Science and Technology

By Dimitris N. Chorafas

The aim of this book is to explore science and technology from the viewpoint of creating new knowledge, as opposed to the reinterpretation of existing knowledge in ever greater but uncertain detail. Scientists and technologists make progress by distinguishing between what they regard as meaningful and what they consider as secondary or unimportant. The meaningful is dynamic; typically, the less important is static. Science and technology have made a major contribution to the culture and to the standard of living of our society. From antiquity to the present day, the most distinguished scientists and technologists have been thinkers, experimenters and persons willing and able to challenge “the obvious”. Technology develops products and processes based on the breakthroughs of science. If technologists fail to steadily upgrade their skills, tools and methods, they will only be as good as their last design, risking obsolescence. Using practical examples and case studies, this book documents the correlations existing between science and technology, and elucidates these correlations with practical applications ranging from real-life situations, from R&D to energy production. As it is a salient problem, and a most challenging one to our society, power production has been chosen as a major case study. The holistic approach to science and technology followed by this text enhances the ability to deliver practical results. This book is intended for students and researchers of science, technology and mathematical analysis, while also providing a valuable reference book for professionals. Its subject is one of the most debated problems of mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Sep 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9783319091891

Dimitris N. Chorafas

Since 1961, Dr Dimitris N. Chorafas has advised financial institutions and industrial corporations in strategic planning, risk management, computers and communications systems, and internal controls. A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Paris, and the Technical University of Athens, Dr Chorafas has been a Fulbright scholar. Financial institutions which have sought his assistance include the Union Bank of Switzerland, Bank Vontobel, CEDEL, the Bank of Scotland, Credit Agricole, Österreichische Länderbank (Bank Austria), First Austrian Bank, Commerzbank, Dresdner Bank, Mid-Med Bank, Demir Bank, Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura, Istituto Bancario Italiano, Credito Commerciale and Banca Provinciale Lombarda. Among multinational corporations Dr Chorafas has worked as consultant to top management, are: General Electric-Bull, Univac, Honeywell, Digital Equipment Corp, Olivetti, Nestlé, Omega, Italcementi, Italmobiliare, AEG-Telefunken, Olympia, Osram, Antar, Pechiney, the American Management Association and host of other client firms in Europe and the United States. Dr Chorafas has served on the faculty of the Catholic University of America and as visiting professor at Washington State University, George Washington University, University of Vermont, University of Florida, and Georgia Institute of Technology. Also, the University of Alberta, Ecole d'Etudes Industrielles de l'Université de Genève, and Technical University of Karlsruhe. More than 6,000 banking, industrial and government executives have participated in his seminars in the United States, England, Germany, other European countries, Asia and Latin America.

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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Dimitris N. ChorafasScience and Technology10.1007/978-3-319-09189-1_1

1. Science

Dimitris N. Chorafas¹  

(1)

Entlebuch, Switzerland

Dimitris N. Chorafas

Email: [e-mail]

1.1 Natural Philosophy

The word science does not date back to antiquity. It has been coined relatively recently though its concepts, theories, and rules have been classically part of philosophy. In 1660, when the Royal Society, the world’s first academy of scientific discipline, was founded in London, the subject to which it addressed itself was referred to as natural philosophy.

Isaac Newton titled his famous book: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Other terms, too, have developed over time or even changed their meaning. The humanism of the Renaissance was originally a technical term applied to studies centered on grammar and rhetoric—as contrasted to logic and natural philosophy of the scholastics, who were the early day scientists.

Like natural philosophy, science aims at creating new knowledge; it is not just interpreting the old in an ever greater but uncertain detail of discoveries already made. In addition, it contributes to progress by distinguishing between what it regards as meaningful, which is by and large dynamic, and what it classifies as secondary or unimportant, which is typically (albeit not always) static.

The key function of science is to challenge the obvious through research, investigation, and experimentation. This requires a method for carrying out planned experiments, recording observations, analyzing data, and developing mathematical algorithms based on the analysis being made. A key scientific tool is enquiring after, and contesting, the properties of the subject undergoing investigation that have been deduced from experiments.

The spirit of investigation and process of experimentation are two foremost tools of science. As Galileo Galilei, the famous scientist, stated to his accusers: One well-documented experiment is enough to knock down a hundred thousand probable arguments (Galileo Galilei, Opere VII, 148).¹

To the opinion of Max Planck, the German physicist, the basis of science does not lie in the nature of things. A certain dose of abstractness must be admitted at the beginning. It is most useful and productive to stipulate a causal, real outer world (see also Chap. 3 on cause and effect). Causality extends to history and psychology. We must, indeed, have determinism to lay any claim as science, and we should be guided by our feeling of personal freedom.²

Planck agreed with Einstein that work on science was far from a finished theory. Quoting from thoughts and statements included in his biography, Planck said that To some extent (the aforementioned principle) is unsatisfactory but on the other hand it is proper and gratifying, for we will never come to an end, and it would be terrible if we did … In science, rest is stagnation, rest is death.³

Through its experimental function, science is building knowledge, demolishing theories, and developing new ones which, in their turn, will be challenged through new scientific ideas, theories, facts, and experiments. The mission of scientists is to analyze and systematize experimental results extending the frontiers of knowledge till the hand of time demolishes existing concepts opening the field for new ones—the challengers.

In her book How the Laws of Physics Lie,⁴ published at Oxford in 1983, Nancy Cartwright advances the thesis that science does not describe a profound physical reality. It only advances phenomenal models, valid only in a limited space or conditions. While modeling is indeed an important scientific domain (Chap. 4), this is too narrow a view of science because it tends to leave out three all-important fields:

Investigation

Experimentation, and

The link between science and philosophy.

It also pays no attention to the role of chance in scientific thinking and investigation. Chance is omnipresent: From hitting on an idea (see in Sect. 1.5 laser’s development) to making a discovery, but as Louis Pasteur, the great scientist, has said: In the domain of science, chance favors only the prepared mind.

What Pasteur essentially stated in 11 powerful words is that chance event(s) can influence an outcome; therefore, they are all important provided our spirit is able to understand their message and capitalize on it. This requires plenty of training (Chap. 5) and a more sophisticated approach to developing and demolishing scientific theories that might have been necessary otherwise.

Thomas Bayes was an eighteenth century British philosopher. Blaise Pascal was Frenchman. Both were mathematicians and are considered to be early workers on probability theory. The two did not quite agree on how real life should be observed. Pascal’s concepts were relatively simple and therefore wider understood. He looked at each throw of the dice as independent of the previous one. By contrast, Bayes allowed for the accumulation of experiences that led to the concept of conditional probability: IF…THEN.

Past experiences were to be incorporated into a statistical model in the form of prior assumptions that could vary with circumstances. Bayesian theory maintained that by failure to do so the artifact being developed could be subject to serious mistakes. (At about 500 BC, Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, had expressed this concept in different terms: If you wish to know about tomorrow, then study the past.)

Scientific ideas and theories supporting them are sometimes invented, forgotten, and reinvented. Chaos theory provides an example. Feigenbaum is widely credited as being its inventor, but in reality, the man who laid the foundation of chaos theory has been Jules-Henri Poincaré (1854–1912). He is also famous for his saying: What is chance for the ignorant is not chance for the scientist. Chance is only the measure of our ignorance.

The reference to the natural philosophy of Galileo, Newton, Bayes, Pascal, and Poincaré, as well as the brilliant scientific ideas they brought forward, is important for still another reason. Science is not omniscience. Scientists know what they learned in school or found by way of research or observed through their daily experience. But not all scientists continue to develop their notions and their skills.

The acquisition of greater sophistication requires steady effort.

Most researchers are only as good as their last experiment, and

When it comes to making important decisions scientists may not possess the competence that is needed.

In addition, like business and all other forms of human enterprise, scientific principles are best applied by people who are both generalists and specialists, amateurs and experts, merchants of dry facts and purveyors of considered conclusions. Scientists who, like Einstein, take a global encompassing view are most valuable. While the views of specialists who see through the prisms of a narrow discipline are necessarily restricted, their contribution too, may be highly significant.

Having said this, when our mission is to broaden the focus of a scientific discipline, we must turn to the interdisciplinary fellow, the generalist, who can use his or her critical faculties to bring together knowledge from different fields. By contrast, a vast array of events related to experimentation requires digging deeper into one field—the one that is the object of the experiment.

1.2 Evolution of Scientific Thought

Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist, has taken the broader possible, flexible, and much more realistic view of science—more so than any of his colleagues. This is a comprehensive and adaptable frame of reference provided by a brilliant brain. Using good sense, Oppenheimer compared the edifice of science to the development of a town. Some of its houses are designed by architects, but the majority is not. At the beginning, the city plan did not exist; the town grew promoted by individual initiative.⁵

It is a beautiful description. By way of a couple of sentences, their author dramatizes and explains the process which over the centuries has characterized the spread of scientific work as well as the common understanding underpinning it. Oppenheimer’s town model is written for open-minded scientists who can comprehend it better than any version partly based on a dogma and partly on formal modus of scientific functioning.

The cardinal element of this open town model, which has been deliberately given such an important place in the first chapter of this book, is the researcher’s ability to investigate the object of his or her endeavor free of bias. Also, to come to conclusions that may be tentative awaiting more rigorous testing or further confirmation through experiment.

Questioning is the only way to know what is going on in science and/or might be expected.

Firm belief in already acquired concepts and positions is poison of the mind, creator of tunnel vision, and killer of the freedom of expression.

In daily life, as well as in the professions, there is a very dangerous cliché that everything depends on confidence. At times it is so, but not always. Since surprises are never to be excluded, one could better argue the importance of intermitting suspicion and the need for the analytical, objective investigation which underpins scientific thought.

Believe and do not question is the antithesis of a scientific discipline. It is a dogma, and those locking themselves into it cannot be true scientists no matter in which area or branch they might be working. From Socrates to Oppenheimer, great minds understood that questioning is a most basic prerequisite of progress. This is explained in Sect. 1.6, with the introduction to the Socratic Method of examination. Socrates paid with his life for it, condemned by ancient Athens that advertised itself as a metropolis of free thinking which it preached but did not permit.

In a way not dissimilar to the setbacks confronted by natural evolution, where a couple of steps forward are followed by a step backward, the transition in human thought continued in spite of reversals. Enriched with research in the laboratory, natural philosophy led into the discipline of science enriching Oppenheimer’s open town model, which provided the framework, while the Socratic Method has been used as the pathfinder. A crucial role has also been played by the macroforces and the more general pattern of endeavor in going from here to there.

According to Carl Sagan, the great scientific adventure, indeed the great revolution in human thought, began between 600 and 400 BC.⁶ Key to it was the hand, and Sagan explains the reason for this statement. Some of the Ionian thinkers were the sons of sailors and weavers. They were accustomed to handwork, unlike priests and scribes of other nations who were reluctant to dirty their hands.

Not only these Ionians worked wonders by sharpening up their mind, but they also rejected superstition. This led to pioneering feats that gave a great boost to the processes of exploration and invention. In turn, this has contributed a great deal to the development of the intellect and therefore of civilization.

The endowment of the seven sages of antiquity have been the first on record aimed to opening the gates of doubt and therefore of uncertainty. By being defiant when confronted by challenging the obvious, they changed the way in which the learned man thinks. This created a different organizational culture; one made up not only of shared values and beliefs but as well as of their antithesis, as conformity to a dogma or creed is anathema to natural philosophers and, therefore, to scientists.

This antithesis is a promoter of thinking and action, hence of research, as a recent example from natural science demonstrates. A most basic question in our search for life in the universe is that this is too Earth-centric, says Steven Benner, professor of chemistry at the University of Florida. Yet, if some aspects of life on Earth are historical accidents, as many scientists think that this is the case, then there could be other chemical solutions to the problem of building life out of non-living materials. Life on Earth:

Builds living organisms out of carbon,

Encodes genetic information in DNA, and

Uses water as a solvent to get chemicals close enough to each other, to undergo biological reactions.

In no way, this means that the recipe of how life developed on Earth is the only way in which living matter could come into existence. Organic chemicals may be just as prone to undergo biochemical reactions in methane and ethane as they are in water. Benner suggests that in natural science, some bonds might be formed even more readily in methane and ethane than they do in water. Moreover, such solutions may be less likely to fall apart.

A priori, the aftereffect of challenging the obvious way of having something done is as clear as a desert sandstorm.

A posteriori, however, such a challenge is the only way for revealing major breakthroughs, as Dr. Roentgen found out when he discovered the X-rays.

Contesting the obvious way of looking at things can only be made effectively by minds that combine conceptual and analytical capabilities. Conceptual approaches to scientific research tend to have amplitude rather than great dept. They also exhibit stability, because of being based on a wholesome view. On the other hand, an analytical approach would have depth, which is fundamental in breaking down old structures by revealing new but nasty facts which destroy established theories.

Search, but assume nothing is a good advice to any scientist in regard to the work he is doing. Even the humble pendulum may spring as discovered by Maurice Allais, a French economist, observing and recording the movements of a pendulum. One of his observations took place during a solar eclipse: When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster.

The so-called Allais effect has confounded physicists by indicating a hitherto unperceived flaw in General Relativity, Albert Einstein’s explanation of how gravity works. Some of the attempts to duplicate Dr Allais’ observation gave mixed results. But according to researchers at Holland’s Delft University of Technology, while Allais’ effect looks as being unreal, and unexplained, it could be linked to another anomaly: The Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes, launched in the early 1970s by NASA, the US space agency, are receded from the sun slightly more slowly than (in theory) they should be.

Dr Chris Duif, a research at Delft, examined different mainstream explanations for the Allais effect and rejected the most frequent suggestion that it is a mere measuring error, because similar results have been found by many different researchers operating independently. He also discounted explanations that rely on conventional physical changes that could take place during an eclipse, but he retained the likelihood that behind the Allais effect might be a correlation of reasons. The possibility also remains that the General Relativity is wrong.

This doubt can be found all over science, at the root of some problems. It is therefore interesting to know that antiquity’s natural philosophers had a well-documented policy of scientific evolution sustained by challenging the observations and theories made by their colleagues—a practice which has become in our time a fundamental discipline. Some of the ancient natural philosophers, like Aristotle made their name as researchers who stuck their neck out with their explanations and postulates which, in the general case, where conceptual findings. By contrast, Aristotle had a laboratory and, postmortem, some twenty centuries later, saw several (but not all) of his theories validated.

Another significant scientific observer, the first to postulate that the Earth is round (confirmed centuries later by Magellan’s worldwide voyage), has been Eratosthenes. He lived in Alexandria in the third century BC and was called by his contemporaries Beta. This is the second letter of the Greek alphabet and was used as his nickname because he was considered to be the second best in the world on everything. Evidence indicates otherwise. In many things Erastothenes was Alpha as mathematician, astronomer, historian, geographer, philosopher, poet and theater critic.

Erastothenes was as well the director of the great library of Alexandria and an experimenter. One of his significant findings has been that in the southern frontier outpost of Syene, near the first cataract of the Nile, at noon vertical sticks cast no shadows. This happened on the longest day of the year. As the sun was directly overhead, at the bottom of a deep well its reflection could be seen in the water.

Someone else might have ignored this observation, but it arose the interest of Erastothenes who had the presence of mind to do an experiment: He observed whether in Alexandria vertical sticks cast shadows near noon, at a time that today corresponds to June 21, and discovered that indeed they do so.

If the two sticks in Alexandria and Syene cast no shadow at all or they cash shadows of equal length, then it would make sense that the Earth is flat, as was thought at that epoch. The sun’s rays would be inclined at the same angle to the two sticks. But since at the same instant there was no shadow at Syene and a shadow at Alexandria, the only possible answer was that the surface of the Earth is curved.

1.3 Basic and Applied Research

In the course of the twentieth century research in science has been classified on a scale from basic to applied. Applied research is followed by development, of which we will talk in the chapters on technology). From conception to deliverables, basic and applied research has different diffusion times. They also differ in methods and practices. Often (but by no means always), basic research requires a decade or more of concentrated work, while the applied research phase may take a couple of years.

Basic research is a quest for fundamental understanding.

Applied research is nearer to technological development, concentrating on specific products in the making.

Return on basic research investments is far out in the future, but at the same time, it is the pacemaker of technological process. Applied research is largely inspired by considerations of implementation and use. This is followed by product specifications, quality and reliability analysis, manufacturing engineering, and the definition of after sales service, including maintenance.

Behind both basic and applied research lies the fundamental need to draw conclusions and test them against experimental results. The way Otto Frisch, the Austrian nuclear scientist who assembled the first nuclear bomb, had it: A really good scientist is one who knows how to draw conclusions from incorrect assumptions.⁷

A ground often shared by basic and applied research is the belief that scientific proof is a matter of showing formal consistency with self-evident definitions, axioms, and postulates of a given system of thought. This constitutes the wrong way of looking at science. In reality, the absence of evidence is no evidence of absence. Believing in self-evident truths impacts in a negative way on the mind of scientists, because it leads to denying the existence of anything outside the predefined bounds of the subject or system under investigation.

To increase his analytical ability, and do so in an effective manner, the scientist must distinguish between scientific research and scientific methodology. The latter helps in supporting the former, but the two are not the same. Scientific research resembles the work of a painter. We are facing a blank canvas, and we cannot fully anticipate the completed work, or even what we need to do so. Creative questions have plenty of uncertainties:

How will we present the theme we are painting?

What colors will render it best?

What’s the technique we should be using to increase the impact of our work?

Scientists may feel being hampered in their work when theory has not caught up with new laboratory discoveries. Or, existing theories, largely based on the behavior of some materials do not adequately explain how new structures behave, and this can have profound ramifications. Both negatives, however, are compensated by the fact that the uncertainties behind them increase the opportunities for research findings.

The alternative to a formal, deductive methodology based on prevailing theories, is to abstain from reference to self-evident definitions, axioms, and postulates by depending on experiments to validate discoveries of physical facts and principles. In the background of the experimental approach (Chap. 3) lies the fact that, in the real universe, there are no fixed sets of self-evident definitions, axioms, or postulates. Researchers typically operate on the basis of assumptions, which they believe to be sufficient up to a point, but at the same time they are:

Eager to challenge the obvious,

Open-minded about discovering that some of their assumptions are false, and

Feel at ease when the outcome is determined by principles different than those they had not known or considered.

When we begin a research project. we have an idea, a hunch. What are we exactly after? Where will our research lead? What kind of background and of experience will be the most helpful? There is no way of knowing the answer to these questions except that our chances of success may be improved if:

We step outside convention, and

We assure that creativity leaves its mark on the results we are after.

A basic rule of exploration, invention, or discovery is being on the alert for evidence of needed changes in theories and hypotheses. As scientist, we start with an idea, which might be a theme of investigation or an experiment. We work on this idea, but the method or tools we use—indeed the idea itself—might lead us to a dead end. When this happens, we must restructure our work and start all over again.

To the contrary, to a considerable extent, a scientific methodology that is more relevant to applied research and development is based on convention. Nearly a century ago, there was a movement known as scientific management. It was based on the work of Henri Fayol, a French nineteenth century industrialist; Frederick Winslow Taylor, an American engineer (who invented time study in the first decade of the twentieth century); and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, the American consultants whose motion study left its mark in the 1920s.

Much earlier René Descartes (1596–1650), the French philosopher and scientist is the first on record having said that the world could be understood and then organized by the scientific method. His theory led to the separation of things into subjects and objects that could be precisely measured and quantified by mathematical formulas. Descartes method found many followers in France where people named it Cartesian logic.

These concepts of scientific discipline contributed to the organization and administration of industrial activities, particularly in the sense of a methodology of orderly work. They also influenced the way scientific laboratories have been managed. Credit for the doctrine of coordination of research activities, which is fundamental in a laboratory, credit goes to Werner von Siemens (1816–1892) the German industrialist. His company was the first to launch an organized research and development (R&D) effort by the end of the nineteenth century.

One of the main challenges of R&D is the efficient management of research documents which must serve two different objectives at the same time: One goal is the transmission of findings, specifications, descriptions, and other files from research to development. Typically, both time and information are lost in this transition, but a first class organization can minimize such a loss. Research findings are a precious addition to the laboratory’s database.

The other goal, to be served in parallel, is the wider dissemination of research findings and associated information so other departments in the laboratory can benefit from it and duplication of work already done is avoided. This has led some people to the belief that information dissemination is a sort of stamp collecting, gathering references not so relevant to other researchers—a false impression because such information should undergo classification for patterns to emerge leading to its understanding.

Having said so, it is important to emphasize that science is much more than collecting facts and data and then interpreting them. The scientific effort begins where what we know is too limited, obscure, or incomplete. Science is creating new knowledge, not just interpreting the old in an ever greater but uncertain detail. Both this new knowledge and its interpretation should be presented, in a way, other researchers can effectively use.

1.4 From the Very Small to the Very Big

Research on the discovery of new materials is one of the best examples describing the scientific effort and its deliverables. By linking up these molecules with unique properties, scientists aim to create new catalysts, super strong plastics, optical switches, superconductors that carry electricity without resistance, and more.

While studying large molecules, two researchers at the University of Sussex discovered structures composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged in soccer ball-like spheres. They were dubbed Buckminster fullerenes and buckyballs after the geodesic domes created by inventor R. Buckminster Fuller. But the substance—the first new form of carbon found since the 1800s—remained a curiosity until 1990 when, working independently, scientists at the University of Arizona and the University of Heidelberg figured out how to produce millions of fullerenes in an electric arc.

Since then, researchers at DuPont, AT&T, NEC, and universities such as UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and Rice have been squeezing the material through chemical sieves, baking it in ovens, and lacing it with metals and plastics. Through intensive work, they started to decipher the nature of these molecules, with an eye on the fact that carbon is fundamental in all aspects of life.

It is the basis of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and other components of cells, and

It is as well at the heart of industrial economies as carbon-based fossil fuels, petroleum-derived plastics, and other chemicals.

Carbon atoms also form strong bonds between one another. In 1984, Barbara McClintock received the Nobel Prize for her discovery that from time to time particles of the DNA⁸ in Indian corn spontaneously leapt out of place. This discovery dated back to 1951, when it was met with resounding silence. But innermost constructs of genetic activity came to light in the course of the next two decades and, with this, the significance of her contribution was appreciated.

McClintock research helped in understanding one of the basic mechanisms of genetic mutation. In the 63 years that have elapsed since her find, work in genetics reinforced the outcome of her research. For its part, the announcement of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953 further promoted genetic engineering. With DNA, genetic researchers are pursuing a number of important medical projects.

Genetic research is not only high science; it affects hundreds of millions on a more prosaic level: from the prevention of common cold to viral infections such as influenza. The work of scientific searchers made it possible to break apart the distinctive double helix of DNA and resplice the chain—a breakthrough expressed by the terms gene splicing and recombinant DNA.

Gene splicing also makes it possible to isolate and produce in quantity a desired protein. Interferon is any one of a variety of antiviral proteins produced in minuscule quantities by cells that are exposed to virus, and it has immunological properties. Up to 1979, it was available solely from human sources; its cost was prohibitive and production was low. Today, thanks to gene splicing, quantities of the drug can be replicated in laboratories of bioengineering firms that pass the drug on to researchers who clinically test its effectiveness against a host of diseases.

Another breakthrough of scientific research on the very small has become known as regenerative medicine, based on stem cell research. A stem cell is one that, when it divides, has the potential to generate specialized cell types through one daughter line, while the other daughter retains the property of so-called stemness. Some stem cells, known as pluripotent, generate several different cell types. The pluripotent cells found in embryos, for example, can turn into any one of appropriately 220 cell types of which a human body is formed—a rich vein for medical science.

Scientific research has also addressed problems associated with the very large. A century ago, in the 1920s, astronomers thought that the universe was running away from them. The farther off a galaxy was, the faster it retreated which implied everything had once been in one place. That led to the Big Bang theory and constituted the start of modern cosmology.

That outsize event is still a theory, though scores of scientists are hard working to prove it. If it has indeed happened, produced galaxies, clusters, and billions of stars (all formed shortly after the Big Bang). Its appearance is supposed to have taken place some 15 billion years ago and to have spawned the universe. But that conviction was shaken when scientists announced that they had found evidence of a cosmic version of gestation, which is believed to be the Rosetta stone of galaxy formation.

The apparent galactic embryo—essentially a massive, disk-shaped cloud of