Discoveries

I’m fascinated that each scientific discovery tends to happen only once. Granted, a discovery can be made simultaneously by two different people. Both Newton and Leibniz discovered the Calculus without collaborating.

Because we keep decent records, once a discovery has been made, no one else is likely to make the same discovery a century later. That’s not quite right. In high school, I “discovered” various trigonometry proofs. However, I’m not going to get much credit for these discoveries. While they were new to me, they were already known to others.

So, history only tends to reward one individual or a team for each new discovery. Einstein discovered his special and general theories of relativity. Darwin discovered natural selection. The Atlas and CMS collaborations at CERN discovered the Higgs boson.

Humans initially lived in a relatively small part of the world. Then, they spread out, discovering each new island and continent. We can think of science like this. Nature has provided us with a vast number of theories and phenomena to discover.

Is this number finite? Is it possible humans will discover everything that can be discovered? Some people think so. John Horgan wrote a book about it called The End of Science.

Sabine Hossenfelder considered the idea in her excellent video Is Science Dying? While she gives compelling reasons why we haven’t reached the end of science yet, we don’t know if we ever will.

And the not-knowing is exciting!