Debate Topic...ever be a point where scientific advancement is no longer possible..

[Bill Ny3]

Because we as humans beings seem to be on a quest for knowledge and understanding and scientific advancement, would there ever be a point were we could scientifically not advance anymore?

[insane_alien]

its possible but very very improbable and will not be reached anytime soon.

 

it will only occur if we have models that perfectly reflect reality and every phenomenon ever. the models we have now do fine for a wide range of conditions but there are many where they become increasingly bad at reflecting reality.

[blazarwolf]

would there ever be a point were we could scientifically not advance anymore?

 

I think this will be when technology takes over, or we become integrated with it... the human mind is not incapable, but it would take along time... So long, weed be way past "grey alien" in terms of evolving into something different.

 

 

it will only occur if we have models that perfectly reflect reality and every phenomenon ever.

 

An extreme of this is to organic life. It can only exist in set circumstances, and it reacts to selective forces in predictible ways.. Real simply stated.. if you unstood theses forces (quadrillions) through observation and statistics, and understood the circumstances (trillions)... You could use a supercomputer to do all your Exobiology, aswell as learn more about dinosuars then from the fossil record.. Exobiologist are already famous for these types of predictions.

 

Its kinda like asking.. Will all the songs ever be sung? and all the symphonies written? well no, that would occupy more energy then is in our universe, but all the good ones... yes.

[mooeypoo]

I'm not sure where I 've heard this from, but I think that this is one fo teh more powerful sentences in this topic:

 

The more we know, the more we ask.

 

Essentially, the more we are advancing in our scientific knowledge, the more we change previous discoveries or thoughts or theories, and therefore we open up more questions -- which means we have MORE things to figure out and find.

 

If the world was going on a 'straight line' of advancing - more and more knowledge without a significant amount of new questions opening up, I might've said that we would eventually reach a saturated state. But that doesn't seem to be the case to me.. it seems we're finding out more and opening up more questions, or understanding more just to grasp more of the universe... that means (to me, at least, this is more philosophy than proven science, I think) that we will always have more to figure out.

 

That's my 2 cents worth.

[john5746]

Because we as humans beings seem to be on a quest for knowledge and understanding and scientific advancement, would there ever be a point were we could scientifically not advance anymore?

 

I don't think so, because there will always be a better way to make a mousetrap and our universe keeps changing - which means new observations, which may in turn require adjustments in our knowledge.

[Mr Skeptic]

It is possible that we might learn all of physics. Then everything else -- chemistry, biology, weather forcasting, engineering, etc, etc -- would simply be applications of that physics knowledge, and measuring starting conditions. While it would be theoretically possible to do this, in practice there is too much that would have to be done.

 

On the other hand, it is proven that we will never know all of math, or computer science. For example, it is impossible to create a computer program that can tell whether a different program will end, or continue indefinitely. Now consider that a real computer is a physical implementation of the mathematical computer model. Considering that if you want to model everything there is, you would have to model the atoms your computer or brain is made of, I'm pretty sure that it is in practice impossible to know everything.