Contemplate the next major revolution in science

[Michaelangelica]

I think I am going to hold my breath until the progrom (not a misspelling) is finished.

 

I mean think about it. We have been accumilating data for the last 2000-3000 years. In the last 100 years we developed the capability to store, sort, and process that data. I think it's the main cause of our progress spur.

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Yes but we now have information overload, and increasing specialisation, even within disiplines.

 

It is becoming harder and harder to see where a "Renaissance Man" might come from. Someone with a grasp of all the arts and sciences.

I think we will need someone with a mind that can stretch over many disciplines to put some of the many highly specialised ideas together.

After all discovery is often just putting two previously unconnected ideas together. 'Serendipity' too but that needs to be informed by as much cutting edge science as possible.

I guess given enough typewriters one Super-monkey-brain will eventually evolve from Hypography?!:)

[IDMclean]

The ability to manage, process, and sort data is related to the tools for this purpose that a person has to work with.

 

I doubt it's simply one person who will make the next major revolution in science. My push is that people instead of specializing in an esoteric method of bridge building actually learn a number of disciplines, preferably rigorous ones at that.

 

I myself am somewhat versed in Physics, Psychology, Sociology, Computer sci, Game theory, and Philosophy.

 

But on a whole we will eventually deal with all the info we have, it's just matter of time. I mena just look at this web site, or wikipedia, or others like them. Their all about the processing, sorting, storage, retrieval, insterlacing, and access of information. Given enough time with even 0.01% of of the world's pop working basically constantly on this, we can expect to have a "universal libary" up and ready in matter of decades. (not accounting for major advancements in Computing.)

 

But your right, higher quality people are required for major break throughs. (Quality as in multi-disciplined, conscientious, empathic individuals.)

[HIENVN]

That is a fond dream of many scientists not an established theory even!!!:confused:

I knew I would take a trouble from you and Tarantism when I write the quote, “Although ... it is exist.” But I still write this quote because it should disclose a truth when once some scientists in the future find out one single secret of the universe.

The researches are always begun by proposed ideas that the temporary people named as “Fond Dreams.” However, we would have nothing to contemplate in this forum if nobody tries to establish these fond dreams!

[HydrogenBond]

There are two approaches to science. One is differentiation of phenomena and the other is integration of phenomena. Contempory data and information collection is connected to differential science which attempts to point out and catelog all the distinctions. Specialization is good for differentiation. While generalization is better for integation. Specialists tend to lose track of the forest because of the trees. The generalists may not know all the trees, but he can ee the forest and is able to pick out large patterns from which major innovation can arise.

 

For example, if one specialized in the study of ant eyeballs, one would probally break it down into excrusiating detail, making extremely subtle distinctions that eventually become expressed as separate phenomena. The generalists only sees ant eyeballs. The expert canget so bogged down in sublties, his mind can no longer see the big picture. The specialist forms a type of microscope mindset. But major innovations needs the telescope mindset of the generalist to see the forest.

 

The ant eyeball expert may get bogged down trying to account for the mitantal diffractional depolarizational syndrone angleton difference between dissimilar octatagonal mitcropheres. The generalists doesn't even know what that it, he see round eyeballs. From this integrated simplicity innovation will begin to take shape.

[Michaelangelica]

There are two approaches to science. One is differentiation of phenomena and the other is integration of phenomena.

So do we need both types of approaches to achieve knowledge/inventions/breakthroughs?

 

Except most of our education systems are designed to encourage increasing specialisation rather than generalisation.

 

So are we the poorer for this?

 

I find a University education makes it harder for me to communicate with some people.

With people in my own speciality/language/jargon we can talk in shorthand.

 

So is university education going in the wrong direction to achieve a major breakthrough in science?

[Qfwfq]

I mean think about it. We have been accumilating data for the last 2000-3000 years. In the last 100 years we developed the capability to store, sort, and process that data. I think it's the main cause of our progress spur.

Actually, is it a cause or is it one of the consequences of the progress spur?

 

We have long been able to store data (how else were we accumulating it?) and it was often being sorted and in some cases processed. Progress has just enhanced the speed and reduced the effort of it. This certainly has a role in further progress but I wouldn't call it the main cause. It's like using the fire to dry more firewood.

[hallenrm]

Just a stray thought that occured to me on reading the above posts.

 

True that scientific revolutions are based on sieving lots of observations to reach meaningful results, but they also require that all the data of observations are available to all the capable analytical minds. While it is a truism that in the last few decades through the advent of IT much more data is available for analysis, but is it all the data that has been collected? Is there some data that has been planted to mislead?

 

Pertinent questions! :evil: Aren't they

[HydrogenBond]

Geting back to differential and integral science. Both are important for full understanding but education is slanted toward differential such that integral education is lacking far behind. For example, the differntial scientists will pull the automoble apart to see all its pieces. The integral scientist keeps rebuilding the car into a whole so it works as a whole. For him, he does not need to know the winding geometry of the alternator. He just needs to know that the alternator goes here.

 

Differential science is easier. It is easier to take something apart than it is to put it back together again. The information glut has pulled the symbolic auto apart down to the subpieces making assemble harder for the limted integral workforce. The workforce should be the other way around. We don't need more parts, we need more assembly. These new assemblies will be where major innovation will appear.

[IDMclean]

What I mean by store, is effiencently and in such a way that the information is easily accessable. Cabinets work fine if all you got is a few hundred pages of information. Libaries are fine and all, but that info isn't exactly "accessible". Searching it can take hours or even weeks. It's like the difference between insert-sort and merge-sort. Right algorithm for the right job.

 

Now as for the others, yes i agree that we do those functions, and have been for many many years however accessibility has been compartivitly trivial for the preivious millenia. Our processing capabilities have been drasticly stream-lined, and on top of that our communication abilities are vastily beyond anything previous.

 

I like to think of Ballistic computers, not the machines but the people whom the machines were named after. Ballistic computers would figure the trajectory of a shot from a source (often a battle ship) to a destination. They were slow, and prone to mistakes or inaccuracy. Then machine computers took over their job. Comparatively these computers were snails to what we have now, but comparatively to the human computers they were vastly faster and provided higher degrees of effienciency, accuracy and speed.

 

Then you have things like grid computing and cell processing.

 

We have had information for the history of humankind, our ability to deal with the information has been severly limited in all but the last two hundred years (if that).

 

There are four areas I think that will turn out the greatest innovations in the history of humankind. If we advance them, I think we will reach an entirely new phase of existence. I can't even begin to describe what would and would not happen. It is beyond my comprehension beyond the statement that "it would blow our minds". I suspect that the realm of sci-fi begins to scratch the surface of what is possible.

 

So like I said, I await the progrom to finish processing. When it does we will know what to do next.

[Qfwfq]

I agree Kick that it's a matter of enhanced speed and reduced effort.

 

While it is a truism that in the last few decades through the advent of IT much more data is available for analysis, but is it all the data that has been collected? Is there some data that has been planted to mislead?

 

Pertinent questions! :) Aren't they

:lol:

Yep, sure are pertinent! :D

 

Try walking into the library of a research dep't, where they have all the years of publications bound into books! Rooms full of shelves for the most recent decades! :hihi: In the past few years subscribers can read them online, and even Google will find articles for you but you only see the abstract unless you're subscribed. Of course there's also the sites with the preprints which are free.

 

Of course, before the days of search engines, workers were still getting to the less recent things by following references.

 

Now, these usually aren't just publishing the raw data from the apparatus, though in appropriate cases data is made available for others' analysis. As for the work of theorists and phenomenologists, they too give just the essential conclusions and readers may do their homework for themselves. It's fine enough for a good researcher that's working full time on it, what's less easy is to become one of them. :doh: You need to show them you have the capabilities and also the stamina, that you're a good investment...

[hallenrm]

what's less easy is to become one of them. You need to show them you have the capabilities and also the stamina, that you're a good investment...

 

Or tow the line, that is not to create trouble by proclaiming anything revolutionary new!!!

[Qfwfq]

...not to create trouble by proclaiming anything revolutionary new!!!

But some of them do!!!

[hallenrm]

Well getting back to the point, I think a major revolution in science would occur the day it is proved that a living organism can be synthesized in vitro. That is the day artificial life is born in some science lab. !! :eek:

[Michaelangelica]

Well getting back to the point, I think a major revolution in science would occur the day it is proved that a living organism can be synthesized in vitro. That is the day artificial life is born in some science lab. !! :eek:

Yes.

all they seem to have managed so far are a few strands of amino acids.

[HydrogenBond]

To make life in the lab will require a rational strategy instead of using the try and see what happens approach of statistics. Consider the extended consequences of a rational approach for forming life in the lab. It would change the way we look at evolution since now a rational evolution straegy would be competitive because of realtime data.

 

One useful experiment that could give insight forming into life in the lab works like this. One starts with the DNA of a simple life form. From the DNA would makes all the RNA that parallels this DNA. From the RNA, one them makes all the proteins. Essentially one starts with the DNA template, makes the analogous double RNA template and then translates this double RNA template into all the implied proteins.

 

Next, one makes a lipid bi-layer shell and places the proteins inside and then insert some mitochondria to make ATP. We pamper the mitochonria since this is the engine of life. The ATP will react with the pseudo-active sites on the loose proteins breaking the proteins apart. At steady state, add the RNA. The RNA will interact with the proteins. When that reaches steady state, add the DNA. This will interact with the RNA and proteins.

 

What one essentially has is all the DNA, RNA and proteins needed to define life but in sort of a semi-ordered tangle. The mitochondria are going to add a potential to this tangle of spagetti at each stage and push it into increasing levels of order until.....

[Qfwfq]

They are certainly making progress, and with rational strategy, not just the "try and see what happens approach of statistics". There are actually growing concerns that, with basic genome building blocks becoming comercially available, bio-hackers designing and synthesizing DNA and RNA viruses could soon become just as common as computer hackers.

 

The tools are still not accessible to the average high-school kid, but I can remember in the late '70s when an Intel 8080 was still advertized for well over $100 (dollars of back then, and just the 40 pin chip!). Within 1980 they (or, better, a Z80) could be found for less than 5 bucks and I got my first Sinclair before finishing high-school.

[Michaelangelica]

It sounds impossible to me.

but what do I know.

 

I don't think the computer analogy fits though.

It seems that creating life, as HydrogenBond describes it, is almost impossibly complex.