, science will continue until we can predict everything. Which won't be so bad since we'll know what to do to make us happy at that point anyway, if we still even remotely resemble humans ro start with.

[Bohandas]

I recall, and Im not sure if this anecdote is true, but I recall hearing an anecdote about how during the decade or so before quantum physics and relativity were discovered the concensus was that physics had been more or less completely solved. And then of course relativity and quantum weirdness were discovered and uended everything

[Vahnavoi]

That seems logical but what do humans do after that. Descend into hedonism?

That would depend on an answer to a question that is yet to be solved by science.