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Fantascience Digest, v. 2, issue 1, Novermber-December 1938

Page 23

FANTASCIENCE DIGEST                          Page 23

   Up to now, science has been mainly concerned with discovering and recording new facts, and determining the rules governing them. This cannot go on indeifinitely. A pessimist whose identity I cannot now recall once said that the fund of knowledge would continue to grow until at last it broke of its own weight--that eventually no one would be able to learn enough to coordinate it in the normal life span, unless the life span were materially increased or some new and more efficient method of teaching were discovered--perhaps something on the order of the hypnobioscope or other scientifictional teaching machines. (The author mentioned didn't say the latter of course.) It was with this idea that the story "The Master Shall Not Die!" was written, and there have been other superlative tales on the same idea. It is certain that the time is long past that a Roger Bacon could claim the whole field of knowledge for his province. Without mechanical aid it would be impossible--or even very difficult with mechanical teachers--for any one man to store in his brain all the knowledge of science as it now exists. So, say the pessimists, the time will come when the whole thing will break down through over-specialization; men will continue to learn until they will lose in a lifetime more knowledge than they gain.

   I beg to disagree. The one great duty of science is to sytematize knowledge, making the rules governing it as simple as possible. I believe that everything can be reduced to a few basic rules. In the beginning there was matter and force and space and certain very general rules, and irregularity--this latter must have been, otherwise the universe would today be a perfect sphere of condensing matter. The general rules were gradually broken down into more and more complex laws, by interaction between them. If you can see it better this way, I might compare it to twelve divided by five. Twelve and five, let us say, are two basic laws. The quotient 2-2/5 represents a more complex law resulting from interaction of the two. And so the devolution continued until today the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics must be of miniature encyclopediac proportions. That represents what science has done so fare in these lines. 
 
   But let us suppose that science "turns the corner" toward reintegration of laws. For example, if the atom could be definitely probed of its secrets, a few simple rules of the interaction of atom particles--electrons, neutrons, etc.--plus the atomic number of the element in question would suffise for that entire manual of chemical and physical data. One would know what elements would combine, what the result would be; the freezing and boiling points of all elements and compounds; the susceptibility to fatigue of any kind of steel--all these things could be figured from a knowledge of the atom's structure and the laws governing it.

   And if science continued along this new path, all the bewildering multitude of facts and figures could be tracked back to the few basic laws, simple enough to carry in memory. At least, I like to think so. 
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FANTASCIENCE DIGEST Page 23 Up to now, science has been mainly concerned with discovering and recording new facts, and determining the rules governing them. This cannot go on indeifinitely. A pessimist whose identity I cannot now recall once said that the fund of knowledge would continue to grow until at last it broke of its own weight--that eventually no one would be able to learn enough to coordinate it in the normal life span, unless the life span were materially increased or some new and more efficient method of teaching were discovered--perhaps something on the order of the hypnobioscope or other scientifictional teaching machines. (The author mentioned didn't say the latter of course.) It was with this idea that the story "The Master Shall Not Die!" was written, and there have been other superlative tales on the same idea. It is certain that the time is long past that a Roger Bacon could claim the whole field of knowledge for his province. Without mechanical aid it would be impossible--or even very difficult with mechanical teachers--for any one man to store in his brain all the knowledge of science as it now exists. So, say the pessimists, the time will come when the whole thing will break down through over-specialization; men will continue to learn until they will lose in a lifetime more knowledge than they gain. I beg to disagree. The one great duty of science is to sytematize knowledge, making the rules governing it as simple as possible. I believe that everything can be reduced to a few basic rules. In the beginning there was matter and force and space and certain very general rules, and irregularity--this latter must have been, otherwise the universe would today be a perfect sphere of condensing matter. The general rules were gradually broken down into more and more complex laws, by interaction between them. If you can see it better this way, I might compare it to twelve divided by five. Twelve and five, let us say, are two basic laws. The quotient 2-2/5 represents a more complex law resulting from interaction of the two. And so the devolution continued until today the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics must be of miniature encyclopediac proportions. That represents what science has done so fare in these lines. But let us suppose that science "turns the corner" toward reintegration of laws. For example, if the atom could be definitely probed of its secrets, a few simple rules of the interaction of atom particles--electrons, neutrons, etc.--plus the atomic number of the element in question would suffise for that entire manual of chemical and physical data. One would know what elements would combine, what the result would be; the freezing and boiling points of all elements and compounds; the susceptibility to fatigue of any kind of steel--all these things could be figured from a knowledge of the atom's structure and the laws governing it. And if science continued along this new path, all the bewildering multitude of facts and figures could be tracked back to the few basic laws, simple enough to carry in memory. At least, I like to think so. -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o