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Everyday science

Everyday science

Problems or prophecies?

04 Dec 1998

What Remains to be Discovered
John Maddox
1998 Macmillan 368pp £20.00hb

There is a spectre haunting this book – the spectre of John Horgan, the journalist whose successful book The End of Science tweaked the collective nose of the scientific community when it was published in 1996. Horgan claimed that everything of fundamental importance that can be known to science is already known, or soon will be. He is nowhere mentioned in What Remains to be Discovered (except on the back cover, as a rather ambiguous reviewer), yet I would be surprised if John Maddox did not intend to write this book as an antidote to Horgan.

Anyone who seeks to prophesy what science is or is not going to discover faces a tricky problem – namely that, quite literally, they cannot possibly know what they are talking about. What can we know about knowledge that we do not possess? It is hard enough to know that one is under a misconception; but by definition one cannot know what that misconception is, or what brilliant insight will dispel it tomorrow. When we do perceive a problem, we cannot tell what it would take to solve it – otherwise we should do so right away. We cannot know what blind alleys are going to delay us tomorrow – otherwise we could avoid them. In short, it is impossible to foretell the future of knowledge. Yet despite the fact that this century’s greatest philosopher of science, Karl Popper, made it his business to warn us of the futility and danger of attempting such prophecy, it has not lost its specious appeal.

Advances in science are expressed as new theories. Yet if one conceives of science merely as a succession of theories, one will miss the point just as surely as if one were to conceive of politics as a succession of acts of parliament. Moreover, because one can know only the theories of the past and present, one must inevitably end up either extrapolating past progress, and foretelling more of the same, or extrapolating one’s present conception of the world, and foretelling the end of progress.

Both exercises are equally empty – and irrelevant too, for the true characterization of science is not in terms of theories but of problems. Problems are the raw material of science, its motive force and its justification for existing. And while we cannot pontificate about theories that we do not have, we can certainly explain problems that we do have. It is because Maddox understands this that his book deserves to be taken seriously, while Horgan’s is best regarded as entertainment.

Maddox, a long-serving former editor of Nature, is well respected in the scientific community, and well qualified to present us with this status report. His quietly absorbing narrative includes a competent, clear and fairly balanced overview of the current problem-situations in fundamental physics, cosmology and biology, as well as some perceptive comments about practical applications of science – including a devastating refutation of the proposition that the “survival of the planet” depends on slowing the pace of discovery.

The context of scientific problems – crucial, but often neglected in popular accounts – is especially well presented. Maddox provides just the right mixture of history, factual exposition and discussion, and his own opinions as well, to allow one to understand not only what current theories say, but also why they are inadequate as they stand, what the disputes are about and why they are important.

For me, what is lacking in What Remains to be Discovered is a sufficient sense of urgency, of passion and of bewilderment at the astonishing dilemmas and opportunities in the structure of scientific knowledge as it stands today. At least the complacent Victorians who (allegedly) thought that the 19th century would see the end of science – or, at least, of physics – had an excuse: it really did look superficially as though the big picture had been drawn and the future belonged to the details. But there is no such appearance today, even superficially: although our knowledge is more unified than ever, it has never before contained such powerful and widespread indications of its own provisional status.

Maddox points to “loose ends”, to “mysteries” in every field, to the increasing standard of explanation that we demand from scientific theories, to the need to deepen our understanding. And he is right. But what an understatement! What we face are not “loose ends” in our fundamental ideas about nature, but gaping wounds. For example, Maddox writes of the need for a “rapprochement” or “accommodation” between the two deepest theories in physics: quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity. It is not going to happen! Half a century of attempts to reconcile these theories by the finest minds on Earth – some of them fresh from the triumph of solving apparently similar problems – have revealed only that our two deepest theories are logically irreconcilable at their very roots. They do not need reconciliation; they need replacement. And if new discoveries in physics cease tomorrow, they will still need replacement, and that need will continue to engage and frustrate the finest minds, perhaps forever, or perhaps, like Fermat’s last theorem, only for centuries until the problem is finally cracked.

Similarly, Maddox mentions the problem of consciousness, but he seems to assume that it will be solved by quantitative advances in existing brain science. Yet that is to ignore the fact that we do not yet even possess a language, or a notation, in which such a solution could be expressed. How, even in principle, shall we express a scientific prediction of what colour will look like to an observer who is about to see for the first time? Again, it appears that only a fundamental shift in our conception of this problem could solve it.

These and other problems that Maddox discusses are, as I said, dilemmas. But they are pleasant dilemmas in the sense that no matter how each issue is resolved, something that now forms part of our basic conception of the world must be overturned in favour of something better. And only an idea so radical that no one has even conceived of it yet can possibly overturn it.

Even the title What Remains to be Discovered is much too defensive. Maddox is telling us that there’s life in the old dog yet. But science today is more like a puppy that has only just opened its eyes, to see the world as a unity for the first time. It would be ill-advised to conclude that this first glimpse encompasses all that it will ever see.

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