Friday, August 27, 2010

Science

A fascinating article in Prospect this month. Science's dead end. The basic point of the article is simply that we are facing the law of diminishing returns in science. Think about it. Newton, bright as he was, required only the apple to fall to work out gravity. He was of course wrong but the point was that he was able to match observations with his theories. Several hundred years on we have come a long way. But each step takes more and more money and more and more effort.

The article outlines some interesting stats. The journal of Biological Chemistry published 12,000 pages in 1980. In 2009 it published 97,000 pages. The answers we search for are harder and harder to find and the knowledge required to undertake that search becomes harder and harder. Each step requires more and more smart and educated people and the discoveries become less and less useful.

This is not to say that new big discoveries will not emerge (specifically we refer to science here and not technology) as that will be as closed minded as it comes. But those discoveries will have incrementally less and less relevance. Physics is already there. It has theories (string theory) which, while interesting, are largely untestable.

Its worth reading the article in full if you get a chance to pick up a copy.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

10:22 pm  
Blogger So long and thanks for all the fish said...

Thanks Anon. I knew that one would come back at me. So hence I said in the blog ...

"This is not to say that new big discoveries will not emerge (specifically we refer to science here and not technology) as that will be as closed minded as it comes."

It is not that there will not be new discoveries, just that each will become harder and harder and less and less useful in general.

The second point in response to that quote was that I was making a difference between science and technological discovery. The usefulness of new invention, I think, is the not same as scientific discovery.

Newton's physics was discovered (that is not to say it was easy) and easily verified. In fact it is testable by most school kids. Now try finding the school kid who can understand relativity let alone verify it through observation. Then find the average grad who can understand string theory and verify it through observation.

I reckon science is like light speed. The closer you get the more energy that has to go in and each increment in speed requires ever more energy.

Same for science.

8:43 pm  

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