What are some of the biggest questions out there?
Some that come to mind right off the bat are -
How did it all begin?
Can we see it all begin?
Are we alone? Are there life forms somewhere else?
Is our universe unique?
What's for dinner tonight, Mom?
(Okay, maybe not that last one. But I had you for a moment there, didn't I? What is for dinner tonight, anyway? Mom!)
Anyway!
Some questions we don't know the answer to today. But we're fairly certain we will have them in the near or distant future. The real question is: what happens then?
There'll be a day when we know the cure to cancer. There will be a day we can control pollution effectively. And there will be a day when we know what the M Theory, the Theory of Everything, is. But what will remain then? Will we have finally reached the point where there's nothing left to explore?
I feel like the answer is no. In an earlier post, I had said that one scientific breakthrough may answer some questions, but pave the way for ten times as many questions that now need to be answered. As of now, I can't really say (neither can anyone else, I suppose) what those questions will be. But I do have two hypotheses for whether we will reach the end of knowledge.
The first hypothesis is that we'll be extinct before we get there. The human race is clever; maybe clever enough to outlast a global catastrophe. But there are only so many things we can escape. We can't escape the death of our star, or any star. We can't escape quasars or gamma ray bursts. We certainly can't escape the upcoming galaxy collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Humans are just too small to control these events. Even if we do survive the next 5 billion years, we will meet these catastrophes. Every species has its end.
My second hypothesis is that any discoveries we will make, like the Theory of Everything, will be appropriate only for a certain time (a concept similar to, if not the same as, model dependent realism). Which means a new theory will have to be formulated. So we may see some things through to the end, but some things we may just die before seeing.
The end result is: we'll die, or keep finding things to explore. There is no end to knowledge, nor are humans a species suited to "sitting tight, holing up, waiting for answers".
Some that come to mind right off the bat are -
How did it all begin?
Can we see it all begin?
Are we alone? Are there life forms somewhere else?
Is our universe unique?
What's for dinner tonight, Mom?
(Okay, maybe not that last one. But I had you for a moment there, didn't I? What is for dinner tonight, anyway? Mom!)
Anyway!
Some questions we don't know the answer to today. But we're fairly certain we will have them in the near or distant future. The real question is: what happens then?
There'll be a day when we know the cure to cancer. There will be a day we can control pollution effectively. And there will be a day when we know what the M Theory, the Theory of Everything, is. But what will remain then? Will we have finally reached the point where there's nothing left to explore?
I feel like the answer is no. In an earlier post, I had said that one scientific breakthrough may answer some questions, but pave the way for ten times as many questions that now need to be answered. As of now, I can't really say (neither can anyone else, I suppose) what those questions will be. But I do have two hypotheses for whether we will reach the end of knowledge.
The first hypothesis is that we'll be extinct before we get there. The human race is clever; maybe clever enough to outlast a global catastrophe. But there are only so many things we can escape. We can't escape the death of our star, or any star. We can't escape quasars or gamma ray bursts. We certainly can't escape the upcoming galaxy collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Humans are just too small to control these events. Even if we do survive the next 5 billion years, we will meet these catastrophes. Every species has its end.
My second hypothesis is that any discoveries we will make, like the Theory of Everything, will be appropriate only for a certain time (a concept similar to, if not the same as, model dependent realism). Which means a new theory will have to be formulated. So we may see some things through to the end, but some things we may just die before seeing.
The end result is: we'll die, or keep finding things to explore. There is no end to knowledge, nor are humans a species suited to "sitting tight, holing up, waiting for answers".
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