Check your comprehension. The Shock of the Not Quite New

The Shock of the Not Quite New

Check your comprehension

The Art of the Soluble

...Science is, in Peter Medawar's words, the art of the soluble. A good scientist knows that the trick is to choose a problem that is ripe for solution, both because the technology is there and because the concepts are in place.

This explains the abundance of examples of simultaneous discoveries in the history of science: Adams and Leverrier found Neptune at the same time and accused each other of plagiarism, contributing mightily to a mood of Anglo-French dislike. Newton and Leibnitz; Darwin and Wallace; Gallo and Montagnier: the list is long.

Scientists speak of the ‘inevitability’ of discoveries in sharp contrast to other historical events. The structure of DNA would not have remained mysterious for long if Francis Crick and James Watson had not existed. James Watt was not indispensable to progress, though the steam engine was. There is irony here.

~ If you plagiarize someone or something, you _ _ _ _ them.

~ Are inevitable events avoidable?

~ Would progress have been made without Crick, Faraday, Watson, and Watt?

It is a commonplace that technologies move only slowly from first invention to widespread use. What is striking in the history of technological innovation, however, is that the dispersion of a new technology is not just slow but extraordinarily uncertain even after its first commercial applications have been realised.

This runs against the conventional wisdom, which holds that the uncertainties are much reduced after the first commercial use. The evidence to refute that view comes not just from any old technologies, but from many of the most important innovations of this century.

~ If something is a commonplace, is it unusual?

~ Is the conventional wisdom a minority view?

~ If an opinion is refuted, is it disproved?

Consider the laser, a comparatively young technology with more development in store. Beyond uses in measurement, navigation and chemical research, applications have expanded to include the reproduction of music (to make the laser a household product); surgery; printing; the cutting of cloth and other materials; and, its most significant use to date, telecommunications.

Together with fibre optics, the laser has revolutionised the telephone business, yet lawyers at Bell Labs were initially unwilling even to apply for a patent for their invention, believing it had no relevance to the telephone industry.

If that story sounds familiar, there is a reason: such a pattern of innovation is not exceptional, nor even quite common, but typical. The steam engine was invented in the eighteenth century as a way of pumping water out of mines; it remained nothing more than a pump for many years. Then it became a source of power for industry, then a source of power for transport, then a way to generate electricity. The first inventors never dreamed of such a breadth of application (or of electricity, for that matter)....

Дата добавления: 2014-10-31