Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!violet!cpshelley
From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley)
Subject: Intelligence in Science?
Message-ID: <1990Oct4.175806.7711@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Keywords: Sparseness_Theory
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct3.183522.17076@riacs.edu> <3549@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 90 17:58:06 GMT
Lines: 75

In article <3549@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
> < (Point 2) I sometimes wonder how much our theories are not just
>recastings of our experience (without great insight). It has happened
>several times that physicists have found in the mathematics literature
>exactly the math they need to solve their physics problems. Whence
>came the mathematics? Was it not from abstractions of earlier physics
>problems (an historian of science should be able to prove or disprove
>this conjecture)?
>
  While I'm not a historian of science, I believe that the first
*recorded* use of mathematics was in account keeping, using cuneiform
notation to keep track of debts/payments.  The Babylonians developed
alot of math in the name of astrology and numerology - which are both
widespread to this day.  They were considered then as we consider
science now.  Thus rather than being abstractions of something as dry
as physics problems, they might be considered abstractions of 
personal problems - from the individual to the political level.  For
another example, look at how the pythagoreans regarded their 
mathematical achievements.

>Indeed, I have heard science historians argue that much of mathematics
>came from earlier physics theories. 

Doubtful, I think.  The ancients regarded mathematics as mostly a
mental discipline which was learned through initiation into whatever
school the well-to-do man could find palatable.  One student at
Plato's academy (whose name I don't recall) was tossed out after
asking "what good geometry is"!  There were, as always, exceptions
to this rule.  Btw, I think many people still regard mathematics this
way today... :>

> But there is another possibility
>explained in an essay of mine --- "Communication with Alien
>Intelligence," in @i[Extraterrestrial: Science and Alien
>Intelligence,] (E. Regis, ed.) Cambridge University Press, 1985.  This
>is a cute theory based on some experiments with very small Turing
>machines.  It turned out that many of them performed operations that
>could be interpreted as elementary addition -- while none of them did
>anything that was "similar" to addition but not exactly addition!   
>
>What that seems to mean is that the most elementary mathematics -- or,
>rather, the kinds that humans have historically first imagined -- hold
>a peculiar position among "all possible mathematical systems".  In a
>sense, they might simply be the ones that are "easiest for a machine
>to think of".

Do you mean "easiest for a human to think of"?  If they're so simple,
why has it taken us so long to develop them?  It wasn't until the
renaissance (sp?) that anyone really thought of modelling the world
in mathematical terms alone.  People must be indoctrinated for years
before the conventions of math and physics seem 'natural'.

>  Why, then, might they help in making physics theories?
>Either because the universe, too, is peculiarly simple -- whatever
>that means -- or that the simplest theories are (at least ,at first)
>the most useful ones -- simply because they are the first ones we can
>use to make any predictions at all...

This sounds somewhat too idealized to me.  The development of any kind
of theories historically have been largely done by adapting old ideas
and conventions, even where they are out of context (analogy).  This
implies more of a feedback mechanism of conception on conception than
a progression of theories corrected by regular reference to "the
universe" as you seem to be saying.  The former would be much more
haphazard and less 'logical' than than the second (and take much more
time and arguement), which seems to agree better with the actual 
history of the sciences. :>  In other words, the way we look at the
world is perhaps more arbitrary than you think - although I cannot
produce any evidence to support this, not having a sufficiently
non-human perspective to refer to!
--
      Cameron Shelley        | "Armor, n.  The kind of clothing worn by a man
cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu|  whose tailor is a blacksmith."
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 Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390  |				Ambrose Bierce