omenti

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History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes

      -  Mark Twain

Except it wasn't him.  

His clever and prolific writing made people assume he said it even though he never did.  It turns out it first appears around 1970 in a poem by a Canadian artist named Robert Colombo.  When asked if he knew where it was from Colombo couldn't recall other than he might have seen it in a literary section of the New York Times a few years earlier.  In fact it appears with and without attribution several times around the time of Colombo's poem in the early 70s.   That said, a hundred years from now people will still think Twain said it.

 

The process of science is much messier than the simple order kids learn in school.   There are too many dependancies to list.  A few philosophers of science  - notably Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn - have tried to describe how scientific revolutions and change happens.  The how, where and why of scientific change.  Kuhn and Popper are somewhat at odds.  Kuhn's ideas were popularized and are still taught as how scientific revolutions happen.  It turns out that both of the frameworks are deeply flawed and have fallen from favor with serious students of the history and philosophy of science.  I came to it late, but I'm more a fan of an earlier step - trying to understand some of the history of science. 

 

Unfortunately the history of science is often neglected in scientific training.  Students are told a few selective stories from the great revolutionaries without much context.  Experiments, theories and techniques are described with little background.  The struggle and small steps forward and backward are  missing.  The world seems much too messy when you start doing real science on your own.  (this is probably true in many fields!)

 

One gets bits and pieces of local history from the last generation or two in their subfield.  This can be very powerful. I learned a lot about the development of the atomic bomb as some of the people I studied with were parts of the Manhattan Project.  You need to learn the importance of failure as well as hunches and the need to distrust your own work.  

 

The history of science, like the history of art or music,  is a story of the development of ideas that can be appreciated by non-specialists.   There are some wonderful books out there.  The trigger for this post was one of them:  Einstein's Fridge by Paul Sen.  I know the technical area well, but have big holes in my understanding of how all of this came about.  If you can follow articles in the New York Times science section, you'll learn a lot of what the physics is saying without the math and how it changed the world.  He gives a very simple, but accurate, description of entropy and has the best description of photosynthesis I've seen that doesn't get into biochemistry.  The historical motivations make it come alive.  I'm stealing some of his clear descriptions.

 

Most of this is probably true in many other fields.  About twenty years ago a friend invited me to dinner with Maurice Wilkes - his grand advisor.  Even though Maurice was in his late eighties the discussion went on late into the night and continued on two more occasions. I'm not a computer scientist or engineer, but Maurice is a physicist who happened to invent a good deal of the fundamentals of computing that's still in use.  Hearing him talk about the early history and the connections to our shared background made it all come alive.  The problems computers had to solve as well as the nuts and bolts of designing one - provided a wonderfully rich learning experience.  There was this hint of how the great mind of this humble person worked. A good history book can provide that kind of experience.

 

 

on fundamental change

 

Ludwig Boltzman, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously.

It's not uncommon for a professor to quote the first paragraph of States of Matter by D.L. Goodstein on the first day of an undergrad statistical mechanics course.  Statistical mechanics is an outgrowth of the study of thermodynamics which had become a major intellectual effort attempting to understand heat engines in the 19^th century.  You can derive the results of thermodynamics from it and it led to much deeper explorations including the beginnings of quantum theory.  It's also concerned with entropy.    Entropy is at the heart of understanding change.  It's deep enough to be tightly connected with why time only goes forward and what cause and effect are.  Popular definitions aren't accurate. It isn't the tendency to disorder and it isn't the entropy computer scientists talk about (although Shannon's entropy is an exceptionally important tool for thinking about information). 

 

Unfortunately the fundamental concept of entropy is a bit abstract.  xkcd notes a problem common in science and undoubtedly many other places.  I'm frequently guilty, but I started to put together a post on the difference between entropy and complexity and why increasing entropy doesn't imply increasing complexity that doesn't involve math.  I found myself sketching pictures and wishing they were animated.  Then I remembered Sean Carroll did a series of very short YouTube videos with Henry Reich creating the animations as part of Henry's Minute Physics series.  They're wonderful!

 

The third video: Where does complexity come from?,  gets at the core of the entropy and complexity and why entropy isn't disorder.  It works as a stand-alone, but I recommend watching all five in order.  They achieve a good balance of getting the basic concepts across without any danger of anyone committing suicide.

 

Sean begins with why doesn't time go backwards and covers a fair deal of what the Second Law of Thermodynamics implies.  Things like cause and effect, the origin of complexity and even how life can exist.

 

Some deep and sexy physics without the math.

 

 

woodie would be proud

a minipost

About two years ago I commented on the sad news of Woodie Flowers' passing.  Watch the video in the link.  His Design and Manufacturing I course was fabled and the reason of many for going to MIT.  The core idea is for students to build something tangible with their own hands using core principles of mechanical engineering.  Pure lean forward hands-on engineering in a collaborative environment.  To make it interesting Woodie provided a challenge that became a contest as well as uniform kits of junk that parts had to come from.  You don't get these skills from online learning or playing with CAD tools - the deep learning is hands on. Several engineering schools have created similar programs over the years, but Woodie was one of those rare people with a serious gift for connecting and mentoring.  

 

A pandemic arrives.  How do you recreate the course as a remote learning experience?  It turns out you can if you send abut 130 pounds of kit and junk to each of the students. The link has a great video that notes the at home experience was excellent - arguably better than on campus.  The course has evolved and the learnings will be incorporated as students come back to campus.

 

 

silver linings?

The pandemic has been responsible for an enormous amount of pain, agony and death.  While we're not out of the woods and won't be for the foreseeable future, a few potentially positive change has been made more likely. It's easy to make a long long and think about some more deeply, but for now a short list.

 

° mRNA vaccines have been under development for over two decades.  Their value has been shown in the most dramatic fashion.  Expect many more - some for conditions that have been very difficult or impossible to treat.

° American contributions to a worldwide network of outbreak observatories were killed by the Trump administration. Finding the next outbreak early enough to contain it requires this kind of work.  We've been lucky and able to catch and contain a few recent candidates early.   Finally there's  a large amount of interest and it's likely to happen.

° We saw an existence proof that parts of nature repair quickly when human impact is reduced.  Unfortunately most of these improvements have disappeared, but many of us have seen them and perhaps some of us will be better motivated to create change.

° Many cities tasted alternative transportation and street use.  It seems to be sticking in some areas. The automobile doesn't belong in cities for a variety of reasons.  Side note:  Electric cars are insufficient - the transportation system needs serious reworking.

° It appears that part of the reduction on business travel may be permanent. 

° A huge social experiment is underway to see what kinds of work can be done remotely.

° Likewise a similar social experiment is underway on remote education.  This is a very complex problem involving much more than what is normally thought of as education.

° Serious work is underway on indoor air quality. This has positive implications beyond airborne viral transmission.

° It's still a way off, but more thought is being given to single payer insurance.

° Massive universal basic income experiments are underway worldwide.

° There are indications young people are spending less time connecting online.

° There's  renewed interest in good science communication.

° A few have been afforded the opportunity to create personal change.  This may prove to be one of the most interesting impacts.

There's much more than this - I wrote these down in a couple of minutes.  I encourage you to make your own lists. Some of these are rich topics for exploration.