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We now have Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and all kinds of new ways of experimenting with some of the most fundamental things believed to exist. Once the Grand Unified Theory is perfected (assuming such a thing is possible), we'll be able to explain any given thing in the universe using the same terms as we would to explain any other given thing.

That's pretty much the way my teachers talked fourty years ago. Science was about to run out of stuff to do.

Just my opinion, but I am not holding my breath.

But assuming we reach a comfortable state of physics, and the levee holds for a couple hundred years, we have a phenomenon known as emergence. We cannot predict the properties of complex things from the properties of their components. We have no theory that explains water based on the properties of hydrogen an oxygen.

Hardly a state threatening unemployment for science.

"That's pretty much the way my teachers talked fourty years ago. Science was about to run out of stuff to do. Just my opinion, but I am not holding my breath."

Neither am I. I never gave a time frame for any of that. First of all, assuming the GUT is sufficiently developed within the next hundred years to be even mildly useful, it's still going to take a long, long time before we can get off this rock we're gravitationally stuck to so we can go out in search of new things. GUT could take a thousand years to perfect, or it may be impossible to perfect. If we were handed a complete GUT tomorrow, it'd be dozens or perhaps even hundreds of years before it could be fully understood. Once it's understood, it becomes a very useful tool to understand how things work and to engineer new things to work. The GUT is a massive accelerator to the growth of our knowledge, but I seriously doubt that human beings will run out of things to explore prior to our sun exploding. By that time, I doubt the human race will be anywhere near this planet, and I doubt they'll even vaguely resemble the race we have here today.

I do pity the poor folks who grow up in a period of time where discovery is a very rare and difficult thing to find. We're really in a golden age right now. We have barely scratched the surface of the natural world, and we're just now getting the tools necessary to dig in deep.

"We cannot predict the properties of complex things from the properties of their components."

Sure we can; just in a less than ideal way. How do you think new substances are created? (like the stuff they just created that's harder than diamond)