Showing posts with label Ernest Rutherford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ernest Rutherford. Show all posts

Friday 11 January 2019

Hot, cold or in between: thermoregulation and public misunderstanding of science

I recently spotted an intriguing paleontology article concerning the 180 million year old fossil remains of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile from the Early Jurassic. The beastie, belonging to the genus Stenopterygius,  is so well preserved that it shows coloration patterns (if not the colours themselves) on patches of scaleless skin, as well as a thick layer of insulating fat or blubber. What makes the latter so intriguing is that reptiles just aren't meant to have blubber. Then again, like some snakes and skinks today, ichthyosaurs must have given birth to live young. Thus the gap between reptiles and mammals surely grows ever smaller?

This conundrum touches on some interesting issues about the public's knowledge of science. Several times I've commented on what Richard Dawkins calls the "tyranny of the discontinuous mind", which is the way in which we use categorisation to make it easier to understand the world. It might seem that this is the very essence of some aspects of science, as in New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford's famously ungenerous quote that "Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting." Indeed, examination of the life and work of many early botanists for example might appear to verify this statement. However, there needs to be an understanding that science requires a flexibility of mind set, a fundamental scientific process being the discarding of a pet theory in favour of a more accurate one.

I'm sure I've remarked countless times - again, echoing Professor Dawkins - that science is in this respect the antithesis of most religions, which set key ideas into stone and refuse to accept any challenges towards them. In the case of the blubber-filled Stenopterygius, it is still a reptile, albeit one that had many of the attributes of mammals. As for the latter, from our pre-school picture books onwards we tend to think of the main mammalian subclass, the placentals, but there are two smaller subclasses: the marsupials, such as the kangaroo; and the monotremes, for example the duck-billed platypus. It has been known since the 1880s that the platypus lays eggs rather than giving birth to live young, a characteristic it shares with the other four monotreme species alive today. In addition, their body temperature is five degrees Celsius lower than that of placental mammals, part of a suite of features presumably retained from their mammal-like reptile ancestors.

Even so, these traits do not justify the comment made by host Stephen Fry in a 2005 episode of the BBC TV quiz show QI, when he claimed that marsupials are not mammals! Richard Dawkins has frequently pointed out that it would be unacceptable to have a similar level of ignorance about the arts as there is on scientific matters, with this being a clear case in point as regards the cultured and erudite Mr Fry. Yet somehow, much of the general public has either a lack or a confusion concerning basic science. Indeed, only  last week I listened to a BBC Radio topical comedy show in which none of the panel members could work out why one face of the moon is always hidden from our view. Imagine the response if it had been a basic lack of knowledge in the arts and literature, for example if an Oxbridge science graduate had claimed that Jane Austen had written Hamlet!

Coming back to the ichthyosaur, one thing we may have learnt as a child is that some animals are warm-blooded and others cold-blooded. This may be useful as a starting point but it is an overly-simplistic and largely outmoded evaluation of the relevant biology; the use of such binary categorisation is of little use after primary school age. In fact, there is series of steps from endothermic homeotherms (encompassing most mammals and birds) to ectothermic poikilotherms (most species of fish, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates), with the former metabolic feature having evidently developed from the latter.

Ichthyosaurs are likely to have had one of the intermediate metabolisms, as may have been the case for some species of dinosaurs, possibly the smaller, feathered, carnivorous theropods. Likewise, some tuna and shark species are known to be able to produce heat internally, but in 2015 researchers at the US National Marine Fisheries Service announced that five species of the opah fish were found to be whole-body endotherms. Clearly, the boundaries between us supposedly higher mammals and everything else is far less secure than we had previously believed.

At times, science terminology might appear as too abstruse, too removed from the everyday and of little practical use outside of a pub quiz, but then does being able to critique Shakespeare or Charles Dickens help to reduce climate change or create a cure for cancer? Of course we should strive to be fully-rounded individuals, but for too long STEM has been side-lined or stereotyped as too difficult or irrelevant when compared with the humanities.

Lack of understanding of the subtleties and gradations (as opposed to clearly defined boundaries) in science make it easy for anti-science critics to generate public support. Ironically, this criticism tends to take one of two clearly opposing forms: firstly, that science is mostly useless - as epitomised by the Ig Nobel Prize; and alternatively, that it leads to dangerous inventions, as per the tabloid scare-mongering around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or 'Frankenfoods' as they are caricatured.

Being able to discern nuanced arguments such as the current understanding of animal thermoregulation is a useful tool for all of us. Whether it is giving the public a chance to vote in scientifically-related referendums or just arming them so as to avoid quack medicine, STEM journalism needs to improve beyond the lazy complacency that has allowed such phrases as 'warm-blooded', 'living fossil', 'ice age' and 'zero gravity' to be repeatedly misused. Only then will science be seen as the useful, relevant and above all a much more approachable discipline than it is currently deemed to be.

Friday 26 August 2016

The benefit of hindsight: the truth behind several infamous science quotes

With utmost apologies to Jane Austen fans, it is a truth universally acknowledged that most people misinterpret science as an ever-expanding corpus of knowledge rather than as a collection of methods for investigating natural phenomena. A simplistic view for those who adhere to the former misapprehension might include questioning science as a whole when high-profile practitioners make an authoritative statement that is proven - in a scientific sense - to be incorrect.

Amongst the more obvious examples of this are the numerous citations from prominent STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) professionals that are inaccurate to such an extreme as to appear farcical in light of later evidence. I have already discussed the rather vague of art of scientific prognostication in several connected posts but now want to directly examine several quotations concerning applied science. Whereas many quotes are probably as deserving of contempt as the popular opinion of them, I believe the following require careful reading and knowledge of their context in which to attempt any meaningful judgement.

Unlike Hollywood, STEM subjects are frequently too complex for simple black versus white analysis. Of course there have been rather derisible opinions espoused by senior scientists, many of which - luckily - remain largely unknown to the wider public. The British cosmologist and astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle has a large number of these just to himself, from continued support for the Steady State theory long after the detection of cosmic microwave background radiation, to the even less defensible claims that the Natural History Museum's archaeopteryx fossil is a fake and that flu germs are really alien microbes!

Anyhow, here's the first quote:

1) Something is seriously wrong with space travel.

Richard van der Riet Woolley was the British Astronomer Royal at the dawn of the Space Age. His most infamous quote is the archetypal instance of Arthur C. Clarke's First Law:  "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Although a prominent astronomer, van der Riet Woolley had little knowledge of the practical mechanics that would be required for spaceflight. By the mid-1930s the British Interplanetary Society had developed detailed (although largely paper-only) studies into a crewed lunar landing mission. In 1936 Van der Riet Woolley publically criticised such work, stating that the development of even an unmanned rocket would present fundamental technical difficulties. Bear in mind that this was only six years before the first V2 rocket, which was capable of reaching an altitude of just over 200km!

In 1956, only one year before Sputnik 1 - and thirteen years prior to Apollo 11 - the astronomer went on to claim that near-future space travel was unlikely and a manned lunar landing "utter bilge, really". Of course this has been used as ammunition against him ever since, but the quote deserves some investigation. Van der Riet Woolley goes on to reveal that his primary objection appears to have changed (presumably post-V2 and its successors) from an engineering problem to an economic one, stating that it would cost as much as a "major war" to land on the moon.

This substantially changes the flavour of his quote, since it is after all reasonably accurate. In 2010 dollars, Project Apollo has an estimated budget of about US$109 billion - incidentally about 11% of the cost of the contemporary Vietnam War. In addition, we should bear in mind that a significant amount of the contractors' work on the project is said to have consisted of unpaid overtime. Is it perhaps time to reappraise the stargazer from a reactionary curmudgeon to an economic realist?

Indeed, had Apollo been initiated in a subsequent decade, there is reasonable evidence to suggest it would have failed to leave the ground, so to speak. The uncertainty of the post-Vietnam and Watergate period, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, suggest America's loss of faith in technocracy would have effectively cut Apollo off in its prime. After all, another colossal American science and engineering project, the $12 billion particle accelerator the Superconducting Super Collider, was cancelled in 1993 after being deemed unaffordable. Yet up to that point only about one-sixth of its estimated budget had been spent.

In addition, van der Riet Woolley was not alone among STEM professionals: for three decades from the mid-1920s the inventor of the vacuum tube Lee De Forest is said to have claimed that space travel was impractical. Clearly, the Astronomer Royal was not an isolated voice in the wilderness but part of a large consensus opposed to the dreamers in the British Interplanetary Society and their ilk. Perhaps we should allow him his pragmatism, even if it appears a polar opposite to one of Einstein's great aphorisms: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. .."

Talking of whom…

2) Letting the genie out of the bottle.

In late 1934 an American newspaper carried this quotation from Albert Einstein: "There is not the slightest indication that (nuclear energy) will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." This seems to be rather amusing, considering the development of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction only eight years later. But Einstein was first and foremost a theorist, a master of the thought experiment, his father's work in electrical engineering not being noticeably sustained in his son. There is obviously a vast world of difference between imagining riding a beam of light to the practical difficulties in assembling brand new technologies with little in the way of precedent. So why did Einstein make such a definitive prediction?

I think it is possible that it may also have been wishful thinking on Einstein's part; as a pacifist he would have dreaded the development of a new super weapon. As the formulator of the equivalence between mass and energy, he could have felt in some way responsible for initiating the avalanche that eventually led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet there is no clear path between E=mc2 and a man-made chain reaction; it took a team of brilliant experimental physicists and engineers in addition to theorists to achieve a practical solution, via the immense budget of $26 billion (in 2016 dollars).

It is hardly as if the good professor was alone in his views either, as senior officials also doubted the ability to harness atomic fission for power or weaponry. In 1945 when the Manhattan Project was nearing culmination, the highest-ranking member of the American military, Fleet Admiral William Leahy, apparently informed President Truman that the atomic bomb wouldn't work. Perhaps this isn't as obtuse as it sounds, since due to the level of security only a very small percentage of the personnel working on the project knew any of the details.

Leahy clearly knew exactly what the intended outcome was, but even as "an expert in explosives" had no understanding of the complexity of engineering involved. An interesting associated fact is that despite being a military man, the Admiral considered the atomic bomb unethical for its obvious potential as an indiscriminate killer of civilians. Weapons of mass destruction lack any of the valour or bravado of traditional 'heroic' warfare.  Is it possible that this martial leader wanted the bomb to fail for moral reasons, a case of heart over mind? In which case, is this a rare example in which the pacifism of the most well-known scientist was in total agreement with a military figurehead?

Another potential cause is the paradigm shift that harnessing the power of the atom required. In the decade prior to the Manhattan Project, New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had referred to the possibility of man-made atomic energy as "moonshine" whilst another Nobel laureate, American physicist Robert Millikan, had made similar sentiments in the 1920s. And this from men who were pioneers in understanding the structure of the atom!

As science communicator James Burke vividly described in his 1985 television series The Day the Universe Changed, major scientific developments often require substantial reappraisals in outlook, seeing beyond what is taken for granted. The cutting edge of physics is often described as being ruled by theorists in their twenties; eager young turks who are more prepared to ignore precedents. When he became a pillar of the establishment, Einstein ruefully commented: "To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."

Perhaps then, such fundamental shifts in technology as the development of space travel and nuclear fission require equally revolutionary changes in mind set and we shouldn't judge the authors of our example quotes too harshly. Then again, if you are an optimist, Clarke's First Law might seem applicable in this situation, in which case quotes from authority figures with some knowledge of the subject in hand should take note of the ingenuity of our species. If there is a moral to this to story, it is other than the speed of light in a vacuum and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, never say never...

Tuesday 14 May 2013

What, how and why? Are there 3 stages to science?

Not being philosophically inclined I was recently surprised to find myself constructing an armchair thesis: it had suddenly dawned on me that there might be three, broad phases or stages to the development of scientific ideas. I'm fairly certain I haven't read about anything along similar lines, so let me explain,  safe in the knowledge that if it's a load of fetid dingo's kidneys, it's entirely of my own doing.

Stage 1

Stage one is the 'what' phase: simply stated, it is about naming and categorising natural phenomena, a delineation of cause and effect. In a sense, it is about finding rational explanations for things and events at the expense of superstition and mysticism.  In addition, it utilises the principle of parsimony, otherwise known as Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor: that the simplest explanation is usually correct. 

Although there were a few clear moments of stage one in Ancient Greece - Eratosthenes' attempt to measure the size of the Earth using Euclidean Geometry being a prime example - it seems to have taken off in earnest with Galileo. Although his work is frequently mythologised (I follow the rolling weights rather than dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa brigade), Galileo most likely devised both actual and thought experiments to test fundamental findings, such as the separate effects of air resistance and gravity.

Of course, Galileo was primarily interested in physics but the other areas of science followed soon after. Systematic biology came to the fore in such practical work as the anatomical investigations of William Harvey - pioneer in the understanding of blood circulation - and the glass bead microscopes of Antony van Leeuwenhoek. The work of the latter, interestingly enough, was largely to understand how small-scale structure in edible substances created flavours.  It's also worth thinking about how this research expanded horizons: after all, no-one had ever seen the miniature marvels such as bacteria. I wonder how difficult the engravers of illustrated volumes found it, working from sketches and verbal descriptions on sights they have never seen themselves? But then again, no-one has ever directly imaged a quark either…

Talking of biology, we shouldn't ignore Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist who started the cataloguing methodology in use today. New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford may have disparagingly referred to all branches of science other than physics as mere stamp collecting but apart from the wild inaccuracy of his statement it is seemingly obvious that without various standards of basic definitions there is no bedrock for more sophisticated research.

The repetitive, largely practical aspect of the phase in such disciplines as geology and taxonomy meant that largely untrained amateurs could make major contributions, such as the multitude of Victorian parsons (of whom Charles Darwin was almost a member) who worked on the quantity over quality principle in collecting and cataloguing immense amounts of data. Of course, Darwin went far beyond phase one but his work built on the evaluation of evolutionary ideas (try saying that three times fast) that numerous predecessors had discussed, from the Ancient Greeks to John Ray in the late Seventeenth Century.

This isn't to say that stage one science will be finished any time soon. The Human Genome Project is a good example of a principally descriptive project that generated many surprises, not least that it is proving more difficult than predicted to utilise the results in practical applications. Although in the BBC television series The Kingdom of Plants David Attenborough mentioned that the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew contains 90% of known plant species, there are still plenty of remote regions - not to mention the oceans - yet to yield all their secrets to systematic scientific exploration.  In addition to the biota yet to be described in scientific records, the existing catalogues are in the process of major reorganisation. For example, the multitude of duplicate plant names is currently being addressed by taxonomic experts, having so far led to the finding of 600,000 superfluous designations. It isn't just plants either: a recent example was the announcement that DNA evidence suggests there is probably only a single species of giant squid rather than seven. It may sound tedious and repetitive, but without comprehensive labelling and description of natural elements, it would be impossible to progress to the next stage.

Stage 2

Who was the first person to move beyond cataloguing nature to in-depth analysis? We'll probably never know, but bearing in mind that some of the Ionian philosophers and Alexandrian Greeks performed practical experiments, it may well have been one of them.

By looking to explore why phenomena occur and events unfold the way they do, our species took a step beyond description to evaluation. If art is holding a mirror up to nature, then could the second phase be explained as holding a magnifying glass up to nature, reducing a phenomenon to an approximation, and explaining how that approximation works?

For example, Newton took Galileo and Kepler's astronomical work and ran with it, producing his Law of Universal Gravitation. The ‘how' in this case is the gravitational constant that explained how bodies orbit their common centre of gravity. However, Newton was unable to delineate what caused the force to act across infinite, empty space, a theory that had to wait for stage three.

So different from the smug, self-satisfied attitude of scientists at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the techniques of modern science suggest that there is a feedback cycle in which knowing which questions to ask is at least as important as gaining answers, the adage in this case being ‘good experiments generate new questions'. Having said that, some of the largest and most expensive contemporary experiments such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have each been principally designed to confirm a single hypothesis.

As recent evidence has shown, even some of the fundamentals of the nature, including dark matter and dark energy, are only just being recognised. Therefore science is a long way from recognising all first principles, let alone understanding them. Closer to home, that most complex of known objects, the human brain, still holds a lot of secrets, and probably will continue to do so for some time to come.
Though microelectronics in general and computers in particular have allowed the execution of experiments in such fields as quantum teleportation, considered close to impossible by the finest minds only half a century ago, there are several reasons why computer processing power is getting closer to a theoretical maximum using current manufacturing techniques and materials. Therefore the near future may see a slowing down in the sorts of leading edge experimental science that has been achieved in recent decades. But how much progress has been made in phase three science?

Stage 3

This is more difficult to define than the other two phases and can easily veer into philosophy, a discipline that has a poor press from many professional scientists. Physicist Richard Feynman for example is supposed to have disparaged it as ‘about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds'.  Despite this - and the probability that there as many philosophies of science as there are philosophers -  it's easy to see that the cutting edge of science, particularly theoretical physics, generates as much discussion over its validity as any work of art. If you've read one of the myriad critiques of superstring theory for example, then you will know that it can be viewed as a series of intellectual patterns (accompanied by diabolical equations) that may never be experimentally confirmed. In that case is string theory really just a collection of philosophical hypotheses, unproven by experiment or observation and likely to remain so? The minuteness of the scale (an underwhelming description if ever there was one) makes the prospect of directly recording strings themselves  - as opposed to their effects - highly unlikely.

If that is the case then just where can you draw the line between science and philosophy? Of course one of the fundamental tenets of a valid hypothesis is to make testable predictions that no other hypothesis can account for. But with over a century of theories that increasingly fail to follow common sense  or match everyday experience perhaps this is a sign of approaching maturity in science, as we finally advance beyond the crude limitations of our biological inheritance and its limited senses. Surely one key result of this is that the boundaries between new ideas promulgated by scientists and the thoughts of armchair philosophers will become increasingly blurred? Or is that just fighting talk?

Whereas scientists engaged in phase two investigations seek to find more accurate approximations for phenomena, phase three includes the search for why one theory is thought to be correct over another. A prominent example may help elucidate. Further to Galileo in phase one and Newton in phase two, Einstein's General Relativity, which explains the cause of gravity via the curvature of spacetime, is clearly an example of phase three. Of course, contemporary physicists would argue that Einstein's equations are already known to be lacking finality due to its incompatible with quantum mechanics. Herein lies the rub!

One problem that has caused dissension amongst many scientists is a possibly even more ‘ultimate' question: why is the universe finely tuned enough for life and more than that, intelligent life, to exist? The potential answers cover the entire gamut of human thought, from the conscious design principle supported by some religiously-minded scientists, to the invocation of the laws of probability in a multiverse hypothesis, requiring an immense number of universes all with the different fundamentals (and therefore including a lucky few capable of producing life). But the obvious issue here is that wouldn't Occam's Razor suggest the former is more likely than the latter? As Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees states, this is veering into metaphysical territory, which except for the scientists with religious convictions, is usually an area avoided like the plague. However, it may eventually become possible to run computer models that simulate the creation of multiple universes and so as bizarre as it seems, go some way to creating a workable theory out of something that to most people is still a purely philosophical notion. Talk about counting angels on a pinhead!

I can't say I'm entirely convinced by my own theory of three stages to science, but it's been interesting to see how the history and practice of the discipline can be fitted into it. After all, as stated earlier no-one has ever observed a quark, which in the first days of their formulation were sometimes seen as purely mathematical objects any way. So if you're doubtful I don't blame you, but never say never...