Can science really advance infinitely, or is the end of the road just around the corner?

This article discusses why the progress of science will inevitably come to an end. It argues that the inherent limitations of science, the finiteness of discoverable natural phenomena, the limits of human intelligence, and economic difficulties may bring about an end to scientific progress.

 

The human species has gone through many stages of evolution, starting with our primitive ancestors called apes and ending with Homo sapiens today. Assuming that Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, given that our ancestors were apes, we can see that early humans and modern humans have distinct differences in appearance. But despite these physical changes, the human essence of curiosity about nature has remained the same throughout tens of millions of years of history, and continues to do so today. It is this curiosity that led to the birth of science as a discipline. From simple stone tools and open fires to modern civilization dominated by computers and machines, we’ve come a long way in science, and we’re excited to see what the future holds. However, as a science student, you may wonder: is there an end point to the progress of science, which has coexisted with humans for tens of millions of years?
Before we dive into this topic, we need to understand the nature of science as a discipline. Strictly speaking, science is an orderly system of theoretical knowledge obtained by observable methods of nature. In other words, it is the human interpretation of existing natural phenomena. Therefore, the development of science can be defined as the process of reasoning and discovering natural phenomena that have not been grasped by existing scientific disciplines. Rather than discovering individual facts or organisms, the study of new orders within those things would be a closer definition of progress. Those who do not have a deep understanding of science may assume that progress in science will continue indefinitely, given that it has continued from the past to the present. However, I argue that there is a finite amount of science that humans can advance, and that science as a discipline will one day reach a point where progress will cease.
The first reason for this is the theoretical limitations inherent in the nature of science as a discipline. Science is limited in the sense that it cannot grasp all of the world’s rationales, which means that the discipline itself cannot interpret all of nature’s flows and phenomena in an absolute sense. To prove this, we can refer to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. The essence of this mathematical theorem is that within a formalized system, there is at least one statement that is true but cannot be proved, as long as the system is not contradictory. Although this mathematical theorem is not directly supported by evidence, applying it to science shows that a similar phenomenon exists in science. There is ample support for the idea that science can never be absolutely perfect, even within defined scientific theories. For example, we can find something of a similar nature in quantum mechanics. For any particle in the wavefunction, we can only define either its position or its velocity, and it’s impossible to know both at the same time. This indicates that perfect determinism does not exist in science. Furthermore, chaos theory already explains that there are bound to be unpredictable natural phenomena that cannot be given order. The natural phenomena dealt with in cosmology and evolutionary biology are so far in the past that we only have abstract theories that extrapolate the past based on the present state of affairs, without specifying the exact basis. All of this proves that science is not perfect and cannot define all of the world’s laws. Currently, science is progressing by organizing itself within the realm of interpretability, but it can be predicted that at some point it will face uninterpretable barriers and stop progressing.
Even if the first rationale is wrong and humans do reach absolute truth through science, there is another barrier: the finitude of discoverable natural phenomena. This is the second argument for the end of science. As we explained earlier, science is the systematic understanding of natural phenomena. The key word here is “nature” itself. Nature, which has existed longer than humans, has not changed its course or laws for hundreds of millions of years, and its domain has not expanded or contracted. The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, there are seasons, and plants and animals breathe oxygen to survive. Nature is unchanging. If science can interpret everything in the universe, then the scope of nature is constant and will only expand as humans discover it. In other words, the moment science is able to perfectly interpret all the phenomena in the world, the progress of science will stagnate. There are no more natural phenomena left to discover and define. From that point on, science will be transformed into a discipline that does not seek new things, but rather circulates within the existing framework. This leads to the expectation that science will lose its independent value as a discipline and be absorbed into philosophy. We are seeing signs of this even now. An example is the concept of ‘ironic science’. It is a speculative, new definition of science based on existing scientific theories, more akin to literature or philosophy than true science. For example, string theory in quantum mechanics. It theorizes that it can explain all of nature’s physical forces, but it hasn’t been proven for decades. In this way, science slowly loses its fundamental values as it evolves, and it is expected to morph into a different form of discipline and meet its end. If both the first and second rationales are true, they are mutually contradictory, so science will eventually die regardless of which one is true.
The third rationale is the limits of human intelligence. Humans are the most intelligent creatures on Earth. We are the only creatures that can speak and write, but we cannot assume that our intelligence is infinite simply because we are intelligent. No matter how brilliant our brains are, and no matter how much intelligence we’ve developed through evolution, there are limits to our intelligence. To understand this, let’s look at other animals. No matter how many times you explain calculus to a common pet dog, it will never solve a differential equation. Nor is it likely that animals can understand and interpret natural laws. While human cognition is the most advanced among living things, there is no conclusive evidence that our intelligence is infinite. If we ever encounter higher life forms (or aliens) that are more advanced than us, we will be even more acutely aware of the limitations of human intelligence. If there is no evidence that human intelligence is infinite, then by the same token, there is no evidence that everything in the universe is interpretable to humans. Rather, the idea that the vastness of the universe can be perfectly interpreted by something as small as the human brain is absurd. Science is about defining an orderly system for natural phenomena, but it is doubtful that the complex world of the universe can be perfectly defined by a simple order and system. The fact that modern science is becoming more difficult to understand over time, and that it is more expensive and time-consuming to train specialized researchers than in the past, are clues that we are reaching the limits of our intelligence. When science reaches a point where human capabilities cannot advance it, it can be expected to stagnate.
The fourth and final rationale is economic reality. Governments around the world have reduced their financial support for science since the end of the Cold War. For example, the superconducting colliders that physics requires have been discontinued on the grounds that they would do more harm than good, and as a result, particle physics, such as quantum mechanics, is currently at a near standstill. This is because the applications of particle physics are few and the expected returns from them are minimal. Physicists argue that more research and equipment is needed to advance the field, but no one will fund it if they don’t benefit from it. The moment the financial support for science is completely cut off, science will not be able to advance.
The advancement of science is a sensitive topic for scientists, and there are endless counterarguments to the idea that it will eventually come to an end. Let’s take a look at some of the most common counterarguments. The first is that just as 19th-century physicists claimed to have proven all the laws of physics, their claims were invalidated by the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics, so too will the current claims be invalidated by the advent of new scientific fields. However, this argument is a simplistic inductive approach to the flow of science that has no basis in reality. It argues that because it has been so in the past, it will continue to be so in the future, ignoring the fact that, from a historical perspective, the rapid development of modern science and technology is by no means a given. It is an anomaly that has emerged as a result of a combination of social, intellectual, and political factors. In no other era has science been as active as it is today. Can humanity’s progress continue without end? It seems more likely that we will reach saturation and normalize.
The second counterargument is that science has no theoretical limits because scientific theories are constantly being tested, revised, and evolved through trial and error. Just as Karl Popper argued that science is always subject to disprovability, so too is human knowledge subject to revision and change, so there are no limits to scientific theories, and scientific progress will continue even if science is absorbed into philosophy. However, the nature of science is not so provisional. To explore this, we need to discuss the nature of science and philosophy in depth. Science was a part of philosophy until the 17th century, when it was called natural philosophy and was separated from philosophy as a discipline that specialized in formulating hypotheses and proving them true or false through experimentation and observation. Science then became an independent discipline, while philosophy remained the discipline of creating new theories by presenting arguments. Since then, philosophy and science have coexisted in mutual cooperation. Philosophy would make arguments against existing theories, and science would build on them, making empirical corrections and improvements. If science were to stop advancing in this relationship, philosophy would be left with a vicious cycle of theories without empirical support. If science were to develop in the form of modifying existing theories, it would be defined as philosophy or ironic science, not true science.
The third argument is that applied science has so much potential, such as the development of nuclear fusion energy, that if the public recognizes this, the economic limits on scientific progress, if any, will soon be broken. The argument is that economic limits are irrelevant in stagnating science. I partially agree with this point. It is my view that when pure science reaches the peak of its development, it will decline and the field of applied science will flourish. It is important to note that pure science and applied science are two distinctly different fields. Pure science aims to fully understand nature, while applied science is about manipulating nature into forms that are useful to humans. Even if funding for science becomes more plentiful, it will all go to applied science and less to pure science. Over the past 50 years, the United States has invested $20 billion in building fusion power plants, but not in developing the colliders needed for pure physics. Of course, some level of pure science advancement is required for applied science advancement, so it won’t be completely absent, but pure science is doomed to economic limitations. This is because the applications of science do not require a complete understanding of everything in the universe.
In my essay on this topic, I presented the view that science is ultimately doomed, and provided evidence for it. The modern age is the age of science, and science dominates our lives and has coexisted with humans throughout history. However, just as all living things eventually die and return to a handful of soil, the end of science seems inevitable. It’s a fact of life that every birth has an end. However, science students shouldn’t be pessimistic, but rather accept it as the natural course of history. When the age of science comes to an end, the dawn of another age will unfold, and no one can predict whether it will be the age of religion or philosophy. It would be wiser to accept the inevitable and prepare for it. I hope this article will help scholars who will contribute to the development of science in the future to form the right values for science as a discipline.