You remind me of the head of the US Patent office who suggested abolishing the office because everything that can be invented, had been invented. This was about a hundred years ago.
Or the scientist/philosopher who said that one certain fact in science was that we can never know the composition of the stars.
This is a canard. I forget the details. You look it up.
Or the scientist/philosopher who said that one certain fact in science was that we can never know the composition of the stars.
That was Auguste Comte ...
"Of all objects, the planets are those which appear to us under the least varied aspect. We see how we may determine their forms, their distances, their bulk, and their motions, but we can never known anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure; and, much less, that of organized beings living on their surface ... "
Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy, Book II, Chapter 1 (1842)
(Comte refers to the planets in the quotation above; he believed that we could learn even less about the stars)
This fact is often quoted, more to the glory of Fraunhofer, who obtained the first stellar spectra around this time.
But OK, where does that leave us?
Show me the money!
Indeed.