RSA - The End of Discovery

The End of Discovery

16th Sep 2010; 13:00

(full recording including audience Q&A)
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RSA Thursday

Are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?

It is generally thought that science, by its very nature, must always progress. But for Russell Stannard, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, this may not necessarily be the case. One day, fundamental science will come to an end. Not when we have discovered everything, but when we have discovered whatever is open to us to understand - which is not the same thing.

Limitations as to what the human brain can comprehend, together with practical considerations to do with the need for ever more elaborate and expensive equipment, are likely to ensure that our knowledge will remain forever incomplete.

A further indication that the world will ultimately retain some of its mystery is suggested by evidence that in certain directions, scientific enquiry might already have come up against the boundaries of the knowable.

Join author and broadcaster Russell Stannard, himself a high-energy physicist and former Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Open University, as he asks the deepest questions facing us today - questions about consciousness, free will, the nature of space, time, and matter, the existence of extraterrestrial life, and why there should be a world at all.

But are the answers beyond the limits of our understanding?

Chair: Georgina Ferry, acclaimed science writer, author and broadcaster

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsastannard