[Tokyo!!]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The field. Physics and Astronomy are fields of diminishing returns. This means that the more they are studied the less new information will found out because we get closer to "learning" it all as time marches forward.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow I don't agree at all. Do you really think that we are closer to learning "it all" than the greeks were? (I do think we have "better" answers) We don't even have a unified theory of how the fundamental forces work within one context.

Do you also feel like we are closer to knowing "it all" in medicine, biology and genetics?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely we have. All of the easy stuff in Physics has been figured out, and only the hard stuff is left. I am not saying we have currently "figured it all out" or that these fields will not be rewarding for zero. I am saying that to think they are endless is misleading, as they are much, much smaller then they were even 100 years ago.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

Be careful about assuming that the current state of knowledge will not undergo some radical paradigm shift. It's happened before and could easily happen again.

[/ QUOTE ]

That has nothing to do with the amount of finite knowledge available to be gained. That only has to do with the way that this knowledge is interpreted.

I watched a video about this in my Science and Society class, and there was a professor who had wrote a book about this topic and he was very thorough on most points. While I did not agree with him completely on everything, he had an answer for the most common believers who felt science was infinite. I wish I could remember his name, his book was like "the end of science" or something, but I am not positive on that.