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Originally Posted by Hesla
I do not really think we are hitting those limits. Maybe slowing down a bit as huge discoveries opened up big areas of innovation in transportation and communication.
In so far as Cosmology and Space exploration there is a tonne of new satellites and planned missions happening. We may actually be in the infancy of an age of Space exploration. Plus the exoplanet hunt is just getting started. A breakthrough in space propulsion could really open things up.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/?type=future
https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/miss...uture-missions
The human Genome project has opened up huge windows of discovery that we are in the infancy of exploring. In fact, they just saved a infants life, using gene Exchange, who had Leukemia.
How about all the potential advances in energy production ? Solar, Wind, Battery, fusion etc. While there have not been any huge breakthroughs, there have been incremental improvements constantly. |
Incremental improvements with diminishing returns. Promises that are never fulfilled. We are certainly measuring more and more data, but with the opposite effect of scientific discoveries. Einstein and Newton created simple and elegant theories that helped explain much of the world. Now, we can actually explain less! The search for a unified theory in physics is probably farther away now then it ever was. Darwin's theory of evolution is just being filled in at this point. It does not look like there will nor can be any improvements in terms of increasing our understanding of the biological sciences.
Exoplanets were neat to consider, but we can't really hope of ever reaching one with the current space propulsion technology, and even if we make massive gains there, we would still have to travel for thousands of years.
I think the Human Genome Project can say that has saved one life so far, but even then, we don't know if the success can be replicated.
It is really interesting to consider that we may actually be at the End of Science - especially at the cognitive level. Chomsky compares our current plight to a rat being asked to navigate a maze where he has to make a left hand turn at every prime number. The rat just isn't cognitively capable of executing the task successfully.