Product Description

As a writer for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, John Horgan has an unsurpassed window on contemporary science, routinely interviewing the scientific geniuses of our times, scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Hawking, Karl Popper and Noam Chomsky. In THE END OF SCIENCE, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be human, whilst also encouraging them to confront the very limits of knowledge. 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? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to these and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, consciousness and numerous other topics. In a time where scientific rationality is under fire from every quarter, THE END OF SCIENCE is a witty, thoughtful, profound and entertaining narrative which serves as both a critique of and a homage to modern science.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1620666 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1 pages

From Amazon.com
In a series of interviews with luminaries of modern science, Scientific American senior editor John Horgan conducted a guided tour of the scientific world and where it might be headed in The End of Science. The book, which generated great controversy and became a bestseller, now appears in paperback with a new afterword by the author. Through a series of essays in which he visits with such figures as Roger Penrose, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, and others, Horgan captures the distinct personalities of his subjects while investigating whether science may indeed be reaching its end. While this book is in no way dumbed down, it is accessible and can take the general reader to the outer edges of scientific exploration.

From Publishers Weekly
Scientific American columnist Horgan here interviews an impressive array of scientists and philosophers, who seem sharply divided over the prospects and possibilities of science. Among the pessimists, molecular biologist Gunther Stent suggests that science is reaching a point of incremental, diminishing returns as it comes up against the limits of knowledge; philosopher Thomas Kuhn sees science as a nonrational process that does not converge with truth; Vienna-born thinker Paul Feyerabend objects to science's pretensions to certainty and its potential to stamp out the diversity of human thought and culture. More optimistic are particle physicist Edward Witten, pioneer of superstring theory (which posits a universe of 10 dimensions); robotics engineer Hans Moravec, who envisions superintelligent creative robots; and physicist Roger Penrose, who theorizes that quantum effects percolating through the brain underlie consciousness. Other interviewees are Francis Crick, Noam Chomsky, David Bohm, Karl Popper, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, Ilya Prigogine and Clifford Geertz. Despite the dominant doomsaying tone, this colloquium leaves much room for optimism.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Rich in provocative ideas and insightful anecdotes, this book investigates a serious question concerning empirical inquiry: Is there a limit to the discovery of theories about nature? The ongoing success of scientific research suggests that a final (ultimate), comprehensive, testable, and effective theory explaining the unity of all reality may soon be forthcoming. Exploring this possibility, Horgan, who writes the interview column for Scientific American, introduces the reader to a wide spectrum of opinion, from Francis Crick, Karl Popper, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Stanley Miller, Margin Minksy, Frank Tippler, and Edward Wilson, among others. His probing interviews discuss engaging themes ranging from language, neuroscience, and evolution to quantum physics, complexity and chaos, and cosmology. This celebration of curiosity and speculation as well as of science and reason is a unique contribution to appreciating the human quest for understanding. Recommended for both academic and public science collections.?H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.