Scientific Progress: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science

This book examines the future prospects for research in the natural sciences. Are the days of scientific discovery numbered? Is there good reason to think that natural science is approaching the completion of its work? Professor Rescher′s thesis is that the latter-day prophets of doom are wrong, and that we actually confront not the termination of scientific progress but merely its slowing down. The author argues that if an exponentially increasing effort is required to maintain a relatively stable pace of scientific progress (as it has over the past century or so), then science is bound to enter a period of deceleration. It is argued that despite these somewhat harsh realities, the prospects of scientific progress remain literally limitless in principle.

However, the facts indicate that the cost of scientific inquiry rises faster than the significant returns that it can yield, and hence a deceleration in scientific innovation will come about not only because of the ending of the frintier, but because of the increased difficulties of pushing it further out. The book concludes by providing an explanation of the reasons for the cost-escalation of scientific work.