{"id":74235,"date":"2012-10-02T22:02:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T06:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=18559"},"modified":"2012-10-02T22:02:32","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T06:02:32","slug":"the-real-end-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2012\/10\/02\/the-real-end-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"The real end of science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/files\/2012\/10\/fraud.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-18570\" title=\"fraud\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/files\/2012\/10\/fraud.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"368\" height=\"244\" \/><\/a>Fifteen years ago John Horgan wrote <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0553061747\/geneexpressio-20\">The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age<\/a>. I remain skeptical as to the specific details of this book, but Carl&#8217;s write-up in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/10\/02\/science\/study-finds-fraud-is-widespread-in-retracted-scientific-papers.html\">The New York Times<\/a> of a new paper in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2012\/09\/27\/1212247109.abstract\">PNAS<\/a> on the relative commonness of scientific misconduct in cases of retraction <strong>makes me mull over the genuine possibility of the end of science as we know it<\/strong>. This sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but you have to understand my model of and framework for what science is. In short: <strong>science is people<\/strong>. I accept the reality that science existed in some form among strands of pre-Socratic thought, or among late antique and medieval Muslims and Christians (not to mention among some Chinese as well). Additionally, I can accept the cognitive model whereby science and scientific curiosity is rooted in our psychology in a very deep sense, so that even small children engage in theory-building.<\/p>\n<p>That is all well and good. The basic building blocks for many inventions and institutions existed long before their instantiation. But nevertheless the creation of &#8230;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/GeneExpressionBlog\/~4\/IuMnyuRqXqM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen years ago John Horgan wrote The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. I remain skeptical as to the specific details of this book, but Carl&#8217;s write-up in The New York Times of a new paper in &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthroplogy","category-culture","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74235"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74331,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74235\/revisions\/74331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}