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John Horgan is a journalist and author who has written books on quantum physics, consciousness, war, sex, attention, and mysticism. He was a columnist for Scientific American for 11 years, until they fired him for his 1995 book, The End of Science. In it, Horgan argues that increases in human knowledge have reached an asymptotic phase of marginal improvements, and the future of science is going to look a whole lot like the present. Twenty five years after publication, Horgan’s certainty about the fate of science has started to waver. Quantum physics doesn’t totally fit together, the JWST keeps finding things that don’t make any sense, and our sense of what makes a biological organism is getting constantly blown apart. In our conversation, we go through what Horgan saw that made him so confident that we were almost at the end, how the landscape has changed since the mid nineties, the areas of science that seem most likely to open a whole new world of study for generations to come, and ideas that probably aren't going anywhere, but maybe should.
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(00:00)
Go!
(00:03:26)
Who cares about the birth of everything?
(00:06:15)
End of Science?
(00:11:55)
Limits of science
(00:23:52)
Math v. science
(00:36:05)
Physics as map-making
(00:46:13)
Seeing both sides in science
(00:54:00)
Cultural, civilizational dead-ends
(01:03:05)
Blackbody science v cosmology
(01:19:22)
Liquid metal model of the photosphere
(01:25:42)
Back to the beginning of science?
(01:32:19)
Origins & probabilities
(01:51:11)
Seeds of revolution
(02:01:20)
Publishing fractures
#JohnHorgan #sciencebooks #ScientificAmerican #TheEndofScience #quantumphysics #JWST #biologicalorganism #sciencehistory #nineties #scientificlandscape #mapmaking #mathvscience #culturaldeadends #cosmology #photosphere
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PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.
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The DemystifySci Podcast