BOOK REVIEW _The_End_of_Science,_Facing_the_Limits_of_Knowledge_in_the_Twilight_of_ _the_Scientific_Age_. By John Horgan, 1996, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc., Reading, MA. The main issue raised in this book, as reflected in its eyebrow-raising title, is not a new one: Is science coming to an end because most discoveries that can be made already have been made? Author Horgan, like some before him, thinks so. He states, "There will be no great revelations in the future comparable to those bestowed upon us by Darwin or Einstein or Watson and Crick." No reservations! Horgan haphazardly jumps into other issues as well. Does science face cognitive limitations? Will we have a final theory that explains everything in nature? Does Horgan furnish any data or rational arguments for a discussion of any of these issues? No; he merely approaches them by offering speculations and crystal ball predictions, and like the great majority of such predictions, they probably will be dismal failures. Had Horgan asked if science will be different, or have a different social role in the future, a more fertile debate may have ensued, even though the path of science is hardly predictable. Will the spectacular advances made and the growth which science has undergone in the present and previous century be continued into the next century? Such questions may be analyzed and rationally discussed on socio-economic grounds. Modern science has always been a function of the resources available. This is likely to be even more the case in the future. Ultimately, the role of science will be set politically to balance the needs of an increasingly technology-dependent society with the views of an anti-science establishment. Horgan does not address any of these issues. He seems to prefer to stay in areas where speculations are the rule. He is neither a scientist nor a philosopher by training or experience, at least not to the level where he contributes any significant creative ideas. He has been a writer on science issues for Scientific American, and has written numerous shorter articles on prominent scientists for this magazine. In fact, his book was first envisioned as a series of portraits of scientists and science philosophers he had interviewed while maintaining a degree of objectivity. But he changed his mind. He writes: "I decided to abandon any pretense of journalistic objectivity and write a book that was overly judgmental, argumentative, and personal." He has kept the portrait format, and to a degree a journalistic reporting style, in most of the book's chapters. However, the subjective coloring of the personalities of those interviewed, and of their messages or opinions, is distracting and annoying. I wonder how well their ideas are represented after having passed through Horgan's filters. Even so, the interviews in general are interesting and often thought-provoking until they drift beyond the fringes of rational thought. Not unexpectedly, no hints of answers to the questions supposedly tackled by this book emerge from the author's conversations with scientists. Horgan appears to be consumed by the issue of science finding *The Answer*, always capitalized and italicized; or, if I understand him correctly, the unifying force that will explain everything in nature. Horgan looks to physics and cosmology to supply this answer, if it exists. Yet he states late in the book that the answer may never be grasped. He seems to say that science is damned if it finds the answer, and damned if it does not. He writes: "But after one arrives at *The Answer*, what then? There is a kind of horror in thinking that our sense of wonder might be extinguished, once and for all time, by our knowledge. What, then, would be the purpose of existence? There would be none. The question mark of mystical wonder can never be completely straightened out, not even in the mind of God?" Horgan gave his readers an early warning of this curious view in his first chapter: "I had become a science writer in large part because I considered science - pure science, the search for knowledge for its own sake - to be the noblest and most meaningful of human endeavors. We are here to figure out why we are here. What other purpose is worthy of us?" I am sorry, Mr. Horgan, but these are theological and teleological statements that have nothing to do with science. Horgan's goal in writing this book is not clear. The problems he raises are poorly defined and systematized, and are usually presented in a jumbled fashion. Unintended or not, the book does little but encourages the forces of anti-science in our society. In the epilogue of the book, Horgan expresses personal beliefs that seem anti-science as well as religious. "My practical, rational mind tells me this terror-of-God stuff is delusional nonsense. But I have other minds. One glances at an astrology column now and then, or wonders if maybe there really is something to all those reports about people having sex with aliens. Another one of my minds believes that everything comes down to God chewing his fingernails. This belief even gives me a strange kind of comfort. Our plight is God's plight. And now that science - true, pure, empirical science - has ended, what else is there to believe in?" Such astonishing statements can only come from someone who is convinced that everything will soon be known about everything: the origin of life, the functioning of the brain, the basis of human consciousness, the fate of the Universe, to name a few. Such a person is not aware of the incomplete knowledge we humans have about the fundamental workings of these and other natural phenomena, nor of how science works. ----------------- Edvard A Hemmingsen, Emeritus Physiologist.