Will There Be Anything Left To Discover?

Is the great era of scientific inquiry over? Have all the big theories been formulated and important discoveries made--leaving future scientists nothing but fine tuning? Or is the real fun about to be

A spirited debate, conducted via e-mail, between two acclaimed science journalists: John Horgan, author of the controversial book The End of Science, and Paul Hoffman, former editor of Discover magazine and past president of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

HOFFMAN: The past decade has brought a spate of books sounding the death knell for a host of subjects. Francis Fukuyama served up The End of History and David Lindley The End of Physics. But your more sweeping work The End of Science (1997) attracted a lot more attention and controversy--and with good reason. The idea that science may have had its run--that we've...

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