Cognitive Limits of Science

Abstract

Before I begin my discussion of the cognitive limits of science, I would like to outline briefly what it is that I shall not be here concerned with. As to origins, I will not spend much time in tracing the historical roots of science in ancient civilizations. And as to limits, I do not intend to consider the very real economic limits of science that arise from the fact that research has become ever more expensive and that the industrialized nations cannot increase indefinitely the fraction of their gross national product spent on financing science. Nor do I intend to discuss the physical limits that set barriers in principle to our study of the universe or of matter, such barriers as the maximum speed of light or the maximally practical kinetic energy to which elementary particles can be accelerated. Moreover, I do not intend to consider the social and political limits that have recently arisen from what appear to be flourishing anti-science movements in the industrialized nations. And as for the future, I will not try to identify the areas in which I think great discoveries still remain to be made, or to put forward any kind of specific predictions. Instead, I intend to discuss three cognitive limits of science which have come into view in this century: a semantic limit, a structural limit, and a subjective limit. Since the existence of these limits forms a barrier to an indefinite progress of our knowledge of nature, it is likely that the science of the future will be different from the science of the past.