The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in ... (ISBN 0349109265)

Amazon.com Review:
John Horgan makes the powerful case that the best and most exciting scientific discoveries are behind us. He states that many scientists today, particularly those he interviewed for the book, are "gripped by a profound unease," due partially to dwindling financial resources and vicious competition, but increasingly due to the sense that "the great era of scientific discovery is over." In other words, he argues, the big problems that can be solved have been, and the big ones that haven't been solved can't be. Among the celebrated thinkers quoted in this ambitious book are Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, and John Archibald Wheeler. A concise history of the last 20 years of scientific study introduces his thesis and covers such topics as superstring theory, mathematical topology, and how to distinguish chaos from complexity.

Time is a good judge: this book was complete crap:
John Horgan is one of those intellectually challenged journalists who only want to write about big things because they are too proud to be interested in any particular "small" question that science tries to solve. So many of these journalists choose a truly big theory - namely that there is something seriously wrong with the scientific method and with science and that science may be ending. Of course, the scientists consider all such journalists and "thinkers" to be cranks, for a very good reason. The very existence of our civilization - something that distinguishes most of us from the monkeys - is based on certain general principles that also underlie science and these principles will never be given up unless the whole humankind is really doomed. Careful thinking that is as quantitative as possible and the elimination of ideas that have turned out not to be viable are two examples of such principles. John Horgan, is his attempt to earn his 15 minutes of fame - plus some bucks - has written this nasty book that not only offered a whole sequence of possible theories how science can finally be killed and how horrible science is. This book was also full of personal attacks against the scientists, their appearance, their voice, and all of their other superficial and unimportant characteristics. John Horgan was - and still is - just far too dumb to be able to look into the scientists' thoughts, the entities that make the scientists important. At least, he could analyze their "quirkiness" and write confusing stories about the scientists and aliens that have nothing to do with the essence of the research done by the actual scientists. Such crappy books have always found a lot of readers who eagerly buy them. However, the books have no lasting value. It's been almost 10 years since the book was released, and all of its predictions look even more absurd now than they looked 10 years ago. The science hasn't ended, Edward Witten is still the most respected physicist, and John Horgan is still just a despicable nobody. Also, this book is the 360,000th most successful book at amazon.com; compare with The Elegant Universe that has been among the top 1,000 books more or less for the whole time. Nevertheless, the big doomsayers and science-haters will never close their mouth. So they still flood the book market with many new crappy books that are very similar to Horgan's book - Troubles with Physics, Not Even Wrong, and various feminist diatribes against the male science - books that will surely share the fate of this nonsense written by Horgan. But before the time will speak, thousands of new stupid consumers will buy these books and they will say how terribly inspiring the content is.

Journalists are not scientists!!!:
"The End of Science" is a stupid book written by a stupid science fanboy journalist with a big case of envy for Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man." "The End of Science" is what happens when journalists spend so much time hanging out and fawning over scentists that they start believing they're scientists themselves.

John Horgan is the Judas of Science: the enemy of fact:
He pretty much knew that he was writing tripe. John Horgan mistakes his popularity and scientific political power for knowledge and wisdom. I suppose that ethics is dead as well, so that he is allowed to be this evil. By talking with all these great men he had a chance for real knowledge and instead he made verbal cartoons and ridiculed all their ideas. He would definitely be the lawyer for the devil if one could exist. I don't think we need to be Spartan about this fox eating our insides out: he probably deserves the fate of a Judas. At the end of the book he congratulates himself for his hatchet job on science and it's scientists. You will notice that like a good English major he hasn't included one equation: not even Rossler's that he probably didn't even copy down ( page 236). Rossler named what he had done: distortion. I think that maybe science deserves to be so served as it stands today.

Nothing new in the book - just a populistic book to make money:
How come that the author Horgan misses to refer to Derek J. De Solla Price - maybe the most important science historian? In his book "Little Science, Big Science", Columbia University Press (1963) De Solla Price already predicted and discussed a form of saturation of knowledge. I would recommend to read De Solla Price's books. Horgan's book is just a tabloid press book which doesn't explain anything and just ain't worth your time and money.

Grand goal but flawed premises:
Horgan's "The End of Science" is thought-provoking, engaging, and an interesting read. It is well-written in terms of prose, but as an argument it is rather weak. Initially, Horgan intended to write a more objective book that provide information from prominent thinkers in fields of philosophy, science, social science, theology, etc. so that the reader could make informed but unbiased judgment on their own on whether or not the suggestion as put forth by Gunther Stent in Stent's work "The Coming of the Golden Age" that the end of science might be close at hand. If that was the case than the book would be much more valuable and far more neutral and thus with less distorted reportage. However, as Horgan dive deeper and deeper into the well of diverging and conflicting sea of opinions of experts, he came to a conclusion of his own on the subject and ultimately found it only fitting that the book should be opinion (his) driven, rather than facts-and-views driven. Thus, every opinion and observation is skewed towards a favorable angle for advancing Horgan's own beliefs and assumptions. As a result, the reader is left to either agreeing with Horgan or disapproving him. This is science writing at its worse; the objectivity that is expected of blissful science writing has been compromised. Further, too much emphasis is put on non-science disciplines -- a great part, at least one-third, is on fields outside the domain of science. If the argument is to be more convincing, then more background in science is necessary, but not on philosophy, theology, and social science. Generally, there is a flow to the ideas, but the focus of each section can be off-focused sometimes. In some sections, there is the discussion surrounding only one thinker, but this number can greatly multiplied into more than three in some sections, which tends to lead the reader off-track and thus the weakness of exposition in some sections. The most ironic observation about the publication is that the author suggests the end of science with absolute conviction, while rebuffing many scholars of their "ironic" (obstinately held) views and opinioins. Many fundamental ideas are introduced in the book, which makes it useful for the beginning science student. It has been more than a decade since the title was first published, so a great portion of the book is out-dated. However, for the entertainment factor of the work, it is still worth reading it for some serious fun.