Cyborg Team Convergence

Destiny of science modeled and explained in new study

Jul 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-destiny-science.html

Researchers modeled the evolution of convergence by analyzing millions of scientific works using machine learning etc. to identify several stages in the evolution of science, each characterized by a different form of convergence:

1. Polymathic Convergence - early science to the Renaissance period, polymaths Aristotle and da Vinci, knowledge integration within the minds of singular scholars
2. Disciplinary Divergence - theories developed within specific disciplines turned into generalized templates with broader applications, "convergence through divergence", Darwin's theory of evolution in biology
3. Multi-Disciplinary Team Convergence - mid-20th century, experts from different disciplines work  together, knowledge integration takes place across teams of scientists with diverse expertise, the Manhattan Project.
4. Polymathic Team Convergence - knowledge integration both within and across scholars, a mix of individual polymathic and multi-disciplinary team convergence, recent brain science research.
5. Cyborg Team Convergence - polymathic scientists collaborate with artificial intelligence in mixed human-machine teams.

Note to Self: We are already at stage 5, because machine learning networks, although designed by scientists, are discovering things that we never knew, and sometimes things that we didn't even ask about, such as the Foodome project at Barabási Labs that discovered an unknown formula in the nutrient profiles of food, or the UC Berkeley crew that discovered a formula related to exoplanets hidden in the math of general relativity, or the DeepMind project that revealed a new theorem about knots (yes knots, trust me).

via University of Houston: From Polymaths to Cyborgs - Convergence Is Relentless. Ioannis Pavlidis, Ergun Akleman, Alexander M Petersen. American Scientist, July 2022. 

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/from-polymaths-to-cyborgs-convergence-is-relentless

Image credit: Black Hole Merger Gravitational Waves - NASA C Henze - 2022

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-laser-breakthrough-gravitational.html

When I see the picture above, which somes to us via NASA, I think to myself "Arthur Dove meets Charles Burchfield", and now that we've figured out how to make robots metabolize and regurgitate our cultural artifacts back to us in visual form, we can see what that looks like:

lexica.art/?q=Charles+Burchfield%2C++Arthur+Dove%2C+black+hole+merger

Post Script: Good News

Government-funded scientific research reflects public interest, study finds

Jul 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-government-funded-scientific.html

Jones and Wang also noted that the study emphasizes the value of using the large datasets available today to study other high-level questions about science as a public good in ways that were not previously possible.

via Northwestern University: Yian Yin et al, Public use and public funding of science, Nature Human Behaviour (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01397-5

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01397-5

Computing Without a Computer

This is a repeat, but worth it.

I'm reading Isaac Asimov's Opus 100, which details his course through a writing career that changed the world of science fiction forever. In the chapter on Mathematics, he recounts a story called "The Feeling of Power" where a character is trying to explain to a space age military how he can navigate their ships without computers, which are at the time susceptible to enemy interference:

"Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my head." 

"Computing without a computer, said the President, is a contradiction in terms."

Post Script
Also from Asimov's Opus 100, on the topic of Words:
"New Jersey"
The state of New Jersey is named after the birthplace of George Carteret, who was given the territory by Charles II of England. He was born on the island of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands between England and France, and originally called "Caesar's Island" until barbarians garbled it into "Jersey".

Our Terran Heritage

Just for personal archival purposes; somehow, as a scifi reader of 20 years, I've only recently come across this word enough times to make me look it up.

It's the word "Terran" and it refers to Earth-things, or particularly people from Earth. This would be used in contexts where the story takes place somewhere beyond our planet, to the point where we would need a name bigger than Chinese, Arabic, Congolese, or Midwesterner. ("Human" doesn't fit the same purpose, for some reason.)

Science fiction is a literature of neologisms - in fact, making up words is the favorite pastime of a scifi writer. It's also necessary in a genre where the point is to write about things that haven't happened yet. The fact that any word has become a de facto term is exceptional.

And yet, here it is: "Terran" was in heavy use in the 60's, and traces its origin back to the scifi magazines of the late 40's. I can't stop, however, until I see where Asimov fits into this.

Isaac Asimov used the term “Terrapolis” in his 1940 story Homo Sol:

Tan Porus stared thoughtfully out the window. Terrapolis, capital city of Earth, sprawled beneath him to the very edge of the horizon.
link

As with anything scifi, it's a safe bet to say Asimov is the origin.

Post Script

In a story taking place beyond our solar system, we might be called Solarians, and in fact we were, in the Asimov story mentioned above.