The “End Of Discovery”?

by Patrick Appel

Jonah Lehrer ponders it:

I think it’s also worth contemplating the disturbing possibility that our cresting living standards might ultimately be rooted in the difficulty of making new scientific discoveries.

… In his Scientometrics paper, Arbesman points out that, in a few rare instances, we’ve already reached this “end of discovery” phase. Consider medicine: For thousands of years, humans documented the discovery of new internal organs. But that process of discovery is over – the last new organ to be identified was the parathyroid gland in 1880. While we’re certainly not close to the end of science – so many profound mysteries remain – we should be prepared to work harder for what we learn next. All the low-hanging facts have been found.