K.C. Cole and Dennis Overbye
"The era of easy answers is over."
By Dennis Overbye
Posted Thursday, Feb. 15, 2001, at 8:19 PM ETDear K.C.,
So now I have moved across the bay--still sunny, still that angelic air--to the shiny new Nikko. Actually I can still see a sliver of bay, along with a lot of freeway. I've spent $110 on cab fare in the last 24 hours, and the inside of the rear door came off in my hand when I tried to close it, and the trunk wouldn't close on this car. And I thought New York taxis were a little funky.
The gap has been closing between us, and tomorrow you will be coming here as well. So we can seal this looooong breakfast with a drink. In the meantime, here's another thought that you will probably agree with: The era of easy answers is over.
In inner space we now know that genes can do quintuple duty and that there is no simple linear relationship between genes and proteins and illness--or alcoholism or infidelity or addiction and so forth. In outer space, the last decade has seen the crash of cosmologists' dreams that the simplest solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity--the one that predicted the bending of light and the expanding universe--would suffice to describe our universe. "The simplest answer works," people like David Schramm, a.k.a. Schrambo, used to say proudly 10 or 15 years ago.
But the universe would not go along. First there was dark matter lurking in intergalactic space, mocking a long history of thinking the universe was what we saw when we looked up. Suddenly it was what we didn't see. Then there was dark energy, apparently speeding up the expansion of the universe, an extra mathematical term in Einstein's equation that he had once called his greatest blunder. Now there are hints that not even one type of dark matter will do, that astrophysicists need to posit more than one type in order to make the galaxies come out right.
We saw the week before last that there may be whole new families of elementary particles lurking in the void. To the features of the world, we might have to add something called supersymmetry, which on one level is a step toward unification, but it is a notion even harder to understand and to explain than what we live with today. And beyond that are strings and space-time foam. Beyond the mountains are more mountains.
Artificial intelligence still doesn't work, nor does your cell phone in Europe. And there are no humans on their way to Mars.
Modern physics and modern genetics tell us that we live in an interactive universe in which relationships somehow define even the masses of the tiniest particles. No electron is an island, nor any man or woman or any cell thereof. In his book, The Life of the Cosmos, the quantum gravity theorist Lee Smolin argues that we are about as far as we can be from absorbing that lesson, either in our science or in our metaphysics and politics. Is there a connection between our political and physical worldviews? If the word got out that all particles are entangled, would we accept that our lives, too, are entangled; would democracy get better and more caring? There's a charge for your students. Show the fly the way out of the bottle, as my old high-school philosophy teacher, Mr. Wichterman, wrote in my yearbook.
I'm off to look for a young Einstein. See you in San Francisco. This has been fun.
Cheers,
Dennis
"The era of easy answers is over."
By Dennis Overbye
Posted Thursday, Feb. 15, 2001, at 8:19 PM ETK.C. Cole is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times
and author, most recently, of The Hole in the Universe.
Dennis Overbye is the author of Einstein in Love and deputy science editor of the New York Times. Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Friday notes from the Fray Editor: A fabulous Fray this week, a forest of checkmarks and stars and great discussions on science and education--though surprisingly little about the Human Genome Project as the week wore on. So posters are encouraged to click here for a science/genome "Breakfast Table" last year: scroll down to read some excellent Fray comments.]
[Comment on Wednesday's entries:]
Dennis Overbye writes:
"If this is the law, then aren't we all morally culpable for enjoying the fruits of this ruthless and sometimes abusive behavior and neglect? Shouldn't there be a genius victims' compensation fund...?"
I suspect, actually, that lots of non-geniuses are abusive. But in fact there is such a compensation fund, and you're enjoying it as you send an email from a hotel in Berkeley, after flying across a country that used to take months to cross.
As for those who are married to geniuses who don't pay enough attention to them, they should do what those who are married to nongeniuses who don't pay enough attention to them do. What's the difference?
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
To Android: "What's the Difference?" You ever noticed that people who live together for a long time begin to pick up each other's mannerisms, habits, etc. I suppose that non-geniuses pick up the genius' inability to see the obvious until after having gone through the complexities. Of course, if the genius' mate is also a genius, then the answer to your question is obvious.
--Tony Adragna
(To reply, click here.)
[Android replied "you are a genius."]
[Tuesday notes from the Fray Editor: A couple of readers--here and here--took issue with the price of the trip to Pluto: It costs a lot more than that, did you mean a billion? (Yes--corrected by K.C.Cole Wednesday. Although no-one in The Fray had any trouble telling the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion.) Jeffery Kahn of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says here, with figures, that it's a myth that California's energy consumption has been rising by 13 percent a year.]
When Virginia Attorney General Mark Early was asked recently about technical education in his state, he related how he had recently attended one of his children's award programs. He said there were 50 awards for band. If Virginia's objective was to produce musicians, there was a great training infrastructure in place. At the same awards ceremony, there was one award each in science and math. Early's point was not that band shouldn't have its awards and support structure, but that if, as a state or a country we were serious about supporting science, we'd treat it more like band.
--WillV
(To reply, click here.)
The kids who perform best in band and mathematics are often the same kids--go to a conference of engineers, physicists, theoretical mathematicians, programmers, etc. and you'll find more musicians per square inch than anywhere outside a symphony hall.
Reading, writing & arithmetic are important, as are the appreciation and creation of music, the ability to stay fit & in shape, self-knowledge and self-respect, the ability to work cooperatively with others... the list goes on and on. How can one ever separate and isolate all the various modes of learning, assigning importance to some disciplines but not others; ignoring the interconnections? As more and more music and art programs are cut from the public schools, Congress issues more and more H-1-B visas, importing more and more scientists and programmers from other nations. Could there be a connection?
--Piece Work Historian
(To reply, click here.)
If any two people in the country are in a position to shake off the tyranny of press releases, get out into the bushes, and find the next Einstein, discover a chemistry story, or ignore NASA's latest non-news, you two are. LA and NY Timeses revolutionizing science writing--boy howdy, wouldn't that be something to see.
--Anne Finkbeiner
(To reply, click here.)
If you're really looking for future Einsteins, you should also be accumulating stories about what Oppenheimer or Bohr or even Shockley did between ages 18-25, say.
--Tom Grey
(To reply, click here.)
The HGP (Human Genome Project) feels like an accomplishment, and it is. [But] we'll soon come to realize that the HGP falls into the same category as so many other accomplishments that haven't fundamentally changed our human experience.
--Democracy was going to end injustice and inequality. So was Communism.
--Antibiotics were going to end disease.
--Modern agriculture was going to solve world hunger. So was effective contraception.
--The UN was going to usher in world peace.
The HGP is another advance, but we'll still be the same dissatisfied humans tomorrow...
--Mangar
(To reply, click here.)
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Friday notes from the Fray Editor: A fabulous Fray this week, a forest of checkmarks and stars and great discussions on science and education--though surprisingly little about the Human Genome Project as the week wore on. So posters are encouraged to click here for a science/genome "Breakfast Table" last year: scroll down to read some excellent Fray comments.]
[Comment on Wednesday's entries:]
Dennis Overbye writes:
I suspect, actually, that lots of non-geniuses are abusive. But in fact there is such a compensation fund, and you're enjoying it as you send an email from a hotel in Berkeley, after flying across a country that used to take months to cross.
As for those who are married to geniuses who don't pay enough attention to them, they should do what those who are married to nongeniuses who don't pay enough attention to them do. What's the difference?
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
To Android: "What's the Difference?" You ever noticed that people who live together for a long time begin to pick up each other's mannerisms, habits, etc. I suppose that non-geniuses pick up the genius' inability to see the obvious until after having gone through the complexities. Of course, if the genius' mate is also a genius, then the answer to your question is obvious.
--Tony Adragna
(To reply, click here.)
[Android replied "you are a genius."]
[Tuesday notes from the Fray Editor: A couple of readers--here and here--took issue with the price of the trip to Pluto: It costs a lot more than that, did you mean a billion? (Yes--corrected by K.C.Cole Wednesday. Although no-one in The Fray had any trouble telling the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion.) Jeffery Kahn of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says here, with figures, that it's a myth that California's energy consumption has been rising by 13 percent a year.]
When Virginia Attorney General Mark Early was asked recently about technical education in his state, he related how he had recently attended one of his children's award programs. He said there were 50 awards for band. If Virginia's objective was to produce musicians, there was a great training infrastructure in place. At the same awards ceremony, there was one award each in science and math. Early's point was not that band shouldn't have its awards and support structure, but that if, as a state or a country we were serious about supporting science, we'd treat it more like band.
--WillV
(To reply, click here.)
The kids who perform best in band and mathematics are often the same kids--go to a conference of engineers, physicists, theoretical mathematicians, programmers, etc. and you'll find more musicians per square inch than anywhere outside a symphony hall.
Reading, writing & arithmetic are important, as are the appreciation and creation of music, the ability to stay fit & in shape, self-knowledge and self-respect, the ability to work cooperatively with others... the list goes on and on. How can one ever separate and isolate all the various modes of learning, assigning importance to some disciplines but not others; ignoring the interconnections? As more and more music and art programs are cut from the public schools, Congress issues more and more H-1-B visas, importing more and more scientists and programmers from other nations. Could there be a connection?
--Piece Work Historian
(To reply, click here.)
If any two people in the country are in a position to shake off the tyranny of press releases, get out into the bushes, and find the next Einstein, discover a chemistry story, or ignore NASA's latest non-news, you two are. LA and NY Timeses revolutionizing science writing--boy howdy, wouldn't that be something to see.
--Anne Finkbeiner
(To reply, click here.)
If you're really looking for future Einsteins, you should also be accumulating stories about what Oppenheimer or Bohr or even Shockley did between ages 18-25, say.
--Tom Grey
(To reply, click here.)
The HGP (Human Genome Project) feels like an accomplishment, and it is. [But] we'll soon come to realize that the HGP falls into the same category as so many other accomplishments that haven't fundamentally changed our human experience.
--Democracy was going to end injustice and inequality. So was Communism.
--Antibiotics were going to end disease.
--Modern agriculture was going to solve world hunger. So was effective contraception.
--The UN was going to usher in world peace.
The HGP is another advance, but we'll still be the same dissatisfied humans tomorrow...
--Mangar
(To reply, click here.)