Re: "Horganism"???? Perfect!!

[crawford j maccallum <mccallum@UNM.EDU>]

On Tue, 14 Sep 1999, William Beaty wrote:
>    ............  The members of our profession - and particularly those
>    who have responsibility for hiring and for funding research - are
>    infected with "Horganism", the belief that the end of science (or at
>    least of our science) is at hand and that all that is left to do is to
>    grub away at Kuhnian "normal science" following the accepted paradigms.
>    They believe that there are no mre scientific revolutions possible, and
>    that we are now in pursuit of nothing but the next decimal place...

Well, it's my (minority) belief that we _will_ reach the end of _physics_
as we know it in the next century (unless our brains aren't up to it in
which case we never will).  Then we can get to work on complexity, DNA,
life, laughter and a few other difficult problems.  I think the remarks
above are unfair to Horgan, particulary the last sentence.

Crawford