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It's interesting to consider what disciplines it makes sense to imagine being "completed" one day. Physics definitely yes. But imagining a "complete chemistry"
by porpoise 6y ago
It's interesting to consider what disciplines it makes sense to imagine being "completed" one day. Physics definitely yes. But imagining a "complete chemistry" one day is harder (revealing chemistry is as much an art as a science, as much about building as about discovering)
And imagining a "complete mathematics" seems even harder.
- bitcharmer 6y agoHow can we say that physics is "completed" with unsolved questions such as dark matter, dark energy or gravity? I'm baffled with the amount of comments agreeing with this sentiment. Saying that physics is mostly solved at this point is just outright arrogant. Didn't we have the exact same situation around the beginning of the 20th century? Just one little problem to solve - the ultraviolet catastrophe. Sigh...
- porpoise 6y agoI wasn't saying physics has been completely already, only that it seems fairly easy to imagine a future point at which it becomes completed. Physics becomes "solved" as it were, much like checkers, and there's no more physics research to do, only problems of physics education, science communication etc remain. On the other hand, it's not at all obvious that we can easily imagine chemistry one day becoming "completed". Part of the reason is perhaps because the properties of compounds are not straightforwardly predictable from those of their constituents; chemistry remains heavy empirical, computation chemistry is never seen as a central branch of chemistry.