At the level of fundamental theories there have not been far-reaching changes in the natural sciences for now almost one century. Rather one sees ongoing extensions and adaptations of the same scientific paradigms to new special fields of applications. One reason for this development may be that the challenges involved in the discovery of the laws of nature at the fundamental level is coming to an end, and the challenges for future sciences lie in the domain of complex (ecological or living) systems. If this is true, then future progress of science will lay not so much in the theoretical domain but in the domain of technical applications.

Complex systems, however, constitute a theoretical limitation to scientific progress because these systems are usually neither mathematically tractable nor even predictable by the use of high-powered computers, because of their extreme sensitivity of initial and boundary conditions. A second limitation of contemporary science has also to do with complexity, but at the social level. Scientific progress is based on a division of cognitive labour in the form of highly specialized expert-fields. However, specialization makes only sense if the highly specialized information can be re-integrated at some point of the research process. At present it seems that the amount of specialization has reached a degree that is no longer manageable in terms of integration. Highly specialized scientific communities create again and again new language-games in which they re-invent problem and facts, being unaware that the same problems and facts have been already been explored for a long time, but in other terminological settings. This is just one of several contra-productive effects in contemporary science.

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Kontakt:

e-Mail: gerhard.schurz@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de