Losing Sight of the End of Science - John Horgan, Author, DS Pod #223

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John Horgan is a journalist and author who has written books on
quantum physics, consciousness, war, sex, attention, and
mysticism. He was a columnist for Scientific American for 11
years, until they fired him for his 1995 book, The End of
Science. In it, Horgan argues that increases in human knowledge
have reached an asymptotic phase of marginal improvements, and
the future of science is going to look a whole lot like the
present. Twenty five years after publication, Horgan’s certainty
about the fate of science has started to waver. Quantum physics
doesn’t totally fit together, the JWST keeps finding things that
don’t make any sense, and our sense of what makes a biological
organism is getting constantly blown apart. In our conversation,
we go through what Horgan saw that made him so confident that we
were almost at the end, how the landscape has changed since the
mid nineties, the areas of science that seem most likely to open
a whole new world of study for generations to come, and ideas
that probably aren't going anywhere, but maybe should. Pick up
John Horgan's books on Amazon & support the show:
https://amzn.to/49bd7WD Tell us what you think in the comments or
on our Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub Sign up for a
yearly Patreon membership for discounted conference tickets:
https://bit.ly/3lcAasB (00:00)


Go!


(00:03:26)


Who cares about the birth of everything?


(00:06:15)


End of Science?


(00:11:55)


Limits of science


(00:23:52)


Math v. science


(00:36:05)


Physics as map-making


(00:46:13)


Seeing both sides in science


(00:54:00)


Cultural, civilizational dead-ends


(01:03:05)


Blackbody science v cosmology


(01:19:22)


Liquid metal model of the photosphere


(01:25:42)


Back to the beginning of science?


(01:32:19)


Origins & probabilities


(01:51:11)


Seeds of revolution


(02:01:20)


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https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD
studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking
to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time
painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also
did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of
molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring
sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various
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