Induction and Deduction in Science and Technology

From off-topic comment in the "Netscape" discussion.

Post 1 Sunday, September 9 - 12:32pm
MEM: [Quoting Ayn Rand on Technology from the Lexicon]Technology is an applied science, i.e., it translates the discoveries of theoretical science into practical application to man’s life. As such, technology is not the first step in the development of a given body of knowledge, but the last; it is not the most difficult step, but it is the ultimate step, the implicit purpose, of man’s quest for knowledge
(And I believe that Ayn Rand was at least incomplete, if not just plain wrong, about technology coming from science. Largely, science is built from an understanding of technology.)

Steve Wolfer Post 2 Sunday, September 9 - 1:57pm:

There is a distinct difference between an innovation in "technology COMING FROM science" and all "technology being BASED UPON science."
That is, there are the psychological processes that are involved in the creation of new technology. That is about how our minds work during this creative process. And then there is the epistemological structure of knowledge which is about the hierarchy of knowledge. Very different.
I suspect that the vast amount of technological advances, talking about smaller, incremental changes, comes from someone looking at a piece of current technology and imagining an improvement. That would be technology coming from technology - and I'm talking about the psychological process. Did the inventor in question understand the underlying science? Probably, in most cases, but certainly not always.
But does technology as a field of knowledge rest upon a foundation of Science? Absolutely - always.
Periodically, whole new waves of technological inventions are released from the discovery of a new scientific principle and this kind of technological advance is greater in the size of the leap forward. And could be said to the source of all the products that get tinkered with thereafter till the next scientific discovery in that area.
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More important, I think, is that they are inseparable. Science deals with the principles that describe how an aspect of the world works, and technology is an application of some of those laws.
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As to the idea that, "largely, science is built from an understanding of technology"... that's questionable and it depends on what Michael meant. I'd like to hear more about what he meant.
We use technology in measurements, in experiments, as tools to pursue scientific understanding... but that is a very limited way in which one would say that science is built from technology because science is a form of knowledge and that would make the tools not much more important to science than the apple was to the theory of gravity - it was there, but that was a minor accident and not the brilliant thought that followed.
I'd say that technology can inspire a thought that leads to a new understanding in science. But what gives inspiration is more a matter of psychology and chance than an epistemological verity

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My reply to the reply follows later.

Post 1

Monday, September 10, 2012 - 6:48pm

I agree with Steve's distinction between an innovation in technology coming from science and all technology being based upon science. I appreciate his having having expanded on his views in the succeeding paragraphs. Also, before we begin, I want to say that as far as his initial post goes, it is largely the same as my own view, that is, it is generally correct. The laws of physics exist independent of the observer, to be discovered. The Romans had only a primitive understanding of physics when they built an impressive array of throwing machines for the the artilleries of their armies. See Roman Army hobbyists here. It is true, as Steve says that the principles of science (the laws of physics) made the technology possible -- and I add that this is true whether or not those laws were understood imperfectly, incorrectly, or at all. The magnetic compass is another example. The Vikings apparently found a crystal whose polarization revealed the sun - and thus direction - even when the sun could not be perceived. They knew nothing of physical optics, but the PRINCIPLES nonetheless exist, and made the applied technology possible.

So I agree with that.

What I see overarching that is the Roman artillery and the Medieval artillery led to Galileo's questions about motion. The medieval clock was a wonderful device (See The Prague Astronomical Clock of 1410 on Wikipedia here.) These devices - including waterwheels and windmills - all were built before Galileo and Newton. Truly, they depended on "scientific principles", but just as surely, their inventors had no clear ideas of force and motion - or what we regard as modern astronomy - and at best, (perhaps) thought in terms of "impetus." (If "impetus" is correct, then why does an arrow not just fly straight and then drop perpendicularly to the ground when its impetus is exhausted? No answer...)

On my blog (here) I show a picture of an early telegraph key. Clearly, the inventor (the painter Samuel Morse) had some idea of what electricity "is" but just as surely, he had only an approximate and mostly wrong understanding (by our standards). That only points to the very correct understanding that he did have. You can build such a device today and have as incomplete an idea of what electricity "is."

I have built crystal radios (http://www.crystalradio.net/) which were invented after Maxwell, but did not depend on Maxwell's Equations to work. (Broadcasting may have; but that may be arguable. Steve?)

The crystal radio led to the germanium diode and the cat's whisker diode which led to the transistor. The non-Objectivist Robert Kolker who was moderated to Dissent here says on other Objectivist forums that Shockley et al, clearly understood quantum mechanics to invent the transistor. I am not convinced because I know the clear line of incremental development from the crystal radio "cat's whisker and diode" which developed independently of quantum mechanics.

Kolker also maintains that the applications of quantum-relativistic effects not mere time differences made GPS (global positionining systems) possible. I am not informed enough to judge.

But, it is clear that even as physicists were debating quantum mechanics at the First Solvay Conference and (1911) the Fifth (1927), radio was being invented and marketed as a commercial product.

These few examples are just an outline. In computing, we have an entire technology built withouth any consistent and accepted theory of cybernetics. Indeed, we theorize after we invent. Joseph Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason is a classic example of a theory tract offered after the launch of purely empirical applications. Jenner and immunization is yet another example.

I could go on all day.

I question (if I may) whether any theoretical scientific advance led to practical inventions which did not exist before the theory was proposed.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/10, 6:55pm)

Post 2

Monday, September 10, 2012 - 8:54pm

Michael wrote:

I question (if I may) whether any theoretical scientific advance led to practical inventions which did not exist before the theory was proposed.

Vacuum tubes and transistors and integrated circuits all came into being after Ohm's Law, or Coulomb's law, or Faraday's law of induction, or any of the other laws in this area - true?

We could not have put men on the moon without Newton's laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation - true?

When I think of the ways that engineers have used slide-rules, then calculators, and now computers to run numbers that are based upon formulas that are expressions of natural laws discovered by scientists... Well, I'm not agreeing with you. Am I missing something, Michael?

Post 3

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - 4:58am

As you say, science and technology are inseparable. "Science deals with the principles that describe how an aspect of the world works, and technology is an application of some of those laws." And I agree that once a valid theory is available it suggests experiments (inventions) to be performed. The problem you and I (and our contemporaries broadly) face now is remaining clear on the actual details of the process.

The IEEE Global History Network has an article on the Early Applications of Electricity (here). Coulomb's Law (1785), Ohm's Law (1827), and Faraday's Law of Induction (c. 1831), did not follow in conceptual sequence. Ohm's Law was denied at first and not accepted for 20 or 30 years. Similarly, Faraday's research was rejected for not being mathematically stated; and scientists denied the reality of "lines of force."

Also, while we nicely say I = V/R (V = IR, etc.), in fact, Ohm originally included a thermocouple, explaining the changes in current according to the length of a resistive wire and along with changes in temperature. Today, we separate those. Also, by the same token, Faraday's Law is now recognized as two distinct phenomena.

Most clearly, however, I point out that these "early" electrical experimenters were the second generation following the electricians of Benjamin Franklin's time for whom electricity was a "fluid." That was the paradigm which Coulomb, Faraday, and Ohm inherited. Their work led to a new understanding, a better theory. As the "Early Applications" article shows, inventors built useful new machines without a clear theoretical understanding of what electricity "is." (We still may not know...)

In electricity, we have a mnemonic: ELI THE ICE MAN. E leads I in inductive circuits (L for induction) and I leads E in capacitive circuits. In the 21st century we still build things that work using 19th century paradigms. In any non-trivial circuit, both induction and capacitance are present. Like science and technology, they are inseparable, perhaps. But, for the purpose of analyzing a circuit, to build one or fix one, it makes a difference which leads in what wires. So, too, as you note, did some inventions come after a theory was accepted.

The rocket to the moon was not so much a matter of Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation as it was the Sadi Carnot's work in thermodynamics which made the fine design of powerful engines possible. As you note, theory allowed technology. However, I point out that James Watt built working steam engines to pump water from mines and then to strike beautiful merchant tokens before Carnot was born. Carnot had the Watt engines as the empirical evidence which his theory attempted to explain.

The local Objectivist group here is reading Leonard Peikoff's Understanding Objectivism. My copy arrives later this week, so this is not a good quotable citation, but early on, Peikoff says that to express knowledge, you must put it in some context, even if your understanding is incomplete and later amended. So, as you say, I agree, any inventor does not work purely empirically with no theory, by blind trial and error (despite Edison to the contrary), but has some theory, however wrong, to guide the work and its expected outcome.

But, pushed to its limits, that means that the work of Galileo came not from his own theory of motion, but as a result of the medieval idea of "impetus" upon which those seige engines and tower clocks were constructed. His familiarity with the wonderful new machines of the Middle Ages gave him the body of knowledge about which to contruct a broad theory.

Post 4

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - 5:23am

Steve said: "Vacuum tubes and transistors and integrated circuits all came into being after Ohm's Law, or Coulomb's law, or Faraday's law of induction, or any of the other laws in this area - true?"

If you read about the development of vacuum tubes in particular (See the Fleming Valve on Wikipedia.) It is pretty clear that the application of previous inventions was not guided by pure theory as much as it was the result of integrated knowledge. Prof. John Ambrose Fleming had been a consultant to the Edison Company and knew of the "Edison Effect" bulb of 1884, which in 1906 he put to use as a rectifier (diode), an application for which it could not have been intended in 1884.

From the diode came the triode and on to the pentode. Tubes could not get much more complicated. Meanwhile... crystals had been used to detect radio telegraph transmissions.

The "unilateral conduction" of crystals, as it was then called, was discovered by Ferdinand Braun, a German physicist in 1874 at the University of Würzburg, before radio had been invented. Based on this work G.W. Pickard developed the cat's whisker diode using a silicon crystal, which was patented in 1906. However, Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose was the first to use a crystal to detect radio waves, in his experiments with microwaves in 1894, applying for a patent on a galena detector in 1901.
When these devices were in common use, more advanced proprietary versions of "permanent" detectors were developed, many of them by G. W. Pickard, who tested more than 30,000 combinations of crystal and wire contacts. Wikipedia here.

30,000 trials is the Edison approach of perspiration in consequence of inspiration. Today, we would just model it all on a computer. But that is my point: technical applications are antecedant to theoretical models. The transistor - transfer of resistance - was only an incremental improvement in a line of empirical development going back to 1874.... while in parallel, physicists worked toward the quantum theory which today we believe explains all of that.

Post 5

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - 7:18am

You may wonder how much of this you need to do — since you have to include all of reality and all of your other knowledge. When do you say, "Okay, that's enough"? The crucial thing that comes in here is the spiral theory of knowledge. You must always remember that. The spiral theory is simply that first we learn a given idea; then we leave it, we move to something else, we learn other subjects; then we encounter the original idea again, but now with more knowledge, with a deeper context. You must have had this experience — you come back to something that you understood, but now you come back with fuller knowledge of other issues, and you suddenly feel, "Gee, now I really get that. I thought I understood that before, but I didn't really." Well, yes, you really did, except that what's happening is you're getting more integration, more connections to other ideas, and therefore you're seeing it from the perspective of a broader context. And then you go on to something new, and then the early point comes up again, and then you feel, "Now I really see, this is really tremendously clear," and it is, but it will be still clearer, and so on. You can't bite off too much at any given time. The hierarchy we're talking about is not like a building that you just literally go straight up or straight down and that's it. This is where the spiral is — you go up, and then back to touch the base, and then up, and then back to touch the base, and so on. That's where it got the name; if you draw it, you'll see a spiral.

Peikoff, Leonard; Berliner, Michael S. (2012-03-06). Understanding Objectivism: A Guide to Learning Ayn Rand's Philosophy (pp. 101-102). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Science and technology work together in a spiral with one informing the other. At times, technology precedes and informs science, e.g. steam engines inspiring and informing thermodynamics. At other times, the spiral reverses direction.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 9/11, 10:56am)

Post 6

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - 10:24am

Michael,

It could drive a less patient man crazy to exchange posts with you. You questioned whether ANY theoretical scientific advance led to practical inventions which did not exist BEFORE the theory was proposed. Your words. I pointed out that wasn't true for a huge number of technological developments that arise from electrical theory.

You gave the dates yourself: "Coulomb's Law (1785), Ohm's Law (1827), and Faraday's Law of Induction (c. 1831)" These are clearly advances in theoretical science. And clearly there many, many "practical inventions which did not exist before the theory was proposed." I'm typing on one of them!

You say at one point that technology is not guided by pure theory as much as it was the result of integrated knowledge. Of course. Luke's quote from Peikoff is a good one on this issue. There must be an existing level of technology used both as a mental model - as the stuff of which an inspiration is formed - and also as the means of construction. Even if a caveman could have concieved of a bicycle, he didn't have the means of constructing it. Technology is used to build technology.

But there must also be a base scientific theory, however poorly understood, that would make a goal feel reasonable. Even at the lowest level of sophistication, we have some sense of causality that we carry as we try to make a thing we have imagined - some thing that will do something that has not been done before. There is an understanding or a guess as to the causality that let's the person move forward and that's their scientific theory, however poorly held. For some endeavors a poor theory won't get the job done and it is back to the drawing board, or to a better grasp of the appropriate theory - more science.

Post 7

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - 2:19am