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...

Monday 1 April 2013

Where's my Thunderbird? Or how Gerry Anderson helped fool the Soviet Union

The death of Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson on Boxing Day last year marked the end of an era, at least as far as I'm concerned. Still my all-time favourite children's television programme, Thunderbirds marked the apogee of Anderson's career, a livelihood spent converting technological prognostication into high drama. Following the recent announcement that a new version of the series will be produced here in New Zealand it seemed a good time to examine a bizarre aspect of the show - along with some of its sister series - that only recently came to light. A combination of freshly declassified documents by the U.K.'s Ministry of Defence (M.O.D.) and the publication of highlights from a bundle of letters by Anderson's once-business partner Reg Hill have caused something of a minor sensation amongst the techno-SF cognoscenti.

A cursory look at even a small number of the craft that appear in the various TV shows reveals something extremely curious: most of the designs look far more Warsaw Pact than NATO. To elaborate, let's start with a survey of a few of the vehicles that helped to inspire such enormous affection in Anderson's television shows. For example:
  1. If you examine Thunderbird 3 or the Sun Probe from the same series there is an eerie similarity to various Soviet space rockets of the late 1960s, including the Soyuz and Proton series. Whilst there were some details of these vehicles available in the West at the time, the USSR's ill-fated N1 manned moon rocket remained a secret until spy reconnaissance in 1968. Yet several of Anderson's rockets of the period have rather more than a passing resemblance to the giant failure.
    Gerry Anderson rocket design
    Gerry Anderson rocket design
  2. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 Spiral space plane, which only went as far as atmospheric flight tests, bears a remarkable likeness to the Dove shuttle seen in the Anderson scripted and produced 1969 film Journey to the far side of the Sun. Yet again, the project was unknown in the West (at least outside of security bureaus) until after its cancellation in 1978.
    Gerry Anderson spacecraft design
  3. The Spectrum Cloudbase in the series Captain Scarlet is echoed by the experimental aerial missile platform the Yakovlev VVP-6, although it seems doubtful if the latter ever got off the drawing board.
    Captain Scarlet Cloudbase
  4. There are various jetcopters and helijets making guest appearances in Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, with several similar in design to the Bartini Beriev VVA-14 which first flew in 1972.
    Gerry Anderson helijet design
One resemblance could be put down to chance, but this random selection shows just how uncanny Anderson's teams' designs were in matching real-life Eastern Bloc ventures. The question is how could the Soviet projects have served as the blueprint when no-one in the West knew about them? Remember: these television series were made during the 1960s, when Cold War paranoia severely restricted knowledge in both directions, especially of advanced hardware (always excepting the material that made it to the opposing side via diplomatic baggage). In addition, the Anderson shows often preceded the equivalent Russian design by several years.

Bearing this in mind, the only explanation I can find is what if the reverse was true? Could the Soviet Union have based the development of some of their aircraft, rockets and spacecraft on the fictional designs seen in Gerry Anderson programmes? As absurd as this sounds, the idea begins to make sense when considering some of the more unusual excerpts from Reg Hill's letters.

Hill, who served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, was both a producer and designer on most of Anderson's classic output. His years in the RAF gave Hill a certain amount of first-hand knowledge in aircraft construction and piloting, which proved extremely handy when it came to creating vehicles for the shows (along with the better known crew members Derek Meddings, Brian Johnson and Mike Trim).  Reg Hill's letters cover the period 1959 to 1976 and would seemingly be of little interest to all except the most diehard Fanderson. However, a small number refer to Hill's meetings with mysterious representatives of the British security services, to whom Hill gave the James Bond (or if you prefer, Men in Black) appellations of Messrs A through H. Although the writing is guarded, Reg Hill gives the impression that as of 1964 he was asked to supply these enigmatic men with - of all things - detailed blueprints for some of the production company's fictional craft. As to what purpose Hill thought these requests were intended, he makes no mention. No doubt as an ex-serviceman he understood the need for national security and thus placed patriotism ahead of curiosity.

As someone who's not a fan of conspiracy theories I had difficulty understanding what the references pertained to. After all, the letters could be forgeries or the results of a strange sense of humour. But then a series of M.O.D. documents dating from the same period were made available to journalists in late 2012 under the UK's Freedom of Information Act, subject to all the usual blanked-out details that encumber such material. Luckily, the missing content mostly related to names, places and times, leaving the gist of the events intact. The upshot of reading the documents is that they confirm the narrative supplied in Hill's letters: the British Government paid (token amounts, it has to be said) for copies of blueprints to vehicles that were designed to appear in children's television series. As this point I said to myself, move over X-Files!

When I found out that Reg Hill and Gerry Anderson had formed a short-lived production company in the late 1950s called Pentagon Films I wondered if the outfit's name had given the British Secret Intelligence Service the idea of deliberately leaking aero- and astronautical disinformation to the Eastern Bloc. Or alternatively, MI5/MI6 may have been aware of similarities between the ramp-launching technique of Fireball XL5 (from the 1962 series of the same name) and a never-implemented Soviet scheme for deploying ICBMs. If accepted as genuine, Hill's drawings could have served several purposes, from tying up Soviet design bureaus in analysis of fictional machines to the wasting of countless rubles in technological dead-ends.

It might seem ridiculous that the deception would work, not just once but repeatedly, only it should be remembered that senior scientists and engineers in the Soviet Union frequently attained their status from acute political rather than scientific skills. The best known example of this is Trofim Lysenko, the untrained researcher and Stalinist crony whose pseudo-scientific theories were used in crop production for decades instead of Mendelian genetics. In the field of astronautics, when the rocket and spacecraft 'Chief Designer' Sergei Korolev suddenly died in 1966 the Soviet manned lunar landing programme stalled and never recovered. Ironically, the USSR was its own worst enemy in this field, since many other capable rocket scientists had been killed in Stalinist purges.

In addition, projects were frequently rushed for political purposes: Sputnik 2, which carried the dog Laika on a pioneering if one-way trip into orbit, was designed in less than a month! It is well known that the latest Western technology often found a surreptitious route to Moscow, with Warsaw Pact design bureaus deconstructing the material in order to produce their own versions at rapid speed. A good instance of this was the Tupolev Tu-144, a poor quality reworking of the Concorde supersonic airliner that beat the latter into the air by two months but was then two years behind its Anglo-French rival in entering commercial service. Indeed, there are rumours that the Concorde manufacturers deliberately leaked inaccurate schematics in order to mislead the Tupolev team!

Bearing all this in mind, is it possible the Soviets would repeatedly fall for such seemingly obvious ploys as British (and possibly American) security services' reworked plans of vehicles designed for children's TV shows? Perhaps the speed with which the Russian teams had to work prevented them from realising they had been duped. In general, their aviation technology remained markedly inferior to the West's until the 1980s, as was shown by the shocking revelation in 1976 (thanks to a defecting pilot) that their most advanced - and record-breaking - interceptor largely relied on vacuum tube avionics. By the early 1970s Hill stopped receiving visits from the shadowy intelligence figures, so perhaps the Soviets had at last caught on to the ruse - but of course failed to advertise this in order to avoid embarrassment.

As bizarre as all this sounds, other disinformation strategies employed  in the West were if anything even more elaborate, from creating fake infra-red 'shadows' for advanced spy planes to leaking wildly inaccurate yet plausible designs for stealth aircraft that even made it as far as plastic model kits. By comparison, reworking the Anderson craft and passing them off as new NATO projects seems a relatively easy - and inexpensive - method.

It's often stated that truth is stranger than fiction. So if you consider the foregoing a plausible hypothesis you might want to ponder the real meaning behind the Thunderbirds' famous call-sign F.A.B. or its Captain Scarlet equivalent S.I.G. Personally, my money's on "Fooled All Bolsheviks" and "Soviets Is Gullible".  Or is that just plain daft?