We absolutely don't know the answer to that question. One of the nicest
discussions of it can be found in Feynman's book "The character of
Physical Law."
Maybe there will be some complete consistent theory with no
dangling ends. We won't know for sure that it's right, but if it works
long enough with no problems, that might be a reasonable guess. Maybe
no such theory exists even in principle. Maybe it exists but it's too
many layers away from what we can experiment on to find. Maybe it
exists but our minds can no more grasp it than a dog's mind can grasp
quantum mechanics.
Mike W.
I'd prefer to believe that we can try to peel as many layers of the
puzzle away as we can, until we run out of good ideas or money to do
experiments. So far, never in recorded human history have we ever given
up the quest to learn more about nature (except temporarily). And
nature has always rewarded us with ever more understanding of what's
going on. There may be no end, or perhaps there is one, but we may just
not be able to probe it with our equipment. Astrophysicists and
cosmologists can use the entire universe as a laboratory for testing
ideas, but often without the ability to control an experiment, if there
are two competing hypotheses that explain the same behavior, we'd
ultimately like to choose between them. The worst case is that we'd
have lots and lots of ideas of how nature could be, but not the ability
to test them experimentally.
Tom
(published on 10/22/2007)
