I didn't see your earlier post, Pamela, but it seems to be that in addition to the lure of money are (1) the shift to biological rather than physics research, perhaps because we are destroying the planet; and (2) government money for anything useful is a thing of the past.
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Pamela McCorduck <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Sun Mar 02 21:13:32 EST 2014 > *To:* [email protected], [email protected] > *Cc:* [email protected], [email protected] > *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 [email protected] mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merlelefkoff
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