With all of this rapid progress, it might be useful to think about human knowledge and whether there are limits to this seemingly exponential trend of understanding.
Q : Will we ever know ALL the things? Is it even conceivably possible that there is a point in humankind's future when nothing will remain a mystery, and our understanding of the natural world can be declared to be virtually complete?
A : Eh. Not so fast.
In order to have a answer (at least, one that's justified and supported), we have to fully understand the question at hand. Gut reactions of "yes!" or "no!" won't be very informative. Let's look at the implications of yes and no replies.
The "yes!" people see the current trends and have full confidence that the rate of scientific progress will continue steadily or grow. They also assume that there is a finite amount of information to be gathered about the universe.
The "no!" people assume that there either limitations to what human minds can grasp or be aware of, or that the amount of information to collect and synthesize about the world is so vast that it (might as well be?) infinite.
I think that none of these assumptions have much bearing because none of them can really be shown to be truer than the others. They are assumptions, after all. One of our reasons for feeling like the question is interesting in the first place is that we don't know how much we know in relation to how much there is to know. But without knowing how close we are to knowing everything about the natural world there is no way to answer this question. Some things we know we don't know, and maybe these seem solve-able mysteries to us. But there are plenty of other things we don't know we don't know, and for all we know these could evade our understanding indefinitely.
The answer to our question is therefore one other thing that is perhaps appropriate to add to the list of unknowns.
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