The Origins Of Science

On the left, the Orloj in Prague's Town Hall, the upper astrolabe mechanism from 1410. A Ptolemaic Astronomy that fit right in with Astrology. It's the most complex piece of machinery ever built until modern times, and one of the oldest town clocks. You could say modern Science started around this time, the building of clocks to measure Time. It was mechanical clocks like this that got Da Vinci thinking. Coincidentally that other branch of Science, Chemistry, had also developed into an obsession by then among the Alchemists who laid the foundations of Chemistry in secret. And why? Ostensibly the method of transmutation of base metals into gold was what they were hiding, but I'd say that was their cover story, one that could get them some financing for their costly equipment and experiments, and so a fable they would need to keep very secret. Other secrets too, we know little about. Prague was a hotbed of Alchemists for 300 years! Perhaps their Mysticism was it, another religion of pagan and Christian elements that the Church would have condemned along with any original scientific thinking, as Galileo found out. Come to think about it, perhaps the Church's objections had much to do with how hard Copernicus' theory, reiterated by Galileo, knocked Astrology, as well as the Earth at the Center of the Heavens. Apart from the gilt-edged sciences of Geometry and Mathematics, and based on them, the Science of Astrology was about the only other Science for centuries. In any case the Princes of Europe had their Court Astrologers and soon added Court Alchemists. A wily one, Augustus the Strong, tired of waiting for the promised gold in abundance, commandeered his Alchemist, Bottger, to make Chinese Porcelain instead. What we got was Meissen Porcelain which made a fortune for Saxony. From now on with government support and funding, Science became unstoppable. Read The Arcanum by Janet Gleeson, Warner Books, 1998.

The odd coda to the beginnings of Modern Astronomy and Chemistry is the lack of interest contemporary scientists have for their own history. Perhaps they're embarrassed at their magical origins. A considerable body of ancient books and manuscripts lie undisturbed about our libraries. Doubly difficult to make sense of them now, written in some arcane code for those who know, and mostly in Latin.

The Logic Of Science

On the left, the ultimate portable atomic clock, the size of a grain of rice from NIST and DARPA, 2004. Works using a tiny laser. Accurate for 300 years. A bit of overkill. Do we really need these in cell phones to come? Whether we want these gizmos or not is irrelevant. Some corporation will decide to manufacture them and soon they'll be everywhere. It's the logic of the age we live in. It's also the logic of Science. Actually a simple definition of Science, apart from the Latin root To Know, from the earlier verb To Cut, is the application of logic to all phenomena. That's how Science started in the mists of time when people perceived an orderly pattern to things that had a logic to it. That's also Science's Central Dogma, that the Universe is logical. On this one assumption everything rests. If Science ever hits a brick wall, it will be the discovery of something beyond logic. But Scientists are confident that will never happen, although there are many baffling gaps in their knowledge, the manufacturing of logical theories to cover them is almost as good as having the knowledge they lack, a working hypothesis.

It's these theories that scientists keep on testing, whether it's smashing atoms or toying with genetics. This is Big Science, the biggest game of all time. Of course, Science's parameters are those of the known physical Universe. What they expect to find and measure has to be physical, since after all they use physical instruments. But what if there are Non-physical Universes informing this one or even shaping it? Then they'll never be able to find out for certain if the Universe is logical or not.

Somewhere in the early 20th century Science split off entirely from Art. Now it's all theory and experiment, without a thought for consequences. It's aim like Art's was a certain amount of pleasure and usefulness, like the compass rose above. Now it's an endless stream of data that even overwhelms its specialist fields, and specialists can't keep up, where now a chemist and a physicist haven't got much in common and can't understand each other's work. It's becoming all rather dehumanizing. But we go on.

The latest big thing in Physics, another theory is theoretically we have Dark Matter and Dark Energy, surmised but not yet detected. Well, there are deficiencies in the Big Bang theory. To satisfy them, the known Universe of matter and energy now accounts for only 4% of the total Universe, the rest or 96%, is this unknown dark matter and dark energy we haven't detected. And Antimatter might exist as stars and galaxies where there is no ordinary matter, which would annilate it. Antiparticles have been found, but no Antimatter, though CERN and later Fermilab with CERN's assistance actually created a few atoms of antihydrogen. It's superhot and with no way to contain it, it's readily annihilated in 10 seconds, releasing 100% of its energy and ordinary hydrogen's in contact with it. 100% energy efficient whereas a hydrogen bomb is only 7%. More dreams of an endless supply of energy, except it's way too expensive, at least $25 million a gram.

Anyway, we're in an age of endless speculation and experimentation. The effect on civilization is destabilizing. Some of this Science trickles down to us and now we're living with machines instead of friends and family. With cars instead of horses, with bulbs instead of candles. Are we better off?

Yet we're still trying to get to the bottom of this Universe. It's one thing to daydream. We all do it even those who are PhD deficient. Another to test any and all theories endlessly. But the real worry is Science's destructive experiments and applications of destructive research which eventually affect us all. From one bomb at Los Alamos to a giant nuclear arsenal and a thousand nuclear reactors and no way to safely dispose of them. While we've got our hands full of problems dumped on us by Science that Science is not addressing, a new era of Big Science is dawning. Genetic manipulation and Nuclear Fusion and Super Colliders like CERN's LHC, due to start up in 2008. What's really going to happen when lead nuclei are smashed together in the LHC at super colossal energies never before attempted? Collisions at nearly twice the speed of light? This isn't atom smashing anymore, this is a new type of Fusion Reaction. Even some physicists are demurring. It could be the end of the world.

Science In A Conundrum

Everybody seems to think Science is a good thing and here to stay. It's right up there with the age old forces that drive the world into the future. Politics, Business, Culture and Religion, except that it is, if not a new idea, a recent application of it to everything. A new philosophy and method of dealing with the planet and our existence. It's a good candidate as the rival to all religions. It has all the trappings of one. Imagine 2,000 PhDs in one place like CERN, the veritable Vatican of Particle Physics.

Reminds me of a Chevy Chase movie, Fletch. Chevy on the lam, hiding out in a hospital, nervously putting on a lab coat and suddenly surprised by guys in lab coats, wondering how to act like a doctor, nodding Doctor, shaking the hand of, Doctor, How are you, Doctor, an exercise in Doctor flattery, desperate to fool them and join the club. Might have done the same skit in Oxford, where conundrum was coined, among the medieval Doctors of Theology, wearing one of their gowns. These Doctors of Theology then and the Doctors of Science have much the same allure. The jargon they share, a sanctimonious air a trifle condescending, and no appetite for criticism. Disagreeing with the other doctors could have got you burned at the stake. Especially if you were a layman with no grasp of their Central Dogma. Even Biologists today have a Central Dogma, as it is actually called: Life comes from life, though they must be arguing about it now.

There's the Standard Model for Particle Physics, extremely complex, much admired, though with a number of big holes that need patching with more theories. Quantum Mechanics, another backbone of Particle Physics that looks sound from every angle and even works, is a jungle of probabilities that a statistician might have dreamed up. Einstein had an early hand in it, but the more he worked on it, the less he liked it, calling it spooky. Its randomness after his theory of General Relativity just didn't make enough sense. No one since has been able to make these theories agree, not even Stephen Hawking. Perhaps Einstein is still right. He hasn't been proved wrong about anything. Quantum Mechanics, as he said, would be acceptable if it were completed by hidden variables. Interesting too that Einstein didn't pursue experiments to validate his theories, but many physicists have since. Certainly his stature was one of a prophet. But mere scientists aren't content with fireside theories scribbled on the back of an envelope.

Scientists want action today, like the Large Hadron Collider, $8.7 to about $10 billion worth, depending what formula you use. A quantum gamble by over 2,000 physicists at CERN essentially to prove or disprove a theory that is vital to another theory, the Electroweak theory, part of the Standard Model. They're looking for the theoretical Higg's boson, perhaps a big particle or a small particle, that confers mass on other particles. If they don't find it they might have to throw out the Electroweak theory and try something else. It might even mean going back to the chalk board like Einstein and start from a general theory to unify all four major forces, instead of 2 with the Electroweak. In the wings too, are String Theory and Supersymmetry, dying from lack of experimental funding. Incidentally, CERN will be looking for any sign of life in them, at the LHC.

This is big stuff, the Science we see and the Science we don't see much of. Today's Science rivals the power of the Church in its heyday that called for a Crusade to the Holy Land. Here a small army of physicists have called for a crusade of their own to find the Higgs, dubbed the God Particle, and capture it for a split second at least, even if it means possibly annihilating, not Jerusalem, but in this case Geneva, sitting beside the ATLAS experiment, the biggest one of all 4 big ones, just outside the 27 km Large Hadron Collider.

The Conundrum then is, do we trust an upstart Science, to steer us into the future? With Science itself battling conundrums, with no clear idea where it's headed, except towards some sort of progress, a promised land? For every step forward for Science, there are two steps back for it and us, usually costly and dismissed in a face saving way as a larger problem you wouldn't understand, requiring more study and funding. Cancer is now many cancers, a staggering discovery, billions of dollars later while cancer mortality overall hasn't changed statistically. Indeed overall numbers of cases have gone up due to modern scientific progress in things like day-to-day drugstore and hardware store chemistry and nuclear power plants. And what about antibiotics that turned scientists into demigods until drug-resistant and tougher pathogens surfaced and tarnished their infallibility. AIDS the new demon still isn't pacified 40 billion dollars later. Sounds like we finally have to buy Science and all the scientific dogmas and promises on Faith alone, like the Church.

The Future Of Science

The problem with Science is there are a lot of problems. Funny thing is nobody seems to think so. What you get in the media are a lot of geewiz science shows and stories. Of course Science is our modern magic and the revelations and accomplishments overwhelm us and our critical thinking, where fantasy becomes a reality, at least for a few spoiled scientists. Later we get the spinoffs. Space Tourism next according to Virgin (not the goddess but the record company) and the Japanese who are already planning Honeymoon Hotels (where else but on the Moon). Once the ball starts rolling it can go anywhere, from E=MC squared, to Hiroshima and Chernobyl, people being people and not very scientific.

If Science flops or goofs somewhere, the media provides an apology, like it's a regrettable mistake which won't happen again and better luck next time. Or lately the usual we're getting better at this. Safeguards are now in place. Science is after all, Experimental Science and naturally some experiments fail. Usually we pay a long term price for them, but the media are not concerned with the future. There are fires and ticking time bombs everywhere that are instigated by Science and yet no one holds scientists accountable. The nuclear industry for example. And what really is important, whether a success or failure, is not evaluated on TV and in print. We'll worry about that later, when the facts are in. By that time it's usually too late. Look at the drastic poisoning of the environment by a handful of agricultural chemical companies. What warnings there were, came from left field, not from the scientific community who are even less critical of themselves than we are. A few ordinary people protested like Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. Like farmers, but the media weren't listening. They still don't. A few groups have organized against the chemicalization but they're considered flaky or they're blackballed as Far Left or as troublesome extremists like Greenpeace. What compounds the comatose response to environmental threats is the comforting presence of government agencies like the EPA in America, who have their own scientists approving this and that, so we're safe in doing nothing. Leave the professionals to deal with the professionals. Sounds great in theory. In fact, certainly there's less degradation in the environment and our health, than without these agencies, but it goes on at an alarming pace. Statistics like a third of all Americans suffering from some respiratory illness grouped into asthma, up from 3% since 1900. Obviously there's room for ordinary people to get involved in the debate about our future.

The only other critics we have who come down hard on Science are writers of science fiction and later the movie makers who've been warning us since Victorian times like HG Wells. The gloom and doom about the future, the future of Science, is almost a daily feature of our lives. Yet we don't seem to be taking the warnings of the inevitable progress of Science seriously. But I'm sure we worry a lot while we're watching these blockbusters, squirming in our seats at the appalling things going on. But here it's more like adrenalin space junkies getting their fix. Always some wiseguy scientist quoted later, trying to bring us down, who says that this movie's based on poor science. Don't worry. That'll never happen. It can't happen if you know your Science.

Evidently there is a need for a public forum on the future, The Science of Conundrums. Nobody seems to know what to do about the present. If we look ahead and figure out what kind of future we want, we could shape the present so we get to the future. Not some wasteland.

Terms Of Use

The Science of Conundrums and Big Science News, including all text, images, audio and video, are Copyright (c) 2007-2008 Alan Gillis. Content appearing that was previously copyrighted belongs to the copyright holders.

Permission is granted, on a Fair Use basis, to reproduce excerpts from materials, and personal, non-commercial private use of materials. All other rights including commercial rights are the property of Alan Gillis. By downloading or copying any material you agree to the above terms.

Submissions in Comments and any other submissions appearing in this web publication and in any other media, now or in the future, not previously copyright, are Copyright (c) 2007-2008 Alan Gillis. By submitting any material you agree to the above terms and grant a non-exclusive and royalty-free license to publish your submissions. If you submit third party material it should be so noted and by submitting you acknowledge that you do have permission from the owner of the material to submit it and publish it under the above terms. The submitter is responsible to the owner of such material if the owner's rights have been infringed.

Submissions are the views of the authors and their responsibility. Alan Gillis is not responsible for their content and veracity, nor does Alan Gillis necessarily agree with such content.

Although efforts are made to insure accuracy, Alan Gillis is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this publication. Please contact Alan Gillis to rectify any problems.

The information published is for entertainment purposes only.

If third party copyright material appears unknowingly, credit will be acknowledged in future postings. Or if the copyright holders wish, their material will be deleted from this publication.