One of the books I received at Christmas was a marvel.
Nancy found it in the St. Olaf bookstore and knew it was for me. She was certainly right. But, it wasn't a mystery. Nor was it science fiction. Well, not quite science fiction, but parts of it were speculative science.
In 1997, Freeman J. Dyson, physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (that's where Einstein used to hang out) gave the Oxford University Press lectures at the New York Public Library. Those lectures turned into the little book, The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, that Nancy found for me.
The book strikes me as common sense, humanitarian science at its best. Dyson is not reporting on the latest scientific results in these lectures, he's speculating about the process of science and possibilities.
In one of the chapters, he carries on an intra-science debate about the instigator of intellectual progress. His debating opponent argues that new concepts and insights create progress. Dyson counters that technology is at least, if not more important in bringing about scientific advances.
As you might expect from the title, he discusses tools like the Hubble telescope, gene sequencing machines, and network servers. (He said enough about magnetic resonance imaging machines to persuade me to buy a copy of the book for Kris, the family MRI professional.) It may be in this section that he's most persuasive.
At another point, he speculates on the possibility of space travel and the role genetically engineered warm-blooded plants may play in the process. It's not unlike the speculation of the best scientific fiction.
If you're at all interested in the ideas of how science is done or how new scientific knowledge is developed, you ought to pick up this thin little volume. Dyson writes in a clear and cogent voice. Even an interested but scientifically deprived mind like mine can make heads and tails of what he has to say. I'll loan you my copy if you'd like. Just ask.
This kind of thinking is exactly what a New York Times article last December reported on. Have you seen the film or the play Six Degrees of Separation?
It turns out that author John Guare may have been describing something more than random relationships.
People studying complex networks (with I might add, other complex networks) are finding stunningly similar connections.
For instance, any two documents on the web are separated only by a small number of mouse clicks.
Similarly, any two elements in an ecosystem are connected by a few relationships. And molecules in a metabolistic system? Darn little separation.
Same thing for any two electrical power stations in the western U.S. power grid. How do you suppose California was able to import as much electricity as it did during the winter crisis?<
This is more than an intellectual's version of the Kevin Bacon game. [How many links does it take to connect Kevin Bacon to any other actor in films? Play at the Oracle of Bacon web site: www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/ ]
Perhaps there is a universal rule here about the organization of networks. Mathematicians have already developed a theoretical formula, but you'll have to look elsewhere for an explanation of that.
To back up Dyson's theory about technology bringing about scientific advances, the article noted that it's only with the development of powerful computers and networks that such relationships can be analyzed.
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