Terry Blanton wrote:
I was recently asked by Dan Stanzione, the former president of Bell
Labs, how much of all knowledge we humans possess.
This is a fascinating topic. I wrote a little about it in Chapter 19
of the book.
Broadly speaking, there are two categories of scientific knowledge:
that would can, in principle, be completed, and that which cannot.
In the first category are things like the laws of chemistry as they
apply to DNA. Years ago, during the fight over the Supercolider
funding, a famous materials scientist and a biologist wrote a
statement to the effect that "high energy physics will never tell us
anything more about the chemistry of DNA." They recommended
Supercolider funding be cut and their fields be funded instead. That
does not say we have learned all that can be known about how DNA
combines and reacts chemically, but it does say that the physics
governing those chemical reactions are essentially complete, and the
physicists -- coming from their direction of subatomic particles and
so on -- are not likely to discover anything that the chemists and
biologists need to know.
In the second category we have things such as how DNA and higher
level biology works in specific species: E. Coli, cats, dogs, people
and so on. Biologists have estimated that the set of facts and
knowledge pertaining to E. coli alone would fill a library full of
books. In other words, if the world's nations launched a mega-project
to understand E. Coli, and spent trillions of dollars, eventually
this would result in a few hundred thousand volumes of textbooks and
databases. Perhaps in a few hundred years there would be only trivial
aspects of E. Coli biology left unanswered. Of course much of this
knowledge would be applicable to other species, but not all. Every
species is unique, and you could easily write another library full of
books about each one. And -- to get to the point -- there are
millions of species on earth, and perhaps ~10E1000 or so on other
planets. So, as a practical matter, the scientific knowledge that one
might gather about biology is infinite in scope. If our species lasts
until the sun goes out (~6 billion more years) we will not even begin
to collect a significant fraction of all this knowledge.
(I have no doubt that over the next thousand years or so, we will
determine every non-trivial detail about how one species works: homo
sapiens. This megaproject is already underway.)
For this example, no doubt the process will be streamlined, automated
and sped up. Even now, the genome for different species is being read
faster and faster, as more species are added to databases accessible
world-wide. But the genome is the starting point; not the ending
point. It is analogous to the Periodic Table in the study
of chemistry. After you get the Periodic Table squared away, you
have a permanent, fairly certain, unchanging knowledge base to start
building upon, and a proven methodology. But you have not learned all
there is to know about chemistry!
Someday, perhaps thousands of years from now, a biologist on an alien
planet may drop a sample of DNA into a gadget, and an hour later a
comprehensive description of the species might emerge, including a
list of unique and previously unknown aspects that deserve research.
The thing is, an army of a billion biologists could keep doing this
for the rest of history and still not make a dent in the total number
of species out there.
Biology is particularly rich in detail, but other subjects such as
material science also deal with so many different permutations and
combinations of elements, compounds, surface conditions and other
factors, for all practical purposes the data set is infinitely large.
But, my other point is that the basic mechanism of DNA, or the
Periodic Table; Newton's laws; the way calorimeters work; and
Conservation of Energy (probably); special relativity, and so on will
probably never change. These things are perfected. I think there is
no chance that Shanahan has discovered an error in calorimetry that
everyone from J. P. Joule to McKubre overlooked.
We might find life-forms not based on DNA. That would be another matter.
The Periodic Table will never be replaced, but it might be supplanted
or extended to cover isotopes, as the periodicity and structure of
the atomic nucleus is elucidated. (Brightsen's idea, and model.)
Again, that would be another matter.
Anyway, this is what I had in mind in Chapter 19, when I wrote:
Progress may not continue infinitely, but as Jefferson said it will
continue "indefinitely, and to a term which no one can fix and
foresee." We are nowhere near the limits yet. Were the empire of the
unknown as large as North America, we have established a few
settlements on the coast; we have some notion how large the continent
may be, and we are still debating whether California is an island or
a peninsula. There are 3,000 miles of unexplored wilderness to the
west. Even this analogy is an understatement. The unknown and
unexplored facets of nature will never decrease in number. Each new
answer reveals dozens or scores of new mysteries. We will, someday,
run out of gumption and stop seeking answers, but we can never run
out of questions.
Anyway, the learning process has just begun, and I am sure there will
be work enough to keep researchers busy for eons to come. After 6
billion years I doubt it will be problem anymore. Assuming there is
no cosmic crunch, Arthur C. Clarke described the next phase in the
expansion of knowledge. Clarke, Olaf Stapledon and I like to look at
the Big Picture. In the last paragraphs of his immortal work,
"Profiles of the Future," Clarke wrote:
Our Galaxy is now in the brief springtime of its life -- a springtime
made glorious by such brilliant blue-white stars as Vega and Sirius,
and, on a more humble scale, our own Sun. Not until all these have
flamed through their incandescent youth, in a few fleeting billions
of years, will the real history of the universe begin.
It will be a history illuminated only by the reds and infrareds of
dully glowing stars that would be almost invisible to our eyes; yet
the somber hues of that all-but-eternal universe may be full of color
and beauty to whatever strange beings have adapted to it. They will
know that before them lie, not the millions of years in which we
measure the eras of geology, nor the billions of years which span the
past lives of the stars, but years to be counted literally in trillions.
They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all
things, and to gather all knowledge. They will not be like gods,
because no gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers
they will command. But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the
bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the universe when it was young.
- Jed
