Could you forward your earlier email? I don't seem to have it, and I don't believe it was part of the current thread, right?
I'm interested in this because of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program that has a couple of projects here in Santa Fe, one of which Redfish is working on. http://www.sbir.gov/about/about-sbir In a sense, SBIR is the "excluded middle". -- Owen On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 8:18 AM, Grant Holland <[email protected]>wrote: > Pamela, > > I am personally very disturbed as well. I see the trend that you are > pointing out as an instance of a much larger trend. I can't quite yet > characterize, or even scope, it yet. However, short-term thinking and > various versions of trying-to-get-something-for-nothing seem to accompany > most versions of it. > > The first expression of this trend that I noticed decades ago was the loss > of respect, and insistence, for a "liberal education" (in the John Henry > Newman vein) within our culture at large and within STEM in particular. The > second expression of this trend that I noticed was in my profession of > software engineering. Here, I saw the devolution of mathematics as a > driving force. I got into the profession in the late sixties when the names > and works of the mathematicians of the forties (who essentially invented > computers) were fresh on our lips. I worked for some of the best computer > companies around over the next many years (Univac, Sun Microsystems, > (with) Seymour Cray, others) and saw nothing but a steady decline in the > centrality of mathematics. I have admittedly exploded your topic beyond the > govenment-to-private-sector issue, but do suspect somehow the same forces > are at work. > > Grant > > > On 3/3/14, 7:20 AM, Pamela McCorduck wrote: > > Utterly nobody in FRIAM thought my question about the shift from > government led innovation to private sector led innovation was interesting > enough to comment on (even to acknowledge) but I'm going to forward this > piece from Dave Farber's list which also addresses the issue and ask you > again whether you think this shift will have consequences. > > > > *From:* John Day <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Sun Mar 02 21:13:32 EST 2014 > *To:* [email protected], [email protected] > *Cc:* [email protected], [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: [IP] Re Read re Losing a Generation of Scientists > > Scott, > You have hit the nail on the head. We are not doing fundamental > research. The sciences are turning into craft. Lee Smolin first brought > this up about physics in the last 5 chapters of his book, "The Trouble with > Physics." > > In CS, we have this disease in spades and partly for the reasons you > outlined below, the pursuit of the dollar. I also think to some degree > what I have come to characterize by paraphrasing Arthur C. Clark, 'Any > sufficiently advanced craft is indistinguishable from science.' We are so > dazzled by the products of Moore's Law that we don't see that what we are > doing is craft. > > The trouble with craft is that it stagnates. > > The classic example is Chinese "science" prior to Western contact. See > Needham's "Science and Civilization in China." To some degree, Needham ends > up arguing (and most scholars agree) that 'science' in pre-Qing China was > more technique or craft. There was no theory, no abstraction, no attempt at > a theory that holds it all together. (By their own admission, this problem > still plagues China and India. There are the exceptions, but in general it > is a recognized problem.) > > By late Ming (17thC), it had pretty much stagnated and they were losing > knowledge. Needham says that it is because merchants (capitalists) were at > the bottom of the heap. The government power structure controlled > everything. I also believe it is because there was no Euclid. There was > no example of an axiomatic system. The Holy Grail of a scientist is to do > to his field what Euclid did to geometry. Interestingly Heilbrun points > out in his book on geometry book that the Greeks were the only ones to > develop the concept of proof. Other civilizations have mathematics, they > have recipes, algorithms; but not proof. Proof is at the root of building > theory. Theory gives the ideas cohesion, shows how they relate in ways you > didn't expect, and shows you where the gaps in your knowledge are. The > quest for theory is more important to avoiding stagnation as the pull of > capitalism. > > Needham didn't live to see it. But we now have the example of how the > entrepreneurial drive leads to stagnation. That drive is fine for > exploiting *within* a paradigm, but it won't get you to the next one. And > we have seen the example of that as well. > > And we are seeing the same stagnation in CS. One sees the same the same > papers on about a 5 years cycle. The "time constants" have changed but > they are the same papers. > > Early CS was much more scientific. We went about things much more > methodically, we were more concerned with methodically understanding the > fundamentals than just building something that worked. (BTW to your > comment: We *did* do a lot of RJE on the early ARPANET. We had many > scientific users submitting jobs on particle physics, economics, weather > simulation, etc. However, we never saw it as the future. We had much > bigger ideas in mind, for distributed computing (ask Dave). It is really > depressing that 40 years later, things really haven't moved anywhere. The > hardware is 10s of thousands times faster and bigger. You are right. We > have re-labeled RJE, cloud computing, and never gotten past the > 3270/Mainframe days.) > > You are right. We do have to get back to this. And there I am afraid it > gets disheartening. We have 30 years of conditioning the field toward > everything else but. I don't see many who even when they say we need to do > it, know how to do it. We have selected against the ability for decades. I > am even finding that CS students (and professors) have trouble with > abstraction. For a field that one could say was founded on abstraction, > this is really scary. > > Take care, > John Day > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
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