The End Of Science
The End Of Science

Author: John Horgan

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2015-04-14

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0465050859

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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 Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

The Island of Knowledge
The Island of Knowledge

Author: Marcelo Gleiser

Publisher: Civitas Books

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0465031714

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Why discovering the limits to science may be the most powerful discovery of allHow much can we know about the world? In this book, physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence, the origin of the universe, the nature of reality, and the limits of knowledge. In so doing, he reaches a provocative conclusion: science, like religion, is fundamentally limited as a tool for understanding the world. As science and its philosophical interpretations advance, we face the unsettling recognition of how much we don't know. Gleiser shows that by aband.

Clashes of Knowledge
Clashes of Knowledge

Author: Peter Meusburger

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1402055552

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Do traditional distinctions between "belief" and "knowledge" still make sense? How are differences between knowledge and belief understood in different cultural contexts? This book explores conflicts between various types of knowledge, especially between orthodox and heterodox knowledge systems, ranging from religious fundamentalism to heresies within the scientific community itself. Beyond addressing many fields in the academy, the book discusses learned individuals interested in the often puzzling spatial and cultural disparities of knowledge and clashes of knowledge.

The Limits Of Science
The Limits Of Science

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2014-08-12

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0822972069

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Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher's discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience.

The Limits of Knowledge
The Limits of Knowledge

Author: Nancy Arden McHugh

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2015-07-21

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1438457812

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Argues for a transactionally situated approach to science and medicine in order to meet the needs of marginalized groups. The Limits of Knowledge provides an understanding of what pragmatist feminist theories look like in practice, combining insights from the work of American pragmatist John Dewey concerning experimental inquiry and transaction with arguments for situated knowledge rooted in contemporary feminism. Using case studies to demonstrate some of the particular ways that dominant scientific and medical practices fail to meet the health needs of marginalized groups and communities, Nancy Arden McHugh shows how transactionally situated approaches are better able to meet the needs of these communities. Examples include a community action group fighting environmental injustice in Bayview Hunters Point, California, one of the most toxic communities in the US; gender, race, age, and class biases in the study and diagnosis of endometriosis; a critique of Evidence-Based Medicine; the current effects of Agent Orange on Vietnamese women and children; and pediatric treatment of Amish and Mennonite children.

The Limits of Science
The Limits of Science

Author: Wenceslao J. Gonzalez

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-10-05

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9004325409

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The problem of the limits of science is twofold. First, there is the problem of demarcation, i.e., the boundaries or “barriers” between what is science and what is not science. Second, there is the problem of the ceiling of scientific activity, which leads to the “confines” of this human enterprise. These two faces of the problem of the limits — the “barriers” and the “confines” of science — require a new analysis, which is the task of this book. The authors take into account the Kantian roots but they are focused on the current stage of the philosophical and methodological analyses of science. This vision looks to supersede the Kantian approach in order to reach a richer conception of science.

Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge
Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge

Author: Dennis Desroches

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-09-15

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1847143725

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While Francis Bacon continues to be considered the 'father' of modern experimental science, his writings are no longer given close attention by most historians and philosophers of science, let alone by scientists themselves. In this new book Dennis Desroches speaks up loudly for Bacon, showing how we have yet to surpass the fundamental theoretical insights that he offered towards producing scientific knowledge. The book first examines the critics who have led many generations of scholars - in fields as diverse as literary criticism, science studies, feminism, philosophy and history - to think of Bacon as an outmoded landmark in the history of ideas rather than a crucial thinker for our own day. Bacon's own work is seen to contain the best responses to these various forms of attack. Desroches then focuses on Bacon's Novum Organum, The Advancement of Learning and De Augmentis, in order to discern the theoretical - rather than simply the empirical or utilitarian - nature of his programme for the 'renovation' of the natural sciences. The final part of the book draws startling links between Bacon and one of the twentieth century's most important historians/philosophers of science, Thomas Kuhn, discerning in Kuhn's work a reprise of many of Bacon's fundamental ideas - despite Kuhn's clear attempt to reject Bacon as a significant contributor to the way we think about scientific practice today. Desroches concludes, then, that Bacon was not simply the 'father' of modern science - he is still in the process of 'fathering' it.

The Outer Limits of Reason
The Outer Limits of Reason

Author: Noson S. Yanofsky

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-11-04

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 026252984X

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This exploration of the scientific limits of knowledge challenges our deep-seated beliefs about our universe, our rationality, and ourselves. “A must-read for anyone studying information science.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own intuitions about the world—including our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Yanofsky describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve: • perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense • different levels of infinity • the bizarre world of the quantum • the relevance of relativity theory • the causes of chaos theory • math problems that cannot be solved by normal means • statements that are true but cannot be proven Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there.

Strange Science
Strange Science

Author: Lara Pauline Karpenko

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 047213017X

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A fascinating look at scientific inquiry during the Victorian period and the shifting boundary between mainstream and unorthodox sciences of the time

Knowledge and Its Limits
Knowledge and Its Limits

Author: Timothy Williamson

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780199256563

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"Knowledge and Its Limits presents a systematic new conception of knowledge as a fundamental kind of mental state sensitive to the knower's environment. It makes a major contribution to the debate between externalist ad internalist philosophies of mind, and breaks radically with the epistemological tradition of analysing knowledge in terms of true belief. The theory casts light on a wide variety of philosophical issues: the problem of scepticism, the nature of evidence, probability and assertion, the dispute between realism and anti-realism and the paradox of the surprise examination. Williamson relates the new conception to structural limits on knowledge which imply that what can be known never exhausts what is true. The arguments are illustrated by rigorous models based on epistemic logic and probability theory. The result is a new way of doing epistemology for the twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.