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MoEnzyme
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The Future is not what it used to be . . .
« on: 2011-04-14 18:39:26 » |
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The future is not what it used to be
APRIL 12, 2011
by Patrick Love
1961, what a year, eh? The OECD, George Clooney and Barack Obama were born. And of course, Yuri Gagarin proved Joseph de Lalande wrong, yet again.
In 1782, a year before the first manned balloon flight took off from the site that would become OECD headquarters [insert your own hot air joke here], the eminent expert from the Académie française declared that: “It is entirely impossible for man to rise into the air and float there. For this you would need wings of tremendous dimensions and they would have to be moved at a speed of three feet per second. Only a fool would expect such a thing to be realised.”
Of course, it’s easy to get it wrong, but it takes a rare form of genius to fail to predict what has actually happened. So a special mention goes to the Engineering Editor of The Times, who, three years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, informed the cream of British society that: “All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to human life, but foredoomed to failure from the engineering standpoint.”
Britain’s outstanding record in technology forecasting was maintained by Astronomer Royal Richard Van Der Riet Woolley, who in 1956 declared that “space travel is utter bilge”. The following year, his predecessor, Sir Harold Spencer Jones, showed that timing is everything when he upgraded the rating to “Space travel is bunk” two weeks before the first Sputnik.
Four years later, Gagarin orbited the Earth, and only eight years after that Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon. Astronautics was the most spectacular proof that the pace of change in science and technology had accelerated dramatically, but major breakthroughs were occurring in every domain in the 1960s.
One Brit who got it right was Harold Wilson, the future prime minister, who said that that the type of country being “forged in the white heat” of the scientific and technical revolution would need different ways of dealing with the potentials and problems of the new discoveries.
However, policymaking often lags behind the pace of change in science and technology, and we’re no exception: the OECD’s Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy wouldn’t be created until 1972, long after Committees overseeing other areas such as agriculture or tourism.
Then as now, scientific discoveries that would prove crucial often appeared unimportant to all but a few specialists. For instance, putting E. coli cells in a cold calcium chloride solution doesn’t sound exciting, but they then become permeable to nucleic acid fragments, allowing scientists to carry out numerous genetic engineering operations.
This illustrates a dilemma for science and technology policy makers. They are faced with demands to finance “useful” research, but it’s practically impossible to predict where science will lead, and which technologies will ultimately make the most money.
A funding strategy that relies on spotting winners ignores the role that unforeseen connections and insights play in science and technology.
The OECD has been a major influence in changing how governments approach science, technology and innovation, and how economics as a discipline tries to understand these phenomena. In 1963 already, Science, economic growth and government policy convinced governments of something that seems obvious now: that science policy should be linked to economic policy. In 1971, Science, growth and society anticipated many of today’s concerns by emphasising the need to involve citizens in assessing the consequences of developing and using new technologies.
For many experts though, the OECD’s major contribution was the concept of national innovation systems, presented in 1992 in a landmark publication, Technology and the Economy: The Key Relationships. Economists working at the OECD pioneered a new approach that saw innovation not as something linear, but as a kind of ecosystem involving interactions among existing knowledge, research, invention; potential markets; and the production process.
Since then, the way science is done has been changed radically by the connectivity offered by the Internet and other communication tools. This allows scientists and technologists to interact better with each other, and it also allows scientists and technologists to take advantage of other types of expertise to develop the tools and foster the innovation required to meet emerging economic, sustainability and even social challenges.
This means that what has been called the science of science policy will have to change too. The OECD will have a role to play in this. As in the past, the OECD will be expected to spot emerging issues; provide the data, analyses, and policy recommendations needed to make the most of them; and to provide a forum where problems, contradictions and differing aspirations can be debated in an objective, productive fashion.
http://oecdinsights.org/2011/04/12/the-future-is-not-what-it-used-to-be/
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Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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MoEnzyme
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Re:The Future is not what it used to be . . .
« Reply #1 on: 2011-04-14 18:47:18 » |
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From the comment section of the OECDinsights blog above:
Quote:Harvey Jackson
April 14, 2011 22:03
I think a certain indispensible part of scientific inquiry remains wholly driven by existential questions above and beyond any economic considerations. Who are we? How did we get here? What is the nature of the universe? Etc. I find myself hard pressed to connect our current search for planets around other nearby stars having any immediately practical economic impact, and yet I don’t feel any need to justify funding such a search no matter our current budgetary squabbles. It’s just something which needs to be done for some existential reason I feel no need to articulate or advocate. Is not the insatiable thirst of humanity to expand our vision and knowledge on every level of our universal existence not enough to drive our search for knowledge? Must we really wait for a thousand economists to articulate their relevance and theories within our expanding consciousness before we proceed? Or can we let them catch up with the dream as they always have in the past. Yes, the future is not what it used to be, but it’s still driven by existential aspirations as it always has been before – just a little bit freer than before . . . as usual.
REPLY
Harvey Jackson
April 14, 2011 23:07
I’d like to address my dear friend Brian Bouffard’s concerns about religion and science in a strictly demand driven way. Historically religion has sought to diminish the demands for existential explanations which unfettered scientific inquiry would otherwise stimulate. Why? Because historically our ideological dogmas have had a tendency to memetically shut down the demand for further existential inquiry. Yes, sometimes religious and ideological interests my seek out the practical efficiencies which science may afford in a mundane sense, but at the end of the day these all encompassing dogmas wish to maintain the illusion that they have already solved the ultimate existential questions. Allegedly we shouldn’t be asking these questions, because our dogmas claim to already have the answers. From Galileo to Darwin and beyond, religious and economimc authorities would rather not compete with existential questions which are ultimately beyond their control. Sure, it’s nice enough to individually pursue your economic interests and whatever mundane scientific questions those may involve within their limited universe, but these selfish dogmas would rather you leave the biggest existential demands safely within their comfortable systems. A truly secular system, on the other hand remains fundamentally open to the ever greater demands for knowledge of the human spirit. This is the kind of competition which no monopolistic ideology would care to compete with which is exactly why a secular society must continue to find independent ways to fund such research. It’s a bigger issue than anyone’s religious or economic ideologies, and should always remain so. We need to discover other life in the universe precisely because most of our older dogmas have failed to sufficiently consider them in the first place. The human spirit of inquiry has to ultimately remain bigger than our dogmas or face the ultimate likelihood of extinction. |
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Fritz
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Re:The Future is not what it used to be . . .
« Reply #2 on: 2011-04-16 14:14:01 » |
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Another dimension; to an interesting thread.
Cheers
Fritz
PREDICTION IN RESEARCH
SCIENTISTS AND SOOTHSAYERS
Prediction in research fulfills one of the basic desires of humanity, to discern the future and know what fate holds. Such foresight used to involve studying the stars or looking at the entrails of animals.
Source: Experiment-Resources
Date: 2009
Author: Martyn Shuttleworth
Obviously, few pay heed to such methods, in the modern world, but many people expect scientists to become the new soothsayers and predict where humanity, the environment, and the universe will end up.
To a certain extent, most scientists regularly use prediction in research as a fundamental of the scientific method, when they generate a hypothesis and predict what will happen. At the other extreme lies something like Global Warming, which has been predicted by many computer models, although measurements have yet to establish the real truth behind the theory.
Reasoning Cycle - Scientific Research
These predictions can have wide-ranging effects and direct whole scientific disciplines, as with Relativity and Darwin’s Evolution, which have underpinned research in Physics and Biology for many years. On the other hand, smaller experiments can also have wider ramifications and allow humanity to predict and therefore avoid future events.
MEDICINE AND PREDICTION IN RESEARCH
One of the earliest examples of this was the Muslim scholar, Al-Razi. He was asked to find the best location to build a hospital, in the city of Baghdad.
Cleverly, he hung a piece of meat and predicted that the place where the meat took longest to rot would be the best place to build a hospital. Although he knew little about the exact processes behind the transmission of illness, he realized that some environments were unhealthier than others, especially in a hot climate where gangrene was a problem. His idea was used for many years, until the bacterial processes behind illness were uncovered.
Sticking with medicine, a later example of prediction in research can be found in the wonderful work of Semmelweiss, a scientist responsible for saving countless thousands of lives. In 1847, the Hungarian Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis's close friend, Jakob Kolletschka, cut his finger during an autopsy and contracted a nasty disease known as puerperal fever. Semmelweis also observed that puerperal fever killed 13 percent of women giving birth in his hospital, whilst the nearby hospital, run entirely by midwives, lost only two percent of its birthing mothers.
Semmelweis noticed that students moved between the autopsy room and the delivery room without washing their hands, and predicted that this was the reason for the higher death rate in the teaching hospital. He informed students that they had to wash their hands in a chlorine solution when entering the maternity wing and mortality rates from puerperal fever promptly dropped to two percent.
Unfortunately, the unfortunate Semmelweis became a victim of politics and the director of the hospital, livid that the young doctor was indirectly blaming him for the high rates of mortality, made sure that Semmelweis never worked in Vienna again. Eventually, he returned to Budapest and used his methods there, eventually publishing a book of his findings.
Sadly, the medical establishment rejected his ideas and the disillusioned Semmelweis died in a mental institution after being severely beaten by guards. The autopsy revealed extensive internal injuries - the cause of death was blood poisoning.
Eventually, the Englishman, Joseph Lister, began using carbolic acid as a disinfectant, 16 years later, but he gave Semmelweis full credit for his prediction in research, which saved thousands of lives.
The unfortunate scientist also gave his name to a scientific phenomenon known as the ‘Semmelweis Effect,’ where new research based upon bold predictions is swiftly rejected because it threatens the established paradigm too much. Wegener also suffered from this effect when he postulated the idea of continental drift, a prediction rejected by almost the entire scientific community.
PHYSICS AND PREDICTION IN RESEARCH
One fine example of making experimental predictions and generating hypotheses was the work of J.J. Thomson, who conducted a wonderfully innovative series of physics experiments by making predictions.
After he completed an experiment and showed that his prediction had some basis and fitted the observations, he made the next prediction and worked towards a greater goal, in stages. Of course, physicists also work at the other end of the scale and make the huge predictions that are capable of shaking the world of science.
Some of the biggest proponents of prediction in research are the theoretical physicists, such as Einstein and Hawking. They use sweeping and elegant mathematical theories to predict how that they think the universe behaves. Their predictions actually guide the direction of entire scientific paradigms as the empirical physicists test and attempt to falsify parts of the theory, leading to refinement and change.
ASTRONOMY AND PREDICTION IN RESEARCH
Astronomy has thrown up some great examples of prediction in science, largely built upon the laws of motion proposed by Newton. One of the finest examples of this arises from the discovery of the planet Neptune, which stands as a testament to the skill of the astronomers but also to the work of Newton. The discovery of this planet showed that his work is largely correct under most circumstances – the Theory of Relativity explained physics at the extremes of scale.
The planet Uranus, discovered by William Herschel in 1781, had made nearly one entire revolution of the sun, by 1846. Excited astronomers realized, after looking at star charts documenting the progress of the planet, that its orbit was irregular and did not follow the Newtonian prediction for planetary moment. They predicted that the only possible explanation for this was if the planet was under the influence of another large planet lying further out, exerting gravitational pull. In Britain and in France, astronomers set out to predict the position of this new planet and then find it.
Two astronomers found the planet, Urbain Le Verrier, in Paris, and John Couch Adams, in Cambridge. Le Verrier takes the credit as he was the first to announce the discovery, but both scientists located the planet through deduction and the application of Newtonian physics. This was a great advertisement for the power of prediction in research and similar indirect deductions are still used to find cosmological objects.
ARCHAEOLOGY AND PREDICTION IN RESEARCH
Strangely enough, even an intuitively backwards looking discipline, such as history, uses prediction in research. Most historians state a thesis, the equivalent of a hypothesis, and set out to find evidence to support or deny it. One of the greatest examples of this was the adventurer and proto-archaeologist, Harald Schliemann. He firmly believed that Homer’s Iliad gave geographical clues and measurements that would allow him to find the site of Priam’s Troy.
Patiently, he collated the information and raised funding, before setting off, using the Iliad as a roadmap. He found a ruined city that most academics believe are Troy and his prediction was supported. His archaeological methods were crude and destructive, but nobody can fault his detective work and power of prediction.
THE DANGER OF PREDICTION IN RESEARCH – THE GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE
It is impossible to write about prediction in research without mentioning Global Warming. This process has been hijacked by conflicting interests and the predictions have become a political football, drowning any fair and impartial science in a morass of compromised research and hidden agendas.
The theory that anthropomorphic carbon dioxide emissions contributed to global temperatures was initially postulated by the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, in 1896. A little research continued in this field throughout the course of the twentieth century, but it did not really take notice until the 1980’s, when computers became the mainstay of science. This allowed climatologist to model the climate of the earth, and some scientists began to predict that humans were pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that it was contributing to Global Warming, with the risk of climate change, melting ice caps and rising sea levels.
Debate has raged ever since then, with scientists attempting to generate better and more accurate predictions for climate change. As computing power increases, and more information becomes available, then a clearer picture emerges. At the moment, the vast majority of scientists have predicted that the earth’s atmosphere is warming, but the overall impact of man-made emissions is still unclear.
The problem with this particular debate is that it has become politicized, with oil companies, environmental groups, governments and NGOs picking the results that best suit their agenda. This highlights one of the dangers of prediction in research, that people will seize them and proclaim them as truth, when they can never be 100% accurate. If left to the scientific method, these predictions would evolve and change but, with the stakes high on either side, these influential groups are reluctant to give up ground, and the whole thing has become a shambles.
THE RISE OF PREDICTIVE SCIENCE
As part of humanity’s quest to understand nature, predictive science is much more widespread than before.
Much of this is due to the exponential growth in computing power, which allows gradually more detailed and accurate models. These are of great use in predicting the weather or natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.
The other factor driving this growth of predictions in research is politics and economics. Predicting the weather benefits an economy by informing farmers about what to expect, and allows emergency services to predict when adverse weather may require action. Economics is prediction driven and, as the current economic crisis shows, incorrect predictions can be devastating, although whether politicians choose to listen to the advice of computer prediction models, if they disagree with their policies, is another matter.
With the millions of dollars invested by governments, or by oil companies using the predictions of geologists to know where to drill test wells, predictive science is only going to grow. However, this entire field of science and computing rests upon the same foundations that drove early scientists, the principle of making a prediction and setting out to test it.
Unfortunately, these predictions in science are at the whim of paymasters, whether in government or the private sector. This will always compromise the integrity of the scientists making predictions, as is the case with Global Warming models, but prediction in research will always drive the scientific method. That is my prediction, anyway!
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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