286
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
• He thought that mathematics could never be used to explain biology
and chemistry. It was impossible, he claimed, to reduce these sciences to mathematics.
• He thought that it was impossible that the study of heavenly bodies
would have any impact on human affairs.
In the nineteenth century it was reasonable to propose these "impossibilities" since so little was known about fundamental science. Almost nothing was known about the secrets of matter and life. But today
we have the atomic theory, which has opened up a whole new realm
of scientific investigation into the structure of matter. We know about
DNA and the quantum theory, which have unraveled the secrets of life
and chemistry. We also know about meteor impacts from space, which
have not only influenced the course of life on Earth, but have helped to
shape its very existence.
Astronomer John Barrow notes, "Historians still debate the suggestion that Comte's views were partly responsible for the subsequent
decline in French science."
Mathematician David Hilbert, in rejecting Comte's claims, wrote,
"The true reason, according to my thinking, why Comte could not find
an unsolvable problem lies in the fact that there is no such thing as an
unsolvable problem."
But today some scientists are raising a new set of impossibilities:
we will never know what happened before the big bang (or why it
"banged" in the first place), and we will never achieve a "theory of
everything."
Physicist John Wheeler commented on the first "impossible" question when he wrote: "Two hundred years ago, you could ask anybody,
'Can we someday understand how life came into being?' and he would
have told you, 'Preposterous! Impossible!' I feel the same way about the
question, 'Will we ever understand how the universe came into being?' "
Astronomer John Barrow adds, "The speed at which light travels is
limited and so, therefore, is our knowledge of the structure of the Universe. We cannot know whether it is finite or infinite, whether it had a
beginning or will have an end, whether the structure of physics is the
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
• He thought that mathematics could never be used to explain biology
and chemistry. It was impossible, he claimed, to reduce these sciences to mathematics.
• He thought that it was impossible that the study of heavenly bodies
would have any impact on human affairs.
In the nineteenth century it was reasonable to propose these "impossibilities" since so little was known about fundamental science. Almost nothing was known about the secrets of matter and life. But today
we have the atomic theory, which has opened up a whole new realm
of scientific investigation into the structure of matter. We know about
DNA and the quantum theory, which have unraveled the secrets of life
and chemistry. We also know about meteor impacts from space, which
have not only influenced the course of life on Earth, but have helped to
shape its very existence.
Astronomer John Barrow notes, "Historians still debate the suggestion that Comte's views were partly responsible for the subsequent
decline in French science."
Mathematician David Hilbert, in rejecting Comte's claims, wrote,
"The true reason, according to my thinking, why Comte could not find
an unsolvable problem lies in the fact that there is no such thing as an
unsolvable problem."
But today some scientists are raising a new set of impossibilities:
we will never know what happened before the big bang (or why it
"banged" in the first place), and we will never achieve a "theory of
everything."
Physicist John Wheeler commented on the first "impossible" question when he wrote: "Two hundred years ago, you could ask anybody,
'Can we someday understand how life came into being?' and he would
have told you, 'Preposterous! Impossible!' I feel the same way about the
question, 'Will we ever understand how the universe came into being?' "
Astronomer John Barrow adds, "The speed at which light travels is
limited and so, therefore, is our knowledge of the structure of the Universe. We cannot know whether it is finite or infinite, whether it had a
beginning or will have an end, whether the structure of physics is the