Merle, I missed your comment and you are certainly somebody to me!!!! P.
On Mar 3, 2014, at 11:12 PM, Merle Lefkoff <merlelefk...@gmail.com> wrote: > I commented, and I'm utterly somebody, dear Pamela. > > > On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Pamela McCorduck <pam...@well.com> wrote: > Utterly nobody in FRIAM thought my question about the shift from government > led innovation to private sector led innovation was interesting enough to > comment on (even to acknowledge) but I’m going to forward this piece from > Dave Farber’s list which also addresses the issue and ask you again whether > you think this shift will have consequences. > > > >> From: John Day <jeanj...@comcast.net> >> Sent: Sun Mar 02 21:13:32 EST 2014 >> To: d...@farber.net, sa...@dsalex.org >> Cc: da...@dslprime.com, d...@bu.edu >> Subject: Re: [IP] Re Read re Losing a Generation of Scientists >> >> Scott, >> You have hit the nail on the head. We are not doing fundamental research. >> The sciences are turning into craft. Lee Smolin first brought this up about >> physics in the last 5 chapters of his book, "The Trouble with Physics." >> >> In CS, we have this disease in spades and partly for the reasons you >> outlined below, the pursuit of the dollar. I also think to some degree what >> I have come to characterize by paraphrasing Arthur C. Clark, 'Any >> sufficiently advanced craft is indistinguishable from science.' We are so >> dazzled by the products of Moore's Law that we don't see that what we are >> doing is craft. >> >> The trouble with craft is that it stagnates. >> >> The classic example is Chinese "science" prior to Western contact. See >> Needham's "Science and Civilization in China." To some degree, Needham ends >> up arguing (and most scholars agree) that 'science' in pre-Qing China was >> more technique or craft. There was no theory, no abstraction, no attempt at >> a theory that holds it all together. (By their own admission, this problem >> still plagues China and India. There are the exceptions, but in general it >> is a recognized problem.) >> >> By late Ming (17thC), it had pretty much stagnated and they were losing >> knowledge. Needham says that it is because merchants (capitalists) were at >> the bottom of the heap. The government power structure controlled >> everything. I also believe it is because there was no Euclid. There was no >> example of an axiomatic system. The Holy Grail of a scientist is to do to >> his field what Euclid did to geometry. Interestingly Heilbrun points out in >> his book on geometry book that the Greeks were the only ones to develop the >> concept of proof. Other civilizations have mathematics, they have recipes, >> algorithms; but not proof. Proof is at the root of building theory. Theory >> gives the ideas cohesion, shows how they relate in ways you didn't expect, >> and shows you where the gaps in your knowledge are. The quest for theory is >> more important to avoiding stagnation as the pull of capitalism. >> >> Needham didn't live to see it. But we now have the example of how the >> entrepreneurial drive leads to stagnation. That drive is fine for >> exploiting *within* a paradigm, but it won't get you to the next one. And >> we have seen the example of that as well. >> >> And we are seeing the same stagnation in CS. One sees the same the same >> papers on about a 5 years cycle. The "time constants" have changed but they >> are the same papers. >> >> Early CS was much more scientific. We went about things much more >> methodically, we were more concerned with methodically understanding the >> fundamentals than just building something that worked. (BTW to your >> comment: We *did* do a lot of RJE on the early ARPANET. We had many >> scientific users submitting jobs on particle physics, economics, weather >> simulation, etc. However, we never saw it as the future. We had much >> bigger ideas in mind, for distributed computing (ask Dave). It is really >> depressing that 40 years later, things really haven't moved anywhere. The >> hardware is 10s of thousands times faster and bigger. You are right. We >> have re-labeled RJE, cloud computing, and never gotten past the >> 3270/Mainframe days.) >> >> You are right. We do have to get back to this. And there I am afraid it >> gets disheartening. We have 30 years of conditioning the field toward >> everything else but. I don't see many who even when they say we need to do >> it, know how to do it. We have selected against the ability for decades. I >> am even finding that CS students (and professors) have trouble with >> abstraction. For a field that one could say was founded on abstraction, >> this is really scary. >> >> Take care, >> John Day >> >> > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > > -- > Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. > President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy > Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA > me...@emergentdiplomacy.org > mobile: (303) 859-5609 > skype: merlelefkoff > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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