Adam+Mistretta+week+2

Perhaps one of the most profound statements in Dr. Robert Hatch's "Preclassical and Classical Science" is his statement that science and technology remained largely unrelated until the 19th century. This is considerably different from the way scientific research exists in the modern world, at least to my knowledge. Although there are certainly many researchers who's goal is purely knowledge for the sake of knowledge, most modern science still ends up being put to a practical use. Engineering may be a separate discipline from science, but one relies heavily on the other, i.e. when a major scientific breakthrough is discovered, its uses in the common world are immediatley investigated, and when engineers or mechanics discover a problem they cannot understand with modern science, they rely on scientists to research this new phenomenon. To imagine a world in which new technologies were not based on scientific knowledge of physics and chemistry is shocking, yet according to Dr. Hatch this is how both fields advanced for the first several thousand years. This may explain why scientific research has exploded so much more in the past few centuries than in the thousands of years before. A select few may feel the thirst for scientific knowledge, but unless the public believes that this knowledge could be applied in some manner research will not have the support it needs to continue at such a rapid pace.

In Micheal Fowler's article "Aristotle" he describes Aristotle's methods for research and some of the conclusions he draws. Aristotle was clearly a mixed bag, with many "laws" being flat out wrong, yet at the same time some of his rules for making new discoveries appear absolutely critical. The ideas of precisely defining terms and of disproving a theory by reducing it to an absurd outcome are clearly pivotal methods even today in modern science. Aristotle completely skipped any notion of experimentation and simply tried to decide how the world worked in his brain, which is impractical, but he still made major steps. this relates to last week's article that science is not some magical form of higher thought, Aristotle's conclusion were laughable by any modern standard, he did not bring any theories to light that have prevailed into modern physics or biology, but is method would later be built upon by people like Galileo, and as such his contribution to scientific knowledge is still very real.

In Fowler's second article, "Counting in Babylon" he touches on the concept of a zero. I have often discussed this issue with others, about how the number 0, which we all perceive so easily, is in fact the central concept to all higher mathematics, and is actually created in relatively recent mathematical history. None of the more complex maths, particularly calculus can exist without this number zero, the complexity of which is rarely understood. It is easily to think of what 0 is, it is nothing, except if it is nothing, how can it be a number, and how can it be used in calculations with numbers which represent real things. The fact is that zero is actually undefined in mathematics and attempts to define it often veer into more philosophical than mathematical debates.