Faith and Reason, II

[stamenflicker]

In order to keep my question from getting lost in a flame war, let me start another thread, which is what I should have done to begin with...

...if Steve Hawking is correct (Universe in a Nutshell), then within the next hundred years -- he gives a more precise estimate -- there will be a technical scientific paper written every seven minutes in the world. Hawking predicts that the rate of new knowledge will surpass humanity's ability to sort it.

At this point, how will we decide which theoretical roads to pursue, or to fund? You obviously can't use Reason to evaluate theory that hasn't been reviewed. If Hawking is correct, and we don't somehow create machines smarter than we are, then there will by necessity enter some other method for determining valid science-- or it will all become valid. Further, the scientific path will be forced to fork on equally competing claims of truth-- through popularity, social constructions, and economic funding priorities. We already see a hint of that beginning to today, but the problem will be multiplied 100 fold over the next century. At that point, does faith enter the equation? Not religious faith, mind you, but what? I can accept the answer of randomness or chance-- though that's not entirely an accurate portrayal of the potential method.

Flick

 

[Loki]

Flick,

Nice question!

My first thought is that "hopefully" there would at some stage be a convergence of theoretical principles, even if the individual experiments and applications take off in wildly diverging directions.

 

[ScottDYelich]

age of man ..

Flick,

Nice question!

My first thought is that "hopefully" there would at some stage be a convergence of theoretical principles, even if the individual experiments and applications take off in wildly diverging directions.

correct.. ages of man... look at the scale.
the current one is 18 months. makes ya wonder.

Scott

 

[stamenflicker]

For science sake I hope so too. I once wrote a poem mocking Ginsberg and one line of it said, "I've seen the best minds of my generation bent on all fours / pimped by the promise of the almighty dollar..."

I live in nuclear city here where they made at least a big part of the "bomb." Some of these scientists are phenomenal thinkers, but they have to go where the money goes... and that's determined by government, not the purity of the craft. If this has been happening in my life time- I can only wonder what it to come. Even now we have a diversity of theories from everything to the Big Bang down to nucletide division of RNA. What theory wins out is largely due to what Ian Hacking laments as philosophically pleasing, especially pleasing to the $$ holders. Yearly, this program seems to be up for budget cuts:

http://www.sns.gov/

Where it not for the economic benefits of the project...

http://www.sns.gov/documentation/Economic_Fact_Sheet.pdf

then it never would have made it. What does that say about equally compelling research projects with the benefit of only enhancing our knowledge of the way the world works...?

Flick
Flick

 

[justsaygnosis]

I'm glad you started the second thread.
It will most likely be the responsibility of the specialized fields to keep track of themselves.
Obviously there is a great spillover when major discoveries are made but it remains for time to allow the practical applications of the discoveries to manifest themselves.
Fortunately Moore's Law is still running pretty strong so we'll have the computers necessary to keep track of all that will break through as this occurs.