Topics Knowledge

Question Our understanding of the physical universe is better than say, what it was a few thousands of years ago. We may continue to understand it better as time progresses. My question is, would it at all be possible, at some stage, to say that we know it all, that the universe has been stripped naked and it no longer holds any more mysteries?

Accepted:
June 14, 2012

Comments

I strongly doubt it! I think it's a very good bet that we human beings will continue to improve our understanding of the universe, but I strongly doubt that our understanding will ever become perfect, that there will come a time at which we've answered every meaningful question about it. Certainly there's no evidence from the history of science that such a day will come. Quite the contrary. Every time scientists have thought that the end is in sight, that soon no further important questions would remain in some domain, a revolution has occurred to open unforeseen avenues of inquiry.

Here's a trivial reason why the possibility of further inquiry won't end. Suppose we answer the 'final question'; call it 'FQ'. Why did we ask FQ? That question is meaningful and has to be distinct from FQ. Call it 'FQ*'. Why did we ask FQ*? And so on.

A less trivial reason stems from the widely held assumption that at least some aspects of our universe are contingent rather than absolutely necessary. If that assumption is correct, then I think the chain of explanation must go on forever, because no contingent aspect can have a logically sufficient explanation that's not contingent. If the chain of explanation goes on forever, then so does the possibility of inquiring ever further along the chain. Even if some aspects of the universe don't have a logically sufficient explanation -- indeed, even if none of them do -- I can't see how we could ever settle that issue so as to make it pointless to ask whether they do and what those explanations are.