The End of Science Part Un: Science no more?

Thanks Zack, for pointing me to the excellent essay.

Horgan has many good points. Specially the one about diminished returns. Even if we experimentally detected extra dimensions or could verify what dark matter is, does it really matter all that much? To us who like this stuff, sure. Will it change the world the way QM did? Not so sure. But, I guess you never know. I still believe, though, that there are enough problems scientists care about to keep us busy discovering stuff for a few decades at least.

Secondly, I agree with the 'technological evangelists' that science is headed towards application. We know the rules of the game now, time to start playing. I think the possibilities here are endless. They may not be the ones we originally thought of (e.g. nuclear fusion) but certainly there are exciting things out there that still need a lot of work. Hey... maybe we'll get a quantum computer in the mid-future and its computing power will lead to some breakthroughs about the nature of the universe.

So is science over? Not quite yet, but we may be getting there.