Sagan, who was one of the leaders in the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the Universe, devotes most of his attention here to lamenting the lack of intelligence on earth. Similarly, cuts in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the move to abolish the Office of Technology Assessment, attempts to do away with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and attacks on the research functions of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal departments all reflect a shifting view of science and its public benefits, a shift from faith to suspicion. The decision by Congress to scuttle the superconducting supercollider project in l993, after an investment of $2 billion on a 15-mile tunnel in Texas, is an example to which all these authors point. The cultural crisis they address is very real, and involves political and economic choices that may reshape society. And in The End of Science, John Horgan, a senior writer at Scientific American, interviews many contemporary scientists to show that science is in decline because it has answered all the important questions - not because of opposition from outside.Īll three books deserve attention.
Physicist Gerald Holton's Einstein, History, and Other Passions focuses more on the political and academic attacks on science that have led to federal budget cuts in research funding and driven many PhDs from particle physics to careers as stockbrokers. In The Demon-Haunted World, the late astronomer Carl Sagan writes in defense of science and reason in a world he sees as darkened by ignorance, superstition, pseudoscience, deceitful advertising and mindless television.
Yet three recent books, from the heart of the scientific establishment, raise serious doubts about the future of science and explore the reasons for its apparent fall from grace. From Newton to the astronauts, from Darwin to the genetic engineers, from Einstein to artificial intelligence, the search for scientific knowledge has produced stunning intellectual advances and applied technologies that have shaped our culture and our lives. Science and progress have seemed like synonyms for more than a century.
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