Prediction is very difficult – especially about the future. That this bon-mot has been variously attributed to Woody Allen, Yogi Berra and even (with deliciously quantum irony) to Niels Bohr, illustrates the impermanence of the foundations on which rests the edifice of knowledge.
So there I was, enthroned, at about 4.15 this morning, when I began to muse (as one so often does in that position) on the Questions of the Age. The nature of understanding; the limits of knowledge; and, in true Rumsfeldian manner, on the Knowns, both Known and Unknown (Actually, I do wonder if much recent US foreign policy has not been conducted from such a seated … er … standpoint).
Science is not about the Known, of course, it is about the Unknown. With every day that passes, scientists find things out about the world that were not known before. And, prediction being what it is, it is very difficult to prescribe or predict what discoveries might be just around the corner. Not that people haven’t tried. John Maddox, Emeritus Editor of Nature, attempted the feat in his book What Remains To Be Discovered.
Futurology – essentially, an informed look at likely new technical achievements – is a thriving industry. To be sure, one can make a rough order of priorities about things that are more likely to be discovered sooner rather than later. One can be fairly confident that in the next century, we are marginally more likely to see a laptop battery that lasts as long as you want it to than to find pigs sprouting wings and flying off (I’d give it no more than an even chance, frankly).
And there is nothing to stop one making a wish list. In 1900, mathematician David Hilbert kicked off the twentieth century with a list of the great problems in mathematics that were yet to be solved.
And so, from my seated position, I began to think about the Big Problems in science that remain to be addressed, and in which progress might be made in the next hundred years. Or perhaps the next thousand. There’s no hurry.
- What is the nature of mass?
- How can entropy be massively decreased?
- What is the nature of dark matter?
- What is the origin and ultimate fate of the universe?
- Can gravity and quantum mechanics be reconciled?
- Is the Earth the only planet with life on it?
- What, while we’re on the subject, is the meaning of ‘life’?
- What is the nature of consciousness/ sentience/ intelligence/ do-be-do-be-do?
- Is there a reliable way of finding an unpopulated checkout queue in Morrisons?
- Why is it that no matter how hard you shake it about, one drop always stays on the end?
I admit that it’s a pretty ambitious program. But no matter – science, being what it is, is rather like the apocryphally waggish (if not Whiggish) commentary on the Irish Question: just when the English think they’ve found an answer, the Irish have changed the Question. Science is not a zero-sum game, in which light of ever greater brightness is shone on an ever-dwindling puddle of ignorance. Our vistas expand exponentially with each new discovery, so much so that the nature of the questions we ask changes with every step. Yesterday’s questions might not only be solved in the light of the knowledge of tomorrow – they might actually be rendered completely meaningless, rather in the same way that the meaning of any word is vitiated as soon as it is prefixed with the word ‘social’, cf. ‘social science’, ‘social security’, ‘social text’, ‘social justice’, ‘social contract’ etc. [oooh, bit political – Ed.]
So, science is not just about plunging ahead into the Unknown Unknown – it is all about learning precisely which questions to ask. And, given that the list of questions I’ve framed above is likely to be turned into syntactic porridge by a week next Thursday, I’ve decided to leap one step ahead and offer a list of questions which, I hope and believe, will endure in their grandificently magniloquent timelessness.
- What becomes of the broken-hearted?
- Why do fools fall in love?
- What’s the story, morning glory?
- Who put the ‘bop’ in the ‘bop-shoowop-shoowop’?
- Where did our love go?
- What’s new, pussycat?
- Do you know the way to San José?
- Why have you left the one you left me for?
- How much is that doggie in the window?
- Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs Murphy’s Ovaltine?
And perhaps, most pertinently,
- How do I work this?
What do you get if you cross Mathematics/Stats and Pop Music?
and
Tons more here on Flickr
Poincaré: “All that is not thought is pure nothingness; since we can think only thought and all the words we use to speak of things can express only thoughts, to say there is something other than thought, is therefore an affirmation which can have no meaning.” (I guess it is a little bit ironic.) In opposite to Poincaré I think the “value of science” and the meaning of experimental work is practice. Although we know, ultimately, nothing (and most likely the world is not to be understandable by our mind), we can cure ilnesses, build power stations, produce cars etc. It is not necessary well message… However, from philosophical point of view, it is fascinating: we can live in world (successfully) which we know anything about. Remarkably, animals as well (arent we eventually animals?).
I think Mass: nature or nurture? is a more interesting question that has yet to be resolved.
@Boris: it’s a fascinating (and frightening) notion that we can interpret the world only through our thoughts. In a sense, though, it sets everything on an equal plane. Given that we can only know things through thought, the world we know (and the solutions we create – curing illnesses, building cars and so on) is self-consistent as such. The world works, and so do the things we make within it. However, it does raise the possibility that things might exist of which we cannot conceive, and that there might be thoughts that are formally unthinkable. Does this make sense? [No – Ed.]
I think it’s actually ok if our list of research questions is flawed. It will all come out of in the wash: the things we wanted to know will inevitably be side-tracked by something we didn’t.
What is the nature of mass?
To be.
How can entropy be massively decreased?
Taxes.
What is the nature of dark matter?
To be dark.
What is the origin and ultimate fate of the universe? #43
Can gravity and quantum mechanics be reconciled?
After a cooling-off period, yes.
Is the Earth the only planet with life on it?
No.
What, while we’re on the subject, is the meaning of ‘life’?
A Monty Python movie.
What is the nature of consciousness/ sentience/ intelligence/ do-be-do-be-do?
It’s nature is to first analyze itself, then destroy itself, then make a comeback.
Is there a reliable way of finding an unpopulated checkout queue in Morrisons?
No, but there is a reliable way to depopulate one.
Why is it that no matter how hard you shake it about, one drop always stays on the end?
Fear of falling.
I think it’s actually ok if our list of research questions is flawed. Exactly. In fact, we won’t know whether the question is flawed until after we’ve tried to solve it. So the questions we ask will always change…
Why is it that no matter how hard you shake it about, one drop always stays on the end?
Fear of falling.
Ah, but that’s not real physics, that’s cartoon physics.
Henry, thanks for the response!
In my view, we are not able to know WHAT world IS, but only can know HOW it works. If animals could speak, they would say the same, for instance: what lion MUST DO to hunt down a zebra.
Our knowledge is fundamentally practical (in Heideggers word “handleable”?). Only God may say what world IS. This is the reason why philosophers, which believe that we can understand what world IS (they are more or less essentialists), have no agreement on truth, but carpenters (they are pragmatists) have. The test, the experiment is nothing but practice. If monkey jumps from tree to tree, it experiments. Such testable truths are INSTRUMENTS (procedures how to achieve the effect) and basically quantum mechanics is only more sophisticated truth than algorithms of animal behaviour. The rest is our imagination.
(This is, lets say, philosophy of John Dewey (called instrumentalism). I think we should try to think about our “scientific image of the world” – in Sellars words – from this point of view. Science is not able to get to know life, it is mere one of the myriads of manifestations of the life. Or otherwise, I strongly agree with Bas van Fraassen´s lectures The Empirical Stance – he recommends to return our thinking about the science and life to both pragmatism and existentialism.
BTW I miss a blog on philosophy of science on Nature Network…
Henry: there might be thoughts that are formally unthinkable.
Boris: God´s thinking.
Jeff: Q What is the nature of mass? A To be.
Boris: I do not understand what does it mean “to be”. Only if it has no meaning, the answer can be true.
Henry: Exactly. In fact, we won’t know whether the question is flawed until after we’ve tried to solve it. So the questions we ask will always change…
Boris: But we can manufacture a boat by course of ancient instructions…
Our knowledge is fundamentally practical (in Heideggers word “handleable”?). Only God may say what world IS. This is the reason why philosophers, which believe that we can understand what world IS (they are more or less essentialists), have no agreement on truth, but carpenters (they are pragmatists) have.
Boris – I agree with you completely. Thank you very much for making this point – I hadn’t thought of looking at the world in this way before.
But we can manufacture a boat by course of ancient instructions…
That’s because nothing fundamental has changed in our understanding of boats and how they work since ancient times.
Boris – I agree with you completely. Thank you very much for making this point – I hadn’t thought of looking at the world in this way before.
Boris: I love these topics!
That’s because nothing fundamental has changed in our understanding of boats and how they work since ancient times.
Boris: I would say: the world works in the same way now as it did thousands years ago (but it is not necessity).
Nothing has changed in our understanding of boats because nothing has changed in the nature of ducks.
Henry, it’s only cartoon physics if the drop remains suspended in midair. This drop clings according to Ninja physics, I’m thinking, except Ninjas are never frightened. Therefore, it must be cat physics.
Today, a propos of nothing. my daughter (she of the unicycling girrafes) asked me:
Why are Cartoon Ducks Always Yellow?
I felt this inquiry deserved consideration as one of the Questions of the Age.
Why are cartoon ducks always yellow?
I assume she means cartoon ducklings, because obviously not all cartoon ducks are yellow. The two most famous examples, Daffy and Donald, are in fact black and white. I think. Daffy is black, for sure. I never paid much attention to Donald because Disney is evil.
Or you could just tell her cartoon ducks are yellow because they’re cowards.
Hmmm. I’m sure Huey, Dewey and Louie are white, and they’re ducklings. As are Grumpy, Happy, Dopey, Sneezy, Crappy, Slappy, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. Clearly my daughter is working from a flawed model of reality.