What remains to be discovered

by John Royden Maddox

[O]n the eve of the millennium the question about science's future reappears. In his widely discussed 1996 book, ''The End of Science,'' John Horgan argued that, indeed, the end is nigh: The big discoveries have all been made. Horgan, a veteran science writer, did not argue that we have answered all the big questions; he is as curious as the next guy about, say, the nature of human consciousness or life on other worlds. The problem, he wrote, is that we will probably never find the answers -- or the solution will be some dispiriting triviality. Consciousness may one day be revealed to be nothing more than an accumulation of nerve impulses. As to the question of extraterrestrials, Horgan says we will never be able to get far enough out into space to find out. The impossibility of exceeding the speed of light hangs from us like a ball and chain. Sir John Maddox doesn't buy any of this. Maddox was for almost 23 years editor in chief of the British journal Nature, one of the world's leadin