My tribute for Clifford Geertz got me wondering where he would go on the Axis of Horganism, a new feature on Discover.com. (I suspect the Discover editor who coined this phrase meant to evoke the Bushism “Axis of Evil,” but I’m used to—and, yeah, enjoy--being demonized.) The Axis of Horganism delineates the distance of various science pundits from the views I spell out in The End of Science (summarized in my article “The Final Frontier”). Perhaps it’s unfair to say this now that he can’t disagree, but I think that Geertz would have accepted a position close to me on the axis. He was, like me, what I call a selective postmodernist. As my last post should make clear, he doubted whether the sciences of human nature can achieve durable, objective truth, and yet he accepted that certain fields of science, notably physics, can do so.

By the way, the physicist Philip Anderson, whom the Axis depicts as my polar opposite, has more in common with me than he’d like to admit. He’s acutely aware of the limits as well as the potentialities of science. As a result, he gets annoyed, as I do, with hype about “theories of everything”--whether string theory or a theory of complex systems or a unified theory of brain and mind--that will magically solve nature’s deepest mysteries. Here is an excerpt from my profile of Anderson in The End of Science:

"I don't think there is a theory of everything… I think that there are basic principles that have very wide generality," such as quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and symmetry breaking. "But you must not give in to the temptation that when you have a good general principle at one level that it's going to work at all levels…You never understand everything. When one understands everything, one has gone crazy."

Comments

[nigel cook]

Anderson is a genius for his stance on the cosmological constant (dark energy), which is a lie:

"... the flat universe is just not decelerating, it isn’t really accelerating ... there’s a bit of the “phlogiston fallacy” here, one thinks if one can name Dark Energy or the Inflaton one knows something about it."

- Professor Philip Anderson, http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/01/03/danger-phil-anderson/#comment-10901

There isn't any such thing, as Lunsford's unification of GR and EM proves:

Danny Ross Lunsford’s major paper, published in Int. J. Theor. Phys., v 43 (2004), No. 1, pp.161-177, was submitted to arXiv.org but was removed from arXiv.org by censorship apparently since it investigated a 6-dimensional spacetime which again is not exactly worshipping Witten’s 10/11 dimensional M-theory. It is however on the CERN document server at http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/other/ext/ext-2003-090.pdf

I've commented in more detail about this on your post http://discovermagazine.typepad.com/horganism/2006/10/the_end_of_stri.html

[Shan Gao]

Quantum Motion: a revolutionary book?

A new book Quantum Motion: Unveiling the Mysterious Quantum World has just been published by abramis academic. It presents a clear and detailed exposition of the seminal ideas of quantum reality, discontinuous motion, quantum superluminal communication etc. The book has been sold in some online bookstores such as Amazon. For further information please visit the website http://www.quantummotion.org/.

[Andrei Kirilyuk]

Fiasco, Rather Than Only End, of Conventional Science: Moving Beyond Horganism on the Axis of Truth

It is true that most scientists, including both supporters and opponents of "The End of Science", actually CONFIRM, in one way or another, major points of John Horgan's concept. One of them is that conventional, scholar science has been useful (efficient, fascinating, etc.), second is that it has entered now upon a more or less flat development "plateau", and third is that there are, nevertheless, various new things ahead. The differences are due, mainly, to subjectively viewed different proportions, or importance, of "past successes" and "future progress" parts. The original End-of-Science concept is that there is a qualitative difference between past successes and future progress: the former were great and have basically "explained the world", as much as possible, while the latter can only be rather limited, especially by its importance, just because the basic structure of the world is finite and "already known". The opponents to the "End" reject especially a relatively small role of the future part of knowledge, but there is a general AGREEMENT about the past and modern (great) role, importance and status of usual fundamental science, as well as about its certain "stagnation" today (although it is naturally a more disputable issue).

John Horgan simply "increases the contrast" (and maybe few colours) of modern science picture, but he does not really change its basic shapes (as he multiply emphasizes it himself). I would add that in reality conventional science priests badly need Horgan proclaiming their "end", even more than Horgan needs them ending: in the absence of ANY really notable discovery in the last decades, what they would be talking about (especially with public) if not about their "definite rejection" (or acknowledgement) of the end of science? As I said already in a previous comment ("Nobel Deflation" at http://discovermagazine.typepad.com/horganism/2006/10/quasiscientific.html#comment-23385197 ), it is the end of science itself that is the biggest discovery of conventional science of the last decades: in fact, it is its discovery about itself, sort of "self-consciousness" act (at last!), but unfortunately this FIRST self-conscious thought of conventional science is also the LAST one (because it discovers its definite end), which shows already that we deal here with a quite SPECIFIC, NON-UNIVERSAL and THEREFORE restricted, form of knowledge (contrary to the opposite "default" assumption).

So what if we try to analyse now a yet stronger idea that modern science is ending not because it is "too big" but rather because it is "too small": it knows everything about nothing (or the reverse), as opposed to knowing everything about... at least something? Indeed, the true understanding of reality, even at its each separate level (let alone their unified whole), was never the result, and neither the purpose of conventional, "positivistic" science. It's "hypotheses non fingo" means actually, practically "shut up and calculate", don't pose too much questions "why?". It does not really understand why things are as they are just because it never (seriously) tried to and actually has been strongly opposed to occasional attempts to ask and understand why. Scholar science just postulates this impossibility of "really knowing" as it postulates all its particular technical tools and empirical knowledge, where the former is but formal, "mnemonic" (or therefore "mysterious") instrument to fix and better arrange the latter. There is no place for "true understanding" here, which can only spoil the "perfect" interplay of mysterious, cabbalistic symbolism, unpredictable, confusing, but the more subjectively "fascinating" empirical discoveries (recall e.g. high-temperature superconductivity), and infinite "philosophic" discussions about "what all of it could mean, actually". A clear, causally complete understanding would instantaneously explode all that tricky "kitchen" of official science similar to aero-space flights killing the idea of God living in the skies just above us. By the way, those properties of conventional science show once again how deeply "religious" it actually is, despite its announced "antagonism" to religion (maybe it is closer to COMPETITION between TWO different kinds of BLIND belief?).

All those real features of conventional science are clearly seen in Anderson's attitude cited in this John's post. Anderson, similar to majority of "officially great" physicists (problem CREATORS), just DOES NOT BELIEVE in a possibility of unified knowledge, and one can be sure that he does not believe in it, specifically, because HE, the almighty (together with other truly big ones) has not found the possibility of such unification. If THEY could not, can you really imagine that YOU (anyone) can?! Just don't be CRAZY, it's impossible according to another, and actually MAJOR, postulate of conventional science, the postulate of the unique and matchless superiority of its current top priests (cf. Roman Catholic Church and other religious hierarchies). It is an infinitely repeated story of THAT particular kind of knowledge and its specific proponents. Recall e.g. the well-known history of new-physics mysteries: they did badly TRIED to find a genuine, logical and physical explanation for the origin of those specific "quantum" and "relativistic" effects a hundred years ago, and it is only AFTER the definite FAILURE of such THEIR attempts that the self-assumed "fathers" of modern physics explicitly POSTULATED (led by Niels Bohr for quantum mechanics and Einstein for relativity) that those mysteries CANNOT (and therefore SHOULD NOT) be solved, or clearly explained: if THEY could not do that, how on earth anyone else ever can?! This is the eternal "easy way", "short circuit" of usual, unitary science: it is so much easier (for THEM) to "shut up and calculate" than to pose those "disturbing" questions, reconsider the foundations, rewrite the textbooks, rearrange the order of authorities (with them being currently on top)... The result is that those multiple and strong RESULTS OF OBSERVATIONS are subjectively EXCLUDED from those that need to be explained, leading inevitably to further series of "mysteries" and now culminating not only in the "end of physics", but in the end of (THEIR) physics on the background of profound and quickly growing CRISIS OF PHYSICS. It's a bit different from both simple "end of (too complete) science" and another "science revolution" (evoked by Anderson).

The latter point needs a special explanation as it opposes a favourite trick of "prominent" unitary scientists: if there is a progress in science, it's evidently good (and you owe them a lot of your money), but if there is no progress in science and problems accumulate instead of being solved (despite astronomical investments), it's even better (and you owe then even more money) because it's the beginning of another "scientific revolution" that will certainly bring about unheard-of miracles of nature to every (American) household! In summary, you owe them all your money (and much more than this), irrespective of their results, but only in proportion to their promises (which indeed progress ALWAYS, irrespective of results, because it is promises, alias "research", that are THEIR TRUE PROFESSION and remunerated "result"). Which other business, including religions, could ever dream of such miraculous working conditions?! And correspondingly, none can be found in such deep decadence as that of today's science.

A big change in the system of knowledge is more than needed, but it will inevitably sweep out all the conventional science versions and its own, intrinsic "revolutions" as it can only lead to that qualitatively new, intrinsically unified and understandable to everybody kind of knowledge of which esoteric and selfish priests have so much (justified) fear: as much as man can be described as a "crazy monkey" species, that qualitatively new knowledge (or even its possibility) should probably indeed look as incomprehensible as something "completely crazy" to ordinary mon... sorry, to our great scientists! In my previous comments (see e.g. "The End of Mechanistic Psi-ence", http://discovermagazine.typepad.com/horganism/2006/10/the_end_of_psie.html#comment-24204168 ) I give references to and briefly describe a well-specified, working example of such kind of knowledge, together with its applications to explicit solution of existing "unsolvable" problems of official science. It shows precisely what is the mathematically exact origin of "impossibly big" difference between incorrect conventional science imitations of reality and its unreduced, mathematically correct description in the new kind of knowledge. Unfortunately everything is so relative in a SUBJECTIVE attitude, we look crazy to monkey, monkeys look crazy to us... But the objective reality has a much more absolute order, or "Axis of Truth", on which humans are simply more intelligent than monkeys, and problem-solving, reality-based knowledge is more advanced than broken abstract imitations of reality. More is not only different, it is also MORE...

Returning to the Axis of Horganism (http://www.discover.com/web-exclusives/axis-horganism-ii/ ), I should say, first, that I would turn it upside down putting Horganism on top as a quintessence of positivistic science finally making its biggest ever discovery about its conceptual, intellectual impotence. A "development curve" or diagram should naturally go in the bottom-up direction. Even more importantly, it should not stop on Horganism as we know it today and continue instead to something like "super-Horganism" that leaves far below ALL THAT KIND of knowledge (unitary science), "all that jazz", with all its intrinsically limited content, modern end, past or imaginary "revolutions", dirty tricks, unlimited frauds and dominating corruption and goes towards a qualitatively greater, coherent (harmonious) understanding of reality whose structure will only reflect the intrinsically unified, living structure of the real world we live in. While being a man, it's better to look crazy to a monkey, and being a conscious man, it's better to look crazy to someone who cannot or does not want to understand the world he lives in (and strongly changes it).

In means that we actually have a deep, conceptual fiasco, intrinsic and well-specified deficiency of conventional science, rather than ONLY its observed stagnation, or "end of science". This REAL end of science is both stronger (more definite) and much more "promising" than that of the current Horganism point on the Axis of Truth, for the evident reason: conventional, positivistic, unitary science does not seem to have any, even "small", future at all, but that "another kind of science" (now the true, qualitatively extended one!) has, on the contrary, quite prominent and intrinsically unlimited future. I can only add a final remark about assumed past "great successes" of usual, positivistic science: they are mainly (real) successes of purely empirical development of human interaction with nature, by basically the same "method" of trial and error (from stone to bronze to...nuclear age), whereas (positivistic) "science" appears to be just mechanically "attached" as more or less useful servant to that empirically based, "intuitive" development that has never been able to explain e.g. the true origin of even simplest (but in reality nontrivial!) world structure, the electron (after triumphant empirical discoveries of all its properties and interactions, of course!), let alone something as complicated as real genome dynamics (and they do change it essentially now!). It's really a pity that practically all "great" scientists (supported by the majority of equally professional science journalists) continue to stubbornly (and increasingly dangerously) insist on "their" subjective kind of truth (corrupting even the emerging novelties), while they can clearly see at least one catastrophic result of their activity, extraordinary depletion (especially in "exact" sciences) of quality and even quantity of younger generations of our profession they say they love so much... We do not need to wait for the "deluge after them", it's already here...