Nat Geo Writer: Science Is Running Out of "Great" Things To Discover

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "John Horgan writes in National Geographic that scientists have become victims of their own success and that 'further research may yield no more great revelations or revolutions, but only incremental, diminishing returns.' The latest evidence is a 'Correspondence' published in the journal Nature that points out that it is taking longer and longer for scientists to receive Nobel Prizes for their work. The trend is strongest in physics. Prior to 1940, only 11 percent of physics prizes were awarded for work more than 20 years old but since 1985, the percentage has risen to 60 percent. If these trends continue, the Nature authors note, by the end of this century no one will live long enough to win a Nobel Prize, which cannot be awarded posthumously and suggest that the Nobel time lag 'seems to confirm the common feeling of an increasing time needed to achieve new discoveries in basic natural sciences—a somewhat worrisome trend.' One explanation for the time lag might be the nature of scientific discoveries in general—as we learn more it takes more time for new discoveries to prove themselves.

Researchers recently announced that observations of gravitational waves provide evidence of inflation, a dramatic theory of cosmic creation. But there are so many different versions of 'inflation' theory that it can 'predict' practically any observation, meaning that it doesn't really predict anything at all. String theory suffers from the same problem. As for multiverse theories, all those hypothetical universes out there are unobservable by definition so it's hard to imagine a better reason to think we may be running out of new things to discover than the fascination of physicists with these highly speculative ideas. According to Keith Simonton of the University of California, 'the core disciplines have accumulated not so much anomalies as mere loose ends that will be tidied up one way or another.'"

Comments

Level of public funding ?

[makapuf]

Well, I think this might have to do with the level of basic science funding (of course I don"t have any figures to back that). Also, this reminds me of chemists after organic chemistry / atomic physics discoveries saying that basically, science was done. Just in time for quantum physics to be discovered ...

So, that's great : saying this just means that we're on the verge of a big event in science !

Re:Level of public funding ?

[artor3]

Science funding as a percentage of GDP has actually been remarkably consistent at around 2.5% going back several decades. Note that that is total funding. The split between industry and public funding used to be fairly even, but in the last 20 years the balance has shifted sharply towards industry. And industry, of course, prefers to spend on things that will be profitable in the next few years. So we see great advancements in consumer electronics, medicine, etc., but not so much in basic understanding of the universe.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Science is worthless if we don't use it in practical applications. But if we're looking for reasons why less basic research is getting done, this could play a role.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[schnell]

I think this might have to do with the level of basic science funding (of course I don"t have any figures to back that)

That's not John Horgan's point. He is, by the way, a very controversial figure in science journalism (in a good way). Back in 1997, he wrote a fascinating book called The End of Science, the thesis of which was pretty much the same as this article. It examined a number of different sciences and reviewed the accumulated evidence that there were no more major league breakthroughs (a la relativity, quantum mechanics, the unraveling of the DNA double helix) to be found, and scientists henceforward would largely be fleshing out and clarifying the implications of the big discoveries of the past.

Scientists of all stripes, of course, immediately decried the book - if that belief gained traction it would kill the climate for future funding as well as killing most interest among future scientists from entering the field. But regardless of your perspective, it was a great book since it raised some interesting questions for discussion, and it's very very worth reading if you have any interest in science.

Long story short, Horgan's thesis isn't "oh noes we aren't funding basic research," it's more along the lines of "there is just nothing as huge to discover left, no matter how much money you pour onto it. That doesn't mean science isn't useful but you have to adjust your expectations not to expect any more great revolutions like have happened regularly from the 17th century through the 20th centuries." Many Slashdotters will reject that argument out of hand, but Horgan has done his homework enough that it's a compelling read and worth considering his point even if you disagree with it.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[crgrace]

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Science is worthless if we don't use it in practical applications. But if we're looking for reasons why less basic research is getting done, this could play a role.

I think it's a bad thing. Most of our great advancements in consumer electronics, medicine, and computing are based on mining basic research (that was mostly publicly funded). When that mine is played out where will the raw material for new advances come from?

Re:Level of public funding ?

[ShanghaiBill]

Science funding as a percentage of GDP has actually been remarkably consistent at around 2.5% going back several decades.

Prior to WWII, when the major discoveries in 20th Century physics were made, science funding was far lower. The theory of relativity was developed with this much funding: $0.

The low hanging fruit are gone. The days are past when a Swiss patent examiner could make world changing discoveries in his spare time.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[flaming error]

"He is ...a very controversial figure in science journalism (in a good way)"

Good why? Does he have a gift for explaining new scientific discoveries to laypeople? Does he somehow further the state of the art?

Sounds to me like what he does for a living is tell people that scientific progress is ending. I see no compelling evidence from him supporting that point, and I see nothing good coming from pushing that idea.

Many Americans don't even accept evolution or global warming yet. Pretending that where we are is the furthest we'll ever get is not constructive and not correct.

If this is all he's got, I wouldn't even call him a science journalist. He's more like an op-ed columnist/author.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[blue trane]

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."

Michelson, 1903

Re:Level of public funding ?

[SEE]

Right now, our current observations combined with general relativity say 96% of the universe is unaccounted-for by anything resembling a solid theory in quantum mechanics. Or, conversely, our current observations combined with quantum mechanics says general relativity is so wrong that it only can be made to work by assuming a mass-energy budget 25 times greater than that of the actual universe. So how can there not be anything huge to discover?

Granted, the stuff might be beyond our ability to discover, but we pretty blatantly don't know what's actually going on.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[Ol Olsoc]

Many Americans don't even accept evolution or global warming yet.

No germane to the point.

Frnkly, I believe it is exactly the point. The People who refuse to accept sicnece that is inconvenient, or just a handy hate-target to their beliefs have already discovered just as much as they want or will ever accept.

The power of willful ignorance is a core value of much of the world's population. And they fully believe we already know all we need or should know. Added to that is a more benign, but no less correct version of "We knows it all!" John Morgan makes of arguing from personal incredulity.

A curve which approaches a line asymptotically will make its big progress early (taking t as the horizontal axis) and small gains afterward. It will still get closer, but not in a way that makes a big change. It's a reasonable hypothesis that science will approach the maximum possible knowledge of the world in the same fashion.

Th old traveling halfway to a destination with each step argument. Nice, but only possible to see in retrospect - and that would be after millennia had passed with nothing new discovered.

The amount of possible knowledge is not infinite.

But it takes a lot of hubris when we declare that we already know almost everything. For those who would say that, I demand the proof.

Prove to the world that mankind knows all but the final bits of all possible knowledge.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[Ol Olsoc]

Wasn't Dark Energy discovered after that book? Something that occupies some 70% of the universe?

"Dark Energy" is just a buzzword for "We have no idea what this stuff is, but it has to exist or else we gotta start over."

The idea has been rumbling around for quite a few years now, so while you are not quite correct, you point out exactly why we don't know it all yet. Dark energy and it's ramifications will keep us busy for a long time yet.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[Baloroth]

It's a fundamentally flawed hypothesis, because by definition we don't know what we haven't discovered yet. I might even go so far as to say the knowledge we haven't acquired is greater than the knowledge we have. This has been true historically, it is probably true now, and it might well remain true for... well, actually, forever, though it's impossible to know.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[ShanghaiBill]

The theory of relativity was hardly "low-hanging fruit".

Yes it was. The experimental evidence for discrepancies in Newtonian Physics was mounting rapidly, especially after the Michelson-Morley Experiment. Relativity was a simple and elegant explanation. It just took a few key insights. If Einstein hadn't had those insights, someone would have, probably within a decade of 1905.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[pepty]

curve which approaches a line asymptotically will make its big progress early (taking t as the horizontal axis) and small gains afterward. It will still get closer, but not in a way that makes a big change.

That probably makes the most sense for fields that address things like Grand Unified Theory/ Theory of Everything in physics. In fields where the goal for the most part is technology (chemistry,biology, solid state physics) the curve isn't approaching an asymptote, at least not anytime soon.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[Opportunist]

Actually, I do think it's a bad thing. You might know the old saying "applied research brings improvements, but basic research brings revolutions".

My pet example of this is lasers. The theoretic foundation for lasers was done somewhere around 1920. Long, long before materials were ready for it. Only in the 1960s the first lasers came into existence, huge, expensive pieces of technology that relied on very expensive crystals to work. Only in the 1980s we started to be able to build cheaper lasers, and it took another ten years before they became mainstream in our consumer electronics.

Today, many fields of work as well as leisure technology could not be imagined without that technology. Everyone here is using technology that either uses lasers directly (like BluRay players or the like), or that could not exist without lasers.

But do you think any of the companies that have to rely on lasers today would have spent a cent on it in 1920 when the theory behind it was developed?

Re:Level of public funding ?

[Beck_Neard]

I don't think it has to do with funding at all. I really think we're starting to bump against the limits of human brain power. The average physics student learns quantum theory and relativity during late undergrad or early postgrad (age range 20-25). 100 years ago this was cutting-edge stuff which the smartest minds on the planet were working on. Now they're required reading and preparation and considered simple compared to the years and years of learning that is yet to follow. Yet our brains haven't changed. It's also the constraints of time and human biology. Take string theory. If you're an average researcher, it takes you a PhD (and usually a post-doc or research position) before you can actually start contributing back useful science. By that time, you're in your 30's, and only have a decade or so of actually useful brainpower left before you start your inevitable neural degeneration process. Most researchers peak before their 40's, in that after that they spend most of their time just supervising new students and doing very little work by themselves. The point is, there is so much to learn now that for most people there just isn't a long enough time window to be able to do something incredible and new. Maybe all this will be solved once we get AI or some way of extending human brainpower. Maybe that's the next technological revolution that will enable the next scientific revolution. Who knows.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statement is somewhat dangerous in at least one way:

It's often difficult to predict market value of basic science discoveries/breakthroughs.

Famous case study: LASERs. For a time it was just viewed as a neat thing. Nice confirmation of theory for the theorists, a cool feat to achieve for experimentalists.
Turns out they have a huge market value after all, once the idea was out for a while and people came up with ways to use the phenomenon.

Turns out even something as arcane as relativity theory has practical implications. At least in the form of having to account for time dilation in long distance signals like GPS.

Re:Level of public funding ?

[justthinkit]

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."
- Michelson, 1903

The more dominant theories trying to describe the fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been selected, and these are so firmly locked in that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Thank goodness.

Complete and utter wastes of time like string theory are useful at creating employment, while guaranteeing that nothing will ever be gained/learned/discovered.

Instead of resolving theory conflicts, or encouraging new theories, we have "status quo" stagnation. There is no money in a new theory, especially one that is better than the old ones.

Rather than costing $5B/year, like the LHC, a new theory could appear at zero cost. Luckily the pay-to-publish system should ensure its stillbirth.

Until warp drive is invented...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hundreds of years ago, there was a "diminishing return." The Rennaisance led to a bunch of discoveries, followed by a period of "plateau." Then a hundred years ago there was massive explosion in discovery and theory. To think we've discovered it all is naive, like proclaiming after Newton that there is nothing left in Physics to discover. It might take a while before the next Einstein but it will probably happen again.

Re:Until warp drive is invented...

[plover]

What happened was the advent of computing, which made solutions to unattainably hard problems attainable. That was rapidly followed by the advent of global communications, allowing people to collaborate like never before. Cheap energy has turned the average person's daily tasks of searching for food and warmth into a side task, allowing more people than ever to get a high quality education, and enter a research field. All kinds of work has gone into discovery at an unprecedented rate.

We don't know for sure what the next advance will be, but it will be built on a lot of the new tools we've just created.

Re:Until warp drive is invented...

[sploxx]

First of all, science is trying to better understand the world, by making models predicting something. It isn't engineering.

In that sense, I think science is always a refinement of the understand of reality. Of course, there is now quantum mechanics and there is relativity. But if you go back in time before that, most of the basic ideas in (mechanical) engineering are pretty much settled since Newton got hit by the apple. And if there are humans in a 1000 years, they will still be ruled to a large extent by gravity!

I think we are approaching at least a phase where experiments and 'engineering' (and here I call everything except fundamental physics 'engineering') has to catch up with our knowledge of physics. In the sense of testing and exploiting what we learned about reality so far. The LHC and Icecube, examples for machines for doing fundamental (particle) physics, are already km-scale. Maybe we need to be able to see more subtle effects and maybe on scales that are either inaccessible or not easily accessible to us to make new 'great' discoveries? If so, I think, yes, science is indeed running out of 'great' discoveries. But maybe because we will need (I guess a VERY long time) to catch up with our engineering first.

Heinrich Hertz - 1875

[YrWrstNtmr]

"Sometimes I really regret that I did not live in those times when there was still so much that was new; to be sure enough much is yet unknown, but I do not think that it will be possible to discover anything easily nowadays that would lead us to revise our entire outlook as radically as was possible in the days when telescopes and microscopes were still new."

Lord Kelvin

[YrWrstNtmr]

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement"

Also, all inventions are invented

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The famous line from the head of the US patent office in 1902:

In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold

Or the slightly less famous line from the head of the US patent office in 1843:

The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.

I've heard this one before ...

[cold fjord]

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Attributed to C. H. Duell, Commissioner of US patent office, 1899.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Attributed to Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olsen, DEC, 1977

They might as well start preparing an entry for him in the book of silly predictions.

There is still plenty of physics to figure out. The same with biological systems. Plenty of math to work out too.

Should be called: Please disprove my claim.

[lmasaya]

This claim is an over-generalization. Nobel prize does not cover all fields of science. Actually, very few. There is no way to predict that someone will not come along and actually make a finding that does not require huge labs or previous work. Almost sounds like a troll to me.

this again...

[dala1]

How many times has this been said before, and proven wrong?

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
- Albert Michelson,1894

Re:this again...

[Biff Stu]

Of course when Michelson said this, there were just a couple of loose ends to be figured out...the "UV Catastrophe" associated with the discrepancy between the purely electromagnetic theory of blackbody radiation, and the strange threshold behavior associated with the photoelectric effect.

Right now, we keep on building bigger and bigger colliders and can't really find anything beyond the Standard Model. It seems that the biggest advances these days are coming from Astrophysics rather than High Energy Physics. Today, the two pesky loose ends that are likely to change everything are dark matter and dark energy. What we need is a theory that explains these phenomena and an experiment to test the theory.

I think he's right...

[XxtraLarGe]

After all, the only thing left to discover after Nanotechnology & Nuclear Fusion is Future Technology. Then what?

Re:I think he's right...

[JeffAtl]

What are the 2 missing fundamental forces?

Re:I think he's right...

[UnknownSoldier]

* Strong Galactic Force
* Weak Galactic Force

Science will discover them once we can see Quantum Energy and the flow back and forth between black holes and white holes.

Meh, not this guy again.

[Gavin Scott]

Horgan has been going on about stuff like this for years. He wrote a book in 1997 called "The End of Science" which I read and thought was completely ridiculous. My recollection (possibly faulty as it's been quite a few years) is that he came across as very anti-science and wandered off into religion later in that book. It feels to me as though he WANTS science to fail at some point.

I don't know why he seems hell-bent on convincing everyone that we're going to run out of things to discover, but I just don't buy it.

Even if we manage to get to the "bottom" of Physics some day that's cool and all but it's hardly the end of much. The biology of even simple cells is fantastically complex and there's lifetimes worth of discovery left there. Also even if some day we we know most or all of the "rules", the possible applications of these simple rules are virtually infinite, so no scientists or technologists or explorers are likely to be unemployed any time soon.

Every time humanity thinks it knows everything, someone thinks up a clever new idea for measuring things and boom, a whole new world of complexity opens up. There might be an end to the turtles at some point, but I'm not worried :)

G.

Re:Meh, not this guy again.

[Wycliffe]

Agree wholeheartedly. We "might" be saturated in physics but I doubt even that.
We are no where close to being saturated in biology. We don't understand a single
cell, we have yet to create a life from non-living matter, we are no where close on
actually creating any type of artificial life and/or artificial intelligence. We have
barely scratched the surface of the brain or conscienceness or dna. When we have
artificial intelligence, can repair the spine, can repair the brain, understand what
causes retardation and autism and can fix it, can cure cancer, can pick and chose
dna attributes for children, cure aging, reverse aging, regrow limbs, etc... then we'll talk.

Welcome to 1894:

[Hartree]

This hoohah even managed to drag me and my BS detector back from Soylent.

(I'm blatantly stealing this quote from one Robert A. Nelson, but it sums up my point quite well.)

In 1894, Albert A. Michelson remarked that in physics there were no more fundamental discoveries to be made. Quoting Lord Kelvin, he continued, âoeAn eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.â

A few short years later, physics was grappling with two tiny details called quantum mechanics and special relativity.

I just got back from a talk outlining the unbelievable complexity involved in the assembly of fleeting RNA and protein complexes that are crucial in translating DNA to protein in our cells. What they are doing and how they do it is not at all well understood, regardless that our lives and that of all cellular/multicellular life depend critically on it.

Three weeks ago BICEP2 gave fair evidence of beyond standard model physics (How else can you characterize amplified quantum fluctuations in the field of gravity?). This is something that only happens at many many orders of magnitude greater energy than we've ever observed before.

And you propose to tell me that science is mostly finished but for tidying up "minor details"?

That's spelled "horseshit" where I come from.

Out of easy experiments?

[joe_frisch]

We are not out of physics - still lots of big mysteries: Dark matter, dark energy, unification, quantum gravity etc. It is possible though that we are running out of small scale experiments and future ones will on average become more expensive and take longer. Bigger accelerators. Bigger telescopes etc.

I hope this isn't true and that people can become more clever, but it might be.

Astronomy (exoplanets,etc ) and Cosmology say Hi!

[dtolman]

Considering that less than 20 years ago there were no known extrasolar planets, no one had ever even thought up of the Holographic universe theory, or debated the existence (and implications) of a firewall around blackholes, not to mention the so dark we still can't find it Dark Matter... I mean - we haven't even made enough discoveries to start making theories yet with Exoplanets (gaseous Super Earths are brand new in the past year, I believe), and cosmology has huge areas to explore and craft experiments around that are literally brand new.

I think we're going to be just fine in the theory and spectacular discovery department.

NatGeo: look at who owns it....

[recharged95]

It's not there are less things to discover, but the reason NatGeo exists. As a Fox property, it need to help the bottom line: hence, sensational science is what they are looking for.

In this world of 10sec blog explanations of DNA formation, 1min youtube videos describing string theory and watered down Odyssey's (I'm talking to you Cosmos, Seth and Neil). There are more science discoveries out there... only if reporters take a little more time than glancing at their smart phone to write up the next science story based on some VC's press release of some cool silicon valley startup using science.

Fuck that noise

[PvtVoid]

Like we know everything. Or even anything much at all. In terms of understanding the nature of the world. we have only scratched the barest surface. Immense depths lay undiscovered.

Let's go!

Re:No mysteries solvable within a lifetime

[crgrace]

I think you can demolish his argument that Nobel lag is indicative of science slowing down much more easily than that.

Think of the Nobel prize as an asynchronous FIFO. Every time a Nobel-worth discovery is made it gets put in the FIFO. Each year the Nobel committee awards a prize and removes one prize from the FIFO.

What if science is speeding up? Then more discoveries will be put into the FIFO than Nobel prizes can empty. So the FIFO gets longer and the length of time between discovery and prize gets longer.

What if science is slowing down? Than the consumption rate is larger than the generation rate and the FIFO empties. Eventually a scientist would win a prize the same here the discovery is made.

I don't understand this guy's logic. It seems to me more parsimonious that there are so many great discoveries for the Nobel committee to choose from that they are starting to queue up.

So, I think his data indicate science is speeding up.

Re:Good?

[narcc]

That's right, Max, there's nothing big left to discover. It's better that you don't study physics. We've got it pretty much all sorted.

It's not like you'll revolutionize everything and get a unit named after you or something.

(More seriously: Doesn't the author understand science? That's not how it works.)

Deja Vu

[meerling]

About every decade somebody makes the same basic prediction/declaration.
This has been going on for more than a century and a half.
(It could be a lot longer, but it's not like I've seen a lot of pointless stupid statements that were quickly proven wrong in most historical documentations.)

Close your eyes so the world will not exist.

[VortexCortex]

Oh? Scientists are taking longer and longer to get Nobel Prizes, meanwhile our President got one just for being elected! Never mind the more competent and capable black fellow who Obama got redistricted out of office to begin his ascent... maybe Gerrymandering is a feat worth a "Nobel" prize? Ah, wait, now I remember, these prizes are just political bullshit, who gives a fuck about them? I don't.

Neurology is unlocking the mystery of the mind and Cybernetics provides models for the creation of new mental latices so that minds may escape their bodies. Information theory gives us insight into the quantification of cognition and its unification with mathematics. Philosophy may soon have epistemology verifiable through quantum physics and ethics based on rigorously provable physics equations. The theory of expansion says there are multiverses and we haven't even colonized the moon let alone been to the nearest planet in person not to mention the nearest star or galaxy... and these fuckers want to claim science is winding down? Sounds like some Grade A+ Christian Fundamentalist Pandering to me: "Science is almost dead! See, it didn't have all the answers. Yaaaay God!"

Hell, I can barely keep up with feeding my distributed neural network experiments ever more precessing power due to the exponential increase in cheap computation complexity. For the first time on this planet a species stands poised to intelligently design and manufacture the biogenesis of a completely new form of life, and some idiots are saying we've reached the end of the road in science? Fuck that. If PCs continue their progress then by 2050 the machine intelligences in my server racks alone will have many times more computation power than a human head does, to say nothing of the Internet as a whole. We just began 3D printing new organs and regenerating existing organs too. We're making ARTIFICIAL EYES and we can even cure deafness. We've got artificial brain implants restoring and repairing the functionality of minds, we even have the first ever telepathy by way of copying the thoughts and memories of one mouse into another. We may not only colonize the asteroid belt, but even create self assembling minds the size of small planets with electromagnetic brain waves so powerful they can shape reality itself concentrating energy matter at a whim, like the most powerful coherent beams on Earth crudely do now. Science killed the old gods, deprecating the term by defining new ones like Alien Intelligence. Now we are closer than ever to creating god-like beings or becoming like gods ourselves, at the very least immortal, and yet science is "running out" of great things to discover? Really?

I could go on about discoveries and achievements to be made in every field from education to material science, from grief counseling to artificial flavoring, from textiles to construction there is not a single area of research that doesn't stand to make revolutionary advances for humanity in everything from self healing metals and glass to houses that think to transforming electro-chemically powered clothing to vegetables and meats that grow in your fridge to environmentally friendly cellularly engineered organically grown building construction or even just candy that repairs and prevents cavities.

It would take a really small minded and ignorant fool to claim science is running out of achievements or advancements. Try peering out from under a rock some time. With each new technology the door opens to even more progress. Just compare the last century to the century before that to refute the bullshit claim; Try it with millenniums to get a real grasp on progress. Machines have developed capabilities in a few short decades that took organic life billions of years to emerge. All observational evidence proves such nonsensical statements as in TFA ill-informed at best, and an indication of brain damage at worse.

The article is sensationalists anti-science garbage. Nature will grant the same fate to troglodytes as trilobites. If you lack adequate awareness, you become a fossil. Adapt or become extinct.

Re:Actually not true

[istartedi]

The setting, a lecture hall in the 23rd century. "Years ago they thought there were limitations on these things. There were even proofs that things could not be measured with certainty. It was thought that transmutation would not be economic, and that the light barrier was unsurmountable".

Re:Good?

[mwvdlee]

Exactly, you'd better pick a profession with an actual future in it, like patent clerk or something.

Others did

[justthinkit]

Others did have "those insights". Poincare & Lorentz, for example. Einstein just never credited them. Prompting E.T. Whittaker to not give Einstein any credit.

More evidence

[StripedCow]

Patents are slowing down innovation.

1899 issue of Punch Magazine:

[fyngyrz]

It was a joke then....

In an imaginary humorous conversation, someone asked "Isn't there a clerk who can examine patents?" The reply was "Quite unnecessary, Sir. Everything that can be invented has been invented.*"

...and it's still a joke.

* incorrectly attributed to Charles H. Duell, commissioner of US patent office in 1899

Horgan is sans clue IMHO

[fyngyrz]

Just off the top of my head, we can reasonably expect (meaning, we're still short of) fundamental discoveries and/or basic technological developments in) artificial intelligence, mind download/upload to any degree, human augmentation (bio, mechanical, information processing, communications), animal augmentation, medicine of all kinds (in the areas of "how we work" and "how to keep us working" almost *everything* remains to be discovered), life extension, genetics, space drives, fusion technology, 3D printing / assemblers, nanotechnology, energy storage (ultracaps etc.), long baseline observing tech, canned learning, synthetic meats, holography, gravity...

And that's just a few of the areas we know about. No one knows what new things may be discovered by further exploration of space and the solar system, the sea floor, the earth beneath us, the various and sundry signals and noises that we can detect from elsewhere, and the ideas that spring solely from thinking about what we already know or suspect...

From my POV, both fundamental and technological development has usually seemed to manifest in a pyramidal fashion; one develops at least part of one level before you get to work on the next. With that in mind, I'd venture that we won't slow down either discovery or invention of things new until we cease discovery and invention among things known. And I don't think that's anywhere in sight.

But... then there are all those ideas in the SF lexicon, at least some of which are no doubt going to show up, either in the manner imagined or via some other mechanism. Frederick Pohl's "Joymaker" basically predicted the modern smartphone (except his device did some extra things we can't duplicate yet... like keep your up-to-date mind on file elsewhere as a backup); Arthur Clark nailed the whole geostationary communications satellite thing, William Gibson gave us a vision of networks that we still haven't even come close to (and I sure wish we would); Robert Heinlein came up with the waldo. There are plenty of ideas that seem like they *ought* to be possible, too, but don't appear to be so as imagined -- but that doesn't mean there isn't another way to get to those goals. Transporters, effectively FTL transport, levitation, etc.