Recently I posed the question “How Much Does Science Know”? It
received a variety of responses, but none were quantitative, stated in
percentages, as the example illustration provided. One person said it was
presumptuous to claim to know the limits of knowledge. Another asked in
return “How Much Does Anybody Know”. For some unexplained reason,
those who have previously been the most verbose advocates for science as
the impartial discoverer of truth were the most reluctant to turn the tools of
science back on itself
This time the question is reversed, and it asks specifically, can
scientific analysis be used to discover how much is left yet to discover? I
say yes, and for the same reason I gave specific quantitative percentages in
how much is known, I can use science to predict how much is left to
discover. Unfortunately, the answers produced are the reciprocal of the
previous question. These are questions which strike deep fear into the core
of those who have no other paradigm than that “science probably knows a
great deal of the majority of what should be known to have a comfortably
predictable future for oneself and the human race”. Any answers
SCIENTIFICALLY produced which proves that science knows very little as
yet has got to shake that warm cocoon, and give pause.
. (Some math is appended at the bottom, so as to not bother math-
phobic people.)
I previously cited reasons to state, quantitatively, based on hard
scientific evidence and peer-reviewed standard procedures, that science
knew less than 1% about what could be known about life. Based on
mathematical treatment of DNA, that percentage is not “nearly 1%”, or
“almost 1%”, but comes in as a minuscule fraction of a trillionth of a
millionth of 1%. The true number, impartially arrived at by mathematics is
the around “the sum of all numbers between 1 and (2 to the 64th power
minus 1)” A closer scrutiny of the math, and the assumptions of the math,
reduces a 20 digit integer to maybe a 19 or 18 digit integer. All of the
presently known species and biological subdata concerning DNA is in the
range of an integer of 7 digits. This is from all the laboratories, all the
medical schools, all of the research scientists of the world pooled together.
Mathematics demonstrates the number of possible combination where the
codons of DNA can be coupled is well less than 1% known, by many
magnitudes.
Those people most ardent advocates of trust of “science” over
“anecdotal” experiential knowledge were the least reluctant to enter this
holy-of-holies to turn science upon itself. Cybernetics is the sampling of
output of a system, and using it as feedback to modify the controls of the
system. Science refusing to use science to examine science is
recklessness in the extreme. If science is any good at all, and trustworthy
at
all, why shouldn’t it be used to look at itself, and take that knowledge to
use
for “go faster” or “go slower” controls on science.
Cybernetics and system analysis produced this answer, not
reductionism of controlling one variable at a time in repeated trials.
Reductionism would get a more precise answer in about 1,000 times length
of the presumed age of the present universe, but cybernetics and system
analysis gets a good-enough ballpark answer in seconds. Reductionism is
totally helpless to come up with any answer at all except through doing all
the experiments for as long as it takes. Reductionism is not the only tool
available to science, and those people who insist it is are misrepresenting
science and suffering self delusion.
Cybernetics can also be used in controlling run-amuck reductionist
hordes, acting irresponsibly and unethically in applying science as
contemporary technology. Samples of the output of science might reveal,
for example, 1,000 species are being extinguished per year, above the
historical 3 per year background extinction rate. This scientifically derived
data than goes back to the scientific community, which says “humm,
something is terribly wrong here -- we have to adjust so as to get back to the
background rate”, and then does whatever is required to do that.
Cybernetics is applied repeatedly to make those adjustments. It might be
necessary that 1,000 corporations a year need to be extinguished, or 1,000
politicians unemployment, or 1,000 university diplomas revoked per year, or
whatever. This is science too.
Cybernetics, Systems Analysis, the World Game are all systems to
have a high degree of certainty without waiting the thousands of centuries
required by reductionism to have absolute precision. Sometimes being
close enough, accurate to 18 decimal places, is just plain good enough. It’s
close enough to launch a basketball and put it through a hoop on planet
Pluto.
==========================================
Now, for those who like math, here’s the data how the numbers
above were produced. There are 2 to the 3rd power (8) possible
arrangements of the three DNA sequence protein pairs to make one codon,
each codon can be linked to each codon (8 square) for 64 combinations
possible. Every one of the 64 double codons can be attached to any of the
64 doubles, and so on, and so on, until every possible combination
arrangement is exhausted. This is where the 2 to the 64th power figure
comes from.
At the bottom end, there are a few hundreds or thousands of
sequences which cannot be viable (so far as we know today), so it causes
an minuscule reduction from numbers with 18 or 19 digits of precision. I
added the sums of all the powers to represent multiple chromosome
combinations, and came out with this number as a rough and ready figure I
call “the number of life”. Human beings alone have 3,000,000,000 protein
pairs in their genome, so the total figure is partially confirmed to ten
digits of
precision.
Life is not indifferent to the “four” postulated fundamental forces of
physics: gravity, electromagnetism, weak-&-strong nuclear forces, but it is
not in any credible way explained or predicted by them. These forces are
equally present at the moment of decease as one moment before. Nowhere
has life ever been observed coming “spontaneously” into existence, and only
articles of religious faith can extend what is scientifically and physically
known, to predict that science will of certainty eventually have an
explanation which uses only these four forces.
A fifth, sixth, or “Nth” force(s) may eventually be discovered which
has the explanatory and predictive power which is acceptable as credible
scientific knowledge. Until then, “life irrefutably exists” and one (or more)
force is evidently missing. So, that is one out of five (one unknown, four
presumed) or 20% is missing from material physics as a system. Two other
forces may fall before a more powerful theory which has more
encompassing explanatory and predictive powers (Occum’s Razor), which
would subtract another 40%. Another essay at a later time will show a
simple elegant experiment which casts serious doubt on the “Standard
Model” or “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum theory. Combining 20
plus 40 percent, I arrived at only 40 percent is possibly within the realm of
the correctly apprehended. Of things known to exist, such as
superconductivity, which have eluded predictability to 100% certainty, there
are obviously bits and pieces missing from the hardest of hard sciences, so
they were given a generously conservative approximation of only 10%. Here
is the origin of the guestimate that there is 70% yet to be learned in the
best
of the hard sciences.
So called “soft sciences”: biology, anthropology, psychology,
economics, sociology and archeology, for examples have less than 100%
quantitative predictability or explanatory basis. Often these are as much of
an art as science, with one person consistently getting certain findings and
another consistently getting other (sometimes even contradictory) findings.
In the field of biology there are those astronomically high numbers of DNA
manifestations which have not been seen or explored, let alone their
interactions with others. There is so much wiggle room, here. Even
scientists, along with truck drivers, waitresses, baseball players,
politicians,
and actors, go sometimes to psychological therapists, drug or marriage
councilors. There’s something which works some of the time for some of
the people, but there is no practical way to quantify it.
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