April 04, 2009
timing
My professor mentioned this article in class the other day about computerized scientific deductive reasoning. I'm also reading a biography on Johannes Kepler called The Watershed. The author, Arthur Koestler, does a very good job writing about Kepler's processive thinking. Kepler himself did not try to hide his meanderings to his great discoveries.
Though a computer is very good at deductive reasoning and trial and error (two essential traits in science), it cannot produce original thought. A computer is still a machine that computes inputs and produces outputs. It has no mind-blowing ideas but reiterates through data. It is limited by its programming and the imagination of its programmer. A computer has yet to pass the Turing test. A tangent, Numb3rs recently did an episode on a supercomputer and the Turing test.
The book made me think how scientific discoveries are made. In particular, how astronomers rely only on observational data and how this limitation might make discoveries difficult. Yet, many of our firsts in the modern science era was in astronomy.
This leads me to wonder what will science hold for the future. Looking for efficiencies is good but it might obfuscate true discoveries. Will scientists continue to reach for the stars?
Posted by azileretsis at April 4, 2009 02:20 PM
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