LionKuntz@aol.com wrote:
> How Much Does Science Need to Learn?
>
> Recently I posed the question “How Much Does Science Know”? It
> received a variety of responses, but none were quantitative
Science is not quantitive. It is a tool, a method. Science must be applied to a
given field of endevor, and a definition of that has gone begging in your
question. In my opinion, you can not begin with that question, and to do so only
requires one to ask in turn: About what?
> 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 I say no. First you must postulate an area of learning. Science must be
consistent only with itself, all it tries to include and what the juxtaposition
implies or assumes.
I am going to assume that everything that follows below is true. (I am not going
to assume that it is or isn't relevent). I am also going to assume that I should
send this now and eat something (it's 7 pm and I haven't eaten today) and then
read it later. I do NOT asssume that I will have anything more to say about the
matter - but reserve the right to be wrong about that (if not about the above
statement). No additional comments follow. DH
> 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.
-- Douglas M. Hinds Centro para el Desarrollo Comunitario y Rural A.C. (CeDeCoR) (Center for Community and Rural Development) - (non profit) Cd. Guzman, Jalisco 49000 MEXICO e-mail: dmhinds@acnet.net, dhinds@ucol.mx, cedecor@acnet.net, cedecor@ipnet.com.mx
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