The essence of the book focuses on the question: “Will scientific progress continue infinitely?” and on the various impossibilities that hamper this progress. His own work is only mentioned in a few paragraphs, and he mostly refrains from offering his own conclusions and opinions, leaving it up to the reader to draw their own. The author mainly assumes the role of a relatively unbiased storyteller, recounting what others have contributed to the conversation on one topic or another throughout recent history. It is an excellent collection of various writers’ thoughts on science, knowledge and progress, woven into an accessible narrative by Barrow. The book provides a thought-provoking review of ideas about what is possible in the universe, whether it all can be eventually uncovered by science, and what pitfalls we might need to overcome in the quest for scientific progress. But every once in a while, I enjoy taking a step back from what I am doing to see how it fits into the greater scientific enterprise and to ponder about the philosophical aspects of knowledge. Thus, with only a narrow field of view, we find ourselves ill-equipped to tackle the big questions in science. Science has changed drastically since their days, becoming more compartmentalised, and making it impossible to keep oneself apprised of the progress in every field. In our academic and professional lives as young scientists, we are encouraged to memorise facts and to focus on details and intricacies, so much so that our everyday lives bear little resemblance to those of the great scientific thinkers of the past, such as Ramon y Cajal or Hermann von Helmholz. A review of Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits by John D.

Impossibility by John D. Barrow