I’ve written a fair number of posts about science writer John Horgan over the years, and also pointed out posts in which others took Horgan to task for his miguided views or even lack of understanding of the science he wrote about.
Horgan became well known for his 1996 book The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the Twilight of the Scientific Age. Its thesis is summarized by Wikipedia:
Horgan’s 1996 book The End of Science begins where “The Death of Proof” leaves off: in it, Horgan argues that pure science, defined as “the primordial human quest to understand the universe and our place in it,” may be coming to an end. Horgan claims that science will not achieve insights into nature as profound as evolution by natural selection, the double helix, the Big Bang, relativity theory or quantum mechanics. In the future, he suggests, scientists will refine, extend and apply this pre-existing knowledge but will not achieve any more great “revolutions or revelations.”
This thesis of course has not been supported. To name two new mysteries in physics that arose after Horgan (writing largely about physics) claimed that the field was moribund, we have new evidence for both dark energy and gravitational waves. The book hasn’t worn well, and his subsequent work never came close to the popularity of his 1996 book. As he writes about himself (yes, in the third person) on his own website:
Although none of Horgan’s subsequent books has matched the commercial success of The End of Science, he loves them all. They include, in chronological order, The Undiscovered Mind; Rational Mysticism; The End of War; Mind-Body Problems; Pay Attention, a lightly fictionalized memoir; and My Quantum Experiment, which like Mind-Body Problems is online and free.
Apparently Horgan supports himself with a sinecure as a teacher and Director of the Center for Science Writings (CSW) at Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Given that he has gone after me several times over the years, and in an unprovoked way (reader Lou Jost once called him a “contrarian” in a comment). And his rancor continues in the latest post on his own website (below), in which, defending departed Scientific American editor Laura Helmuth, he can’t resist insulting a number of us:
Well before Scientific American’s editor vented her despair over the election, social injustice warriors were bashing the magazine for its political views. Critics include anti-woke bros Jordan Peterson, Charles “The Bell Curve” Murray, Pinker wannabe Michael Shermer, Dawkins wannabe Jerry Coyne and the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and City Journal.
Seriously, Horgan, “social injustice warrrions?” and “woke bros”? And what’s with the nicknames and “wannabes”? No, I don’t want to be Richard Dawkins: I’ve never aspired to that level of renown nor do I have the talent to achieve it. Horgan simply can’t resist mocking everyone who has “bashed” Scientific American, apparently unable to distinguish between criticism and “bashing.” Yet despite his historical nastiness to others, Horgan characterizes himself on his webpage as a “nice guy”
John Horgan is a science journalist who has knocked many scientists over the course of his career and yet stubbornly thinks of himself as a nice guy
And, in the piece below, also praises Helmuth for her niceness:
She is also—and I’ve heard this from her colleagues and experienced it first-hand–a kind, considerate person. That’s a heroic feat in this mean-spirited age.
I am perfectly prepared to believe that Helmuth is a kind and considerate person, and have never said otherwise. It’s a pity that Horgan himself has failed to achieve this “heroic feat.”
At any rate, Horgan wrote for Scientific American between 1986 and 1997. As he says in his third-person bio, “Horgan was a full-time staff writer at Scientific American from 1986 to 1997, when the magazine fired him due to a dispute over his first book, The End of Science.” But he later wrote several other pieces for the magazine: “From 2010-2022 he churned out hundreds of opinion pieces for the magazine’s online edition.” Several of these were under the editorship of Helmuth, who headed the magazine from 2020 until about a week ago.
As you know, Helmuth resigned from Scientific American after posting several expletive-filled tweets on election night, something that I showed and discussed here. Although she later apologized, she announced her resignation five days ago. It’s not clear, however, whether she voluntarily resigned or was given the choice of resigning or being fired. The president of the magazine says the former, but it seems ambiguous; as the Washington Post notes:
Kimberly Lau, president of the magazine, said in a statement that it was Helmuth’s decision to leave, and the magazine is already seeking a new editor.
and adds:
A screenshot of her posts circulated on X, and one account called “The Rabbit Hole” asked its followers on Nov. 12 if Helmuth was “someone who is entirely dedicated to uncompromising scientific integrity?” or “a political activist who has taken over a scientific institution?”
Elon Musk, owner of X and close ally of president-elect Donald Trump, reacted to the post four minutes later with “the latter” — which spawned thousands of comments, replies and likes.
Lau, the president of Scientific American, did not respond to questions about whether Helmuth’s resignation was related to the backlash from Musk and others.
I won’t speculate about what happened, but as readers know I’ve criticized the magazine many times for its wokeness, its misguided views, its pervasive ideology, and its downright errors many times (see here for a collection of criticisms, including the magazine’s infamous indictment of both E. O. Wilson and Gregor Mendel [!] as racists).
Michael Shermer, a Sci. Am. columnist, who was given a pink slip because he contradicted the magazine’s “progressive” views, has also summarized the increasing wokeness of the magazine, as has James B. Meigs. (See also my critique of articles from just the single year of 2021.)
In the end, I think Helmuth’s desire to make Scientific American a magazine infused with and supporting progressive leftism not only severely degraded the quality of a once-excellent venue for popular science—perhaps at one time our best popular-science magazine—but also ultimately led to her leaving the room.
But John Horgan now defends both the magazine and Helmuth in his latest blog post (click below), implicitly assuming that Helmuth was fired—and fired largely because people like me criticized the magazine:
The intro:
Well before Scientific American’s editor vented her despair over the election, social injustice warriors were bashing the magazine for its political views. Critics include anti-woke bros Jordan Peterson, Charles “The Bell Curve” Murray, Pinker wannabe Michael Shermer, Dawkins wannabe Jerry Coyne and the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and City Journal.
On election night, Sci Am editor Laura Helmuth called Trump voters “racist and sexist” and “fucking fascists” on the social media platform BlueSky, a haven for Twitter/X refugees. Yeah, she lost her cool, but Helmuth’s labels apply to Trump if not to all who voted for him.
Although Helmuth apologized for her remarks, Elon Musk (perhaps miffed that Scientific American recently knocked him) and others called for her head. Yesterday Helmuth announced she was stepping down.
Trump spews insults and wins the election. Helmuth loses her job. Critics of cancel culture cheered Helmuth’s cancellation. I’m guessing we’ll see more of this sickening double standard in coming months and years.
Note the implicit assumption that Helmuth was fired (“loses her job”). Well, I didn’t cheer her cancellation (yes, some people cheered her departure), and I doubt that she’s been canceled. She’s been gone only a week, and I doubt that she’s been blackballed in science journalism. At any rate, Scientific American does have a long way to go if it’s ever to repair the reputation it once had, a reputation that was eroded with Helmuth at the helm.
Horgan lays out his rationale for the piece:
I’m writing this column, first, to express my admiration for Helmuth. She is not only a fearless, intrepid editor, who is passionate about science (she has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience). She is also—and I’ve heard this from her colleagues and experienced it first-hand–a kind, considerate person. That’s a heroic feat in this mean-spirited age.
Indeed! Would that Horgan himself was kind and considerate! But in fact I’d settle for “not obnoxious,” but for Horgan that’s not in the cards.
He proceeds to defend the magazine’s politicization:
I’d also like to address the complaint that Helmuth’s approach to science was too political and partisan. Yes, under Helmuth, Scientific American has had a clear progressive outlook, ordinarily associated with the Democratic party. The magazine endorsed Joe Biden four years ago, shortly after Helmuth took over, and Kamala Harris this year.
Sci Am presented scientific analyses of and took stands on racism, reproductive rights, trans rights, climate change, gun violence and covid vaccines. Critics deplored the magazine’s “transformation into another progressive mouthpiece,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. Biologist Jerry Coyne says a science magazine should remain “neutral on issues of politics, morals, and ideology.”
What??!! As Coyne knows, science, historically, has never been “neutral.” Powerful groups on the right and left have employed science to promote their interests and propagate lethal ideologies, from eugenics to Marxism. Science journalists can either challenge abuses of science or look the other way.
I became a staff writer at Scientific American in 1986, when Jonathan Piel was editor. The magazine bashed the Reagan administration’s plan to build a space-based shield against nuclear weapons. I wrote articles linking behavioral genetics to eugenics and evolutionary psychology to social Darwinism. I got letters that began: “Dear Unscientific Unamerican.” My point: the magazine has never been “neutral,” it has always had a political edge.
First, Horgan here conflates the practice of science itself with the presentation of science in magazines like Scientific American. Yes, the actual doing of science should, as far as possible, be politically neutral, and so should articles published in scientific journals. (Sadly, the latter hope is now repeatedly violated.) The ideological erosion of biology, as Luana and I called our paper in Skeptical Inquirer, has led to the loss of trust in biology and in journals themselves; and the same is happening in all STEMM fields. You wouldn’t think that math could go woke, for instance, but it has, and medical education has long been colonized by ideology, to the point where it endangers the health of Americans.
No, I see no problem in principle with scientific journals pointing out scientific problems with social issues. Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, for example, was criticized by three authors (including Hans Bethe) in a 1984 issue of Scientific American. And scientific data on covid, published in journals, was critical in assessing how to best attack the pandemic. To the extent that public policy depends on scientific fact, and to the degree that those facts inform policy, it’s perfectly fine for scientific journals and magazines to correct the facts and show how such corrections might change policy.
But Scientific American went much further than that, taking on social-justice issues that were purely performative and had no possible salubrious effect on society, or even dealt with matters of fact. To see some of this mishigass, I call your attention to the collection of 2021 posts I made about ludicrous or mistaken articles in the journal—and this is but a small selection.
1.) Bizarre acronym pecksniffery in Scientific American.Title: “Why the term ‘JEDI’ is problematic for describing programs that promote justice, diversity, equity, and Inclusion.”
2.) More bias in Scientific American, this time in a “news” article. Title: “New math research group reflects a schism in the field.”
3.) Scientific American again posting non-scientific political editorials.Title: “The anti-critical race theory movement will profoundly effect public education.“
4.) Scientific American (and math) go full woke. Title: “Modern mathematics confronts its white, patriarchal past.”
5.) Scientific American: Denying evolution is white supremacy. Title: “Denial of evolution is a form of white supremacy.”
6.) Scientific American publishes misleading and distorted op-ed lauding Palestine and demonizing Israel, accompanied by a pro-Palestinian petition. Title: “Health care workers call for support of Palestinians.” (The title is still up but see #7 below)
7.) Scientific American withdraws anti-Semitic op-ed. Title of original article is above, but now a withdrawal appears (they vanished the text): “Editor’s Note: This article fell outside the scope of Scientific American and has been removed.” Now, apparently, nothing falls outside the scope of the magazine!
8.) Scientific American: Religious or “spiritual” treatment of mental illness produces better outcomes. Title: “Psychiatry needs to get right with God.”
9.) Scientific American: Transgender girls belong on girl’s sports teams. Title: “Trans girls belong on girls’ sports teams.”
10.) Former Scientific American editor, writing in the magazine, suggests that science may find evidence for God using telescopes and other instruments. Title: “Can science rule out God?“
And of course the magazine was full of op-eds that pushed a progressive Leftist viewpoint. When I emailed Helmuth offering to write my own op-ed about the malign effects of ideology on science, she turned me down flat. There was no balance in the magazine—not even in the op-eds.
The rest of Horgan’s short rant goes after Trump and his appointees, for he seems to connect Helmuth’s resignation with Trump’s victory. Yes, in one sense they were connected, because Helmuth scuppered herself by being unable to control her tweets on election night, calling Trump supporters “fucking fascists.” But to imply that the critics of the journal were “right-wing”or “social injustice warriors” is just wrong. People like me, Pinker, Dawkins, and Shermer are classical liberals, and criticized the magazine because it was becoming a vehicle for ideology rather than science.
“Scientists will refine, extend and apply this pre-existing knowledge but will not achieve any more great ‘revolutions or revelations.'”
It took me at least 90 seconds to think of microRNAs and CRISPR-Cas9 (to go along with dark energy and gravitational waves). Yes talk about aging badly.
As for Horgan, he had me at “Sci Am presented scientific analyses of and took stands on…trans rights.”
As you note well, SciAm lost its mind well before Helmuth’s tweet meltdown. And I stopped paying any attention to it (except when you post about it here).
I pointed out the SDI SciAm issue the other day on one of the posts. Eric S. Raymond wrote a short note on it on eXtwitter, adding that the end of Gardner’s column was perhaps the bell weather. But I warn : a reader on that post warned nobody should listen to Raymond at all about anything.
Back to this post:
“Horgan claims that science will not achieve insights into nature as profound as […]”
This is a tempting thought-goblin that glosses over what it takes to make profound insights to Nature. I’ll leave it at that.
But it is true, or makes some sense, that there are so-called “closed sciences”. Crystallographic symmetry is one example that comes to (as put forth on an MIT Press book inside flap … it’s in a pile of mine inaccessible ATM…).
Crystallographic symmetry isn’t a science, is it? I thought the science was called “crystallography.” And even if that science is “closed,” Horgan’s thesis applied to ALL science–physics, chemistry, biology, and so on.
There’s 230 space groups.
I think that’s what they mean. Perhaps it is pure mathematics. Your crystal is one of those SGs and yes it can be a quasi crystal (amazing Nobel prize winning work!) but usually not. The International Tables for Crystallography are … comprehensive.
But a crystal is a material, empirical specimen, so scientific, but maybe this is pilpul to explain. (Amusing, at least). Crystallography encompasses more than pure mathematics, so I agree with you PCC(E). I think there was a lot of scientific work on crystal symmetry but it’s all done now, perhaps.
But I shall return with a quote! I just found that idea astonishing – “closed science”.
[ goes to get shovel ]
Found it!
“reissued in paperback The MIT Press for two reasons. First, geometric crystallography is generally regarded as one of the few “closed” sciences—-it was brought to formal completeness about seventy years ago, and future research (or newer texts) will have little to add to what this book presents.
And second, [..]”
Elementary Crystallography – An Introduction to the Fundamental Geometric Features of Crystals
Martin J. Buerger
MIT Press
1956, 1963, (1978 pb)
You may be interested to know that the 2021 Connecticut high school track case you presented in your item #9 is still going on. The trial judge granted a presumptive dismissal to the school system which had allowed the two boys to run against the girls. The girls appealed to Federal Court. A three-judge panel sided with the trial judge and dismissed the appeal. Undeterred, the girls appealed for a full hearing by the Second Circuit Court where they won! The case has just been sent back down to the original judge who, Megyn Kelly reports, now accepts that he misinterpreted Connecticut’s gender provisions in his three-years-gone dismissal. Their case will proceed to discovery and a possible trial.
The suit is being financed by a legal charity. The plaintiffs want the boys’ names removed from trophies and the records asterisked to show that the girls actually won the events. And of course for the school system to keep boys out of girls’ sport in future.
I didn’t read the original SciAm article but the arguments you quote the activists as making already have a dated feel. There is hope for progress and it comes substantially from your efforts at scientific objectivity.
Glad to hear of this outcome for the girls. Common sense (and real science) prevailed!
The claim that science has ended is hubris, like the too-online claims that we live in the worst possible times. People who make these claims suffer from a kind of main character syndrome in which “Great events must be happening because they’re happening while I’m alive.” This must almost always be wrong. As Hitchens might have said, “Which is more probable, that the laws of [history] have been suspended, and in your favor, or that you are under a great misapprehension?”
“The claim that science has ended is hubris”
That, yes, but also serves as an potent excuse – I’ll leave it to the imagination as to what for.
Hint : the saying science is hard exists for a reason.
This may not be a popular view, but I can see where world-view changing discoveries might be pretty much behind us since reality is finite. CRISPR or dark energy are amazing and all, and they do come close to being world-view changing, but they do not match the kind of gob-smacking revelations like DNA being the main molecule of inheritance, with universal application to all life, or that the universe started with a bang 13.8 billion years ago.
Yep for sure there are finite discoveries to make. I meant that there have always been people claiming that the end is here and there are no more frontiers to explore and this is happening now because I’m alive at this time to make this declaration. It’s a claim to special status (that one is a witness to history).
Great article. I’m with PCC(E) on 99%, but I’m with Mark on this point. Science isn’t ending, but there is good evidence that it’s harder and harder to make big advances – and that’s despite an acceleration in the effort being put in. ‘Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time’ by Park, Leahey and Funk is a serious effort to quantify this using data over the past 60y: https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x
Look at their Fig. 2. It’s the same in the physical sciences and the life sciences.
Sorry not to drag this out but much depends on the meaning of “harder” and “big advances”. I’m sure Park et al. are trying to do this seriously. Is it harder now (in any general sense) to make big advances than it was in the 1960s or 1920s? There is a regular and repeating history of claims across disciplines that all the “big” problems have been solved, and only small or incremental advances will be made from here on out. I’m skeptical of all those claims, not because these claims have never been true but because they have ~always been true but in exactly the same way: we have always been making progressive advances to fill our ignorance with knowledge, so it’s always true that from here on out only the remaining gaps need to be filled. The hubris is in claiming that filling those remaining gaps would be merely small or incremental advances. That’s the sense in which I think the claims are meaningless and serve only the egos of the folks making the claim to live in a special time at the end of [history/science/the world].
Agreed
That E.O. Wilson article also uses the term “so-called normal distribution” and misstates its definition as assuming “that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against”. This misinformation should have disqualified the article from being published in SciAm but Helmuth chose to publish it as it met her social justice goals regardless of whether it was accurate or not. As a PhD-holding editor, she should have sent that back to the author to clean up, but she did not.
So on one hand she was railing against misinformation coming from the right, while at the same time she published misinformation that confirmed her progressive-left social biases but under the auspices of one of the top science communication magazines. I hope for better days ahead for SciAm.
Jesse Singal addresses SciAm’s coverage of youth gender altering medicine in Reason: https://reason.com/2024/11/18/how-scientific-americans-departing-editor-helped-degrade-science/
In the name of the distribution, its origin is somewhat obscure, but “normal” seems to serve as a synonym of “orthogonal”. Its interpretation to mean ordinary or conventional is a misunderstanding.
The definition of orthogonal is:
1. of or involving right angles; at right angles.
2. (in statistics, of variables) statistically independent.
I don’t understand what you mean when you write that
“Normal to a surface” means orthogonal to that surface. One of the most explanatory derivations of the normal distribution was by Gauss, who considered the effect of a number of independent, hence orthogonal, contributions to an error. I suspect that “normal” arose from a too literal and rather unhelpful translation from German.
Data values in normal distribution are symmetrical to the mean and probabilities of those values taper off symmetrically in the x axis normal to the y axis of the mean, so maybe the definition of normal as being “at right angle to” could be applied to “normal” distribution.
Also, this distribution pattern is exhibited in many physical attributes like height, birth weights, and blood pressure, so it is also exhibited in things we measure regularly, and thus is a conventional or “normal” pattern we observe. The measurement error that we see during materials testing is also normally distributed; one of the ways we can check that our equipment is operating properly and that our process is in control is to confirm that the data is normally distributed and then to check skew and kurtosis.
Back to the SciAm article – normal refers to the shape of the distribution of the data, not a judgment as to being a “normal” person in the colloquial sense, which is how she seems to understand it, and the error of SciAm was allowing this error to make it to publication.
Excellent article. Thanks for the link.
Nassim Taleb talks about IYIs – “Intellectuals yet idiots” – and this guy seems to fit the bill.
In an amusing irony the ever brilliant, ever offensive a-hole Lebanese Christian Nassim Taleb has recently sided with Hezb. Consider Palestinians shot his dad in the back in the 1970s….
Tarring anyone one disagrees with as IYI is cool until one BECOMES one.
Sorry, Nassim.
Horgan is a clown. Don’t take his insults personally. He is stupid enough to equate “agrees with/is friends with” as “wanna be-s” re Dawkins. We usually agree with our friends, it is why they’re our friends.
D.A.
NYC
What if any egregious, gratuitous insult may one reasonably “take personally”? I’ve little doubt that Horgan would take offense at someone saying of him, “Oh, he simply can’t help himself.”
Horgan is an apotheosis of epistemic humility.
When I read The End of Science more than 25 years ago, Dawkins, Gould, Sagan and Wilson were the only popular Scientist/Writers that I had followed to any degree. After reading Horgan’s book, I made a list of those he had interviewed and made a commitment to expand my understanding of science. Today my library of Science books includes works by every one of those Horgan interviewed… and many many more, including a hard cover of Coyne’s WEIT, and an e-copy of F vs T.
I clearly remember thinking at the time that Horgan’s book fell well short of making his case about the status of science. What it did for me was to immediately expand my interest in all areas of scientific discovery.
A person (he/she) who calls themselves “nice” in a pompous manner is an immediate red flag, especially if that person is a perpetuator of a domestic abusive relationship.
People who are genuinely nice don’t have the need to announce themselves as such. I let their actions speak for themselves.
Hey, I’m unashamedly nice. FSVO nice.
I’m reminded of Don Rickles’s shtick, “I’m a nice guy!”
Sure, but these are literally abuses of science, not, you know, science.
Science is honest observation interpreted with accurate logic. Period.
That is, neutral on matters of ideology, morality, and politics.
Being called a “Nice guy” is a vicious take down by the ladies. It says a lot about Horgan that he voluntarily applies that label to himself.
Horgan’s “End of Science” stuff is reminiscent of an earlier case: Gunther Stent’s “The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress”. Stent, a fairly notable bacteriophage geneticist, was known for his ingenious but generally wrong hypotheses, and for his brilliantly written textbooks. His “End of Progress” book argued that Biology, and by analogy the rest of science, had pretty much reached its limit. The book was published in 1969, just a few years before the revolution in DNA manipulation and sequencing.
Gunther retained a sense of humor over this conjunction of events. Something tells me that John Horgan, in contrast, lacks a strong sense of humor.
Phil Anderson, the eminent condensed matter physicist, wrote an excellent review of “The End of Science” (“They Think it’s All Over”, reprinted in “More and Different”). He discusses “the unfortunate propensity of senior scientists to declare that their field is now a wasteland of solved problems, and ends with a somewhat mixed assessment, describing it as a good read which he cannot consign to the dustbin, but:
“Horgan could, in a better book, have exposed some of these pretensions to good effect without writing what, on rereading, leaves a lasting impression of deliberate destructiveness. If this review sounds somewhat harsh, it is because, in spite of all the author’s protestations to the contrary, it seems to me he has most mischievously provided ammunition for the wave of antiscientism we are experiencing.”
I am inclined to disbelieve all ‘End of Science’, ‘End of History’, ‘End of Economics’ type of works because I expect that they are merely relishing a plateau of understanding of their subject. And then after considering various dis-proofs (real Science, History, Economics) new formulations are advanced which may be a better fit to reality.
Thank you Jerry Coyne for WEIT and Faith vs. Fact, and for running this “blog”. Thank you for sharing this “rant” by John Horgan, of whom I had previously had a good opinion.
I suggest following link to Horgan’s website and skimming the comments to his defense of Helmuth.
Horgan states he agrees with Helmuth that the 74 million people voting for Trump, all genders, races, ethnic groups etc, are f**king fascists. Such skills of persuasion.
I don’t know if Helmuth, Horgan, or Sci Am agree with the pseudo-economic theory of Kamala Harris that price controls will “fix” inflation. An objective magazine should be able to point out errors as they arise from either side.
At the WaPo article most commenters are fine with Helmuth’s tweets. Most liked comment:
“You are telling me the editor-in-chief of Scientifc American didn’t have nice things to say about the party that denies climate change, argues against vaccines, believes that hurricanes are men-made, attacks public servants like Fauci, and constantly tries to defund scientific research?
“If the Republican party is going to come out against scientists, journalists, and public servants, embrace it! Don’t be hypocrites and demand fake neutrality when your entire political platform is to attack them and clasiffy them as enemies.”
Jesse Singal has also written about Helmuth’s departure: https://reason.com/2024/11/18/how-scientific-americans-departing-editor-helped-degrade-science/
Re math(s) going woke, I downloaded the zip file of all the “strides” (forceful steps? “great strides”?) from the linked-to equitablemath.org. It looks pretty dire. The file of bios is I think revealing: of the 35 “toolkit collaborators” (a.k.a authors), at my count 3 have bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, and the other 32 have various education degrees and “certifications” (which can often be considered BS degrees, and I don’t mean Blessed Sacrament). Sigh.
Also revealing is the glossary file of terms they considered important to define. Here is the complete list —
Some terms not sufficiently important to define include —
mathematics, reasoning, logic, truth, competence, excellence, precision.
Sorry, slightly missing the main point of the article, but how stupid is it for Horgan to put out a book in 1996 saying, essentially, that science is solved? How can you not err on the side of caution and keep your mouth shut even if this is your belief?
I think the most famous examples are Albert Michelson, Lord Kelvin, and Philipp von Jolly (Max Planck’s advisor) who all said, to lesser or greater degrees toward the end of the nineteenth century, that there was little left to discover in theoretical physics. And they knew there were big unknowns in the current theories, such as the anomalous precession of Mercury and black body radiation.
I’m not entirely sure where physics stood in 1996, but surely the failure to integrate relativity with quantum mechanics, the holes in the standard model, dark matter, and cosmic inflation (to name but a few), might suggest our current theories may in time be turned on their heads? Wasn’t string theory in its heyday, although of course not proven/solved?
Such arrogance.
(Admittedly this rant is from someone who has not read the book; indeed I’d not even heard of it until this article.)
John Horgan is a name I know well. He is/was regarded as the ‘woke’ police of ScIam. At one point (in Sciam) he argued again scientific research that he did not agree with. My response, we that the publication should be renamed to ‘Religious American – Where faith smashes facts and doesn’t apologize’.