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C-R-Newsletter #18 April 29, 2004
If you'd like to read the HTML version, with nicer formatting and working hyperlinks, just go here: crnano.org/newsletter.htm#18
CONTENTS
Slashdot Does CRN
CRN Busy-ness
The new C-R-Network
Blog improvement suggestions?
Tell us about enabling tech!
Feature essay: Science vs. engineering vs. theoretical applied
nanotechnology
------------
Slashdot Does CRN
Slashdot.org* is a large techie news blog. CRN was featured on their front page today. Many of the 650 comments posted to the article* show that readers are aware of the power and the problems created by molecular manufacturing. Now we just have to get the news to nanotech policymakers!
* slashdot.org/
* slashdot.org/article.pl
CRN Busy-ness
Mike and Chris* are both very busy with CRN activities, as well as other pesky aspects of real life that keep intruding. Chris, for example, is in the process of moving this week to a new home in Miami. For his part, Mike spent four days last week in England at a Board of Directors retreat for another NGO that he works with. But no complaints; we both love our lives and our work.
Speaking of work, we’re both laboring mightily to prepare for important conference activities next month on behalf of CRN. As we’ve told you before, Chris will be jetting to China in mid-May to give a talk at the World High Technology Society's Life Spring Forum* in Dalian. Following that conference, he will give talks in Nanjing on progress toward molecular manufacturing, and in Shanghai on advanced nanotechnology and human rights.
While Chris is in China, Mike will be in California for the Foresight Institute's Senior Associates Gathering,* where he has been invited to be a featured speaker. Perhaps some of you will be there to meet him and hear his talk. Here is the abstract:
"""""
The challenges brought by advanced nanotechnology will have to be addressed by a diverse collection of people and organizations. No single approach will solve all problems or address all needs. The only answer is a collective answer, and that will demand an unprecedented collaboration of leaders in science, technology, business, government, and NGOs. It will require participation from people of many nations, cultures, languages, and belief systems. Never before has the world faced such a tremendous opportunity—and never before have the risks been so great. We must begin now to develop common understanding, create lines of communication, and build a stable structure that will enable humankind to pass safely through the transition into the nano era.
"""""
By the way, the Foresight Institute has extended a nice offer to CRN supporters. They will give C-R-Newsletter readers a discount of $200 off the standard fee to join Foresight and register for the Senior Associates conference. Visit this page* to register at the long-expired "Super Early" rate and put "CRN" in the comments field.
* crnano.org/about_us.htm#Principals
* whts.org/lifespring/en-2004.htm
* www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/s...l#Speakers
* www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/spring2004
The new C-R-Network
Since our founding in December 2002, CRN has experienced significant growth. People often tell us how impressed they are by all that we’ve accomplished in a short time. It’s nice to hear such things, of course, because sometimes when one is so close to the actual work, it’s hard to appreciate how much progress is being made.
Some members of our Board of Advisors* have told us that we should prepare ourselves for even faster growth. Evidently these people, who have more experience in startup organizations than we do, can sense that CRN is nearing a “tipping point”, and that things will start moving even faster for us.
A piece of advice they have offered is that we need to be more proactive about developing a strong working network of supporters, researchers, and potential collaborators. As such, we’ve decided to form the C-R-Network, and we want you to join! If you’re interested in being a part of the solution, please click on the link above.
* crnano.org/about_us.htm#Advisors
Blog improvement suggestions?
As most of you know, we started a weblog in January 2004 called Responsible Nanotechnology.* Response has been great. We’re averaging well over 300 hits per day and we get three to four times as many posted comments as we make blog entries. But everything can be improved, right?
If you are a regular reader of the blog, please tell us what we can do to improve it. We think it’s an important way to stay in touch with our constituency, and the feedback we get to our ideas is truly helpful. So tell us how we can make it more useful or interesting to you. And if you’re not a regular reader of the blog, maybe you should be!
* crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/
Tell us about enabling tech!
One of the things that indicates CRN was founded at the right time (not a moment too soon, and we hope not too late!) is the rapid development we’re seeing in enabling technologies. From nanoscale lasers to dip-pen lithography, and from nanoscale fasteners to nucleic acid building blocks, the molecular manufacturing toolbox is filling up rapidly.
It’s very important for us to keep abreast of these developments. We’ve got our ears close to the ground, but if you come across something you think we should know about, please tell us. Perhaps you work in a field that is doing relevant work, or maybe you’ve just read something that we didn’t catch. In any case, don’t hesitate to email Mike* or Chris* with new information.
* mtreder@crnano.org
* cphoenix@crnano.org
(Suggested subject: "Enabling Tech")
Science vs. engineering vs. theoretical applied nanotechnology
by Chris Phoenix, CRN Director of Research
When scientists want an issue to go away, they are as political as anyone else. They attack the credentials of the observer. They change the subject. They build strawman attacks, and frequently even appear to convince themselves. They form cliques. They tell their students not to even read the claims, and certainly not to investigate them. Each of these tactics is being used against molecular manufacturing.
When facing a scientific theory they disagree with, scientists are supposed to try to disprove it by scientific methods. Molecular manufacturing includes a substantial, well-grounded, carefully argued, conservative body of work. So why do scientists treat it as though it were pseudoscience, deserving only political attack? And how should they be approaching it instead? To answer this, we have to consider the gap between science and engineering.
Scientists do experiments and develop theories about how the world works. Engineers apply the most reliable of those theories to get predictable results. Scientists cannot make reliable pronouncements about the complex "real world" unless their theory has been field-tested by engineering. But once a theory is solid enough to use in engineering, science has very little of interest to say about it. In fact, the two practices are so different that it's not obvious how they can communicate at all. How can ideas cross the gap from untested theory to trustworthy formula?
In Appendix A of Nanosystems*, Eric Drexler describes an activity he calls "theoretical applied science" or "exploratory engineering". This is the bridge between science and engineering. In theoretical applied science, one takes the best available results of science, applies them to real-world problems, and makes plans that should hopefully work as desired. If done with enough care, these plans may inspire engineers (who must of course be cautious and conservative) to try them for the first time.
The bulk of Appendix A discusses ways that theoretical applied science can be practiced so as to give useful and reliable results, despite the inability to confirm its results by experiment:
"""""
For example, all classes of device that would violate the second law of thermodynamics can immediately be rejected. A more stringent rule, adopted in the present work, rejects propositions if they are inadequately substantiated, for example, rejecting all devices that would require materials stronger than those known or described by accepted physical models. By adopting these rules for falsification and rejection, work in theoretical applied science can be grounded in our best scientific understanding of the physical world.
"""""
Drexler presents theoretical applied science as a way of studying things we can't build yet. In the last section, he ascribes to it a very limited aim: "to describe lower bounds to the performance achievable with physically possible classes of devices." And a limited role: "In an ideal world, theoretical applied science would consume only a tiny fraction of the effort devoted to pure theoretical science, to experimentation, or to engineering." But here I think he's being too modest. Theoretical applied science is really the only rigorous way for the products of science to escape back to the real world by inspiring and instructing engineers.
We might draw a useful analogy: exploratory engineers are to scientists as editors are to writers. Scientists and writers are creative. Whatever they produce is interesting, even when it's wrong. They live in their own world, which touches the real world exactly where and when they choose. And then along come the editors and the exploratory engineers. "This doesn't work. You need to rephrase that. This part isn't useful. And wouldn't it be better to explain it this way?" Exploratory engineering is very likely to annoy and anger scientists.
To the extent that exploratory engineering is rigorously grounded in science, scientists can evaluate it -- but only in the sense of checking its calculations. An editor should check her work with the author. But she should not ask the author whether he thinks she has improved it; she should judge how well she did her job by the reader's response, not the writer's. Likewise, if scientists cannot show that an exploratory engineer has misinterpreted (misapplied) their work or added something that science cannot support, then the scientists should sit back and let the applied engineers decide whether the theoretical engineering work is useful.
Molecular manufacturing researchers practice exploratory engineering: they design and analyze things that can't be built yet. These researchers have spent the last two decades asking scientists to either criticize or accept their work. This was half an error: scientists can show a mistake in an engineering calculation, but the boundaries of scientific practice do not allow scientists to accept applied but unverified results. To the extent that the results of theoretical applied science are correct and useful, they are meant for engineers, not for scientists.
Drexler is often accused of declaring that nanorobots will work without ever having built one. In science, one shouldn't talk about things not yet demonstrated. And engineers shouldn't expect support from the scientific community -- or even from the engineering community, until a design is proved. But Drexler is doing neither engineering nor science, but something in between; he's in the valuable but thankless position of the cultural ambassador, applying scientific findings to generate results that may someday be useful for engineering.
If as great a scientist as Lord Kelvin can be wrong about something as mundane and technical as heavier-than-air flight, then lesser scientists ought to be very cautious about declaring any technical proposal unworkable or worthless. But scientists are used to being right. Many scientists have come to think that they embody the scientific process, and that they personally have the ability to sort fact from fiction. But this is just as wrong as a single voter thinking he represents the country's population. Science weeds out falsehood by a slow and emergent process. An isolated scientist can no more practice science than a lone voter can practice democracy.
The proper role of scientists with respect to molecular manufacturing is to check the work for specific errors. If no specific errors can be found, they should sit back and let the engineers try to use the ideas. A scientist who declares that molecular manufacturing can't work without identifying a specific error is being unscientific. But all the arguments we've heard from scientists against molecular manufacturing are either opinions (guesses) or vague and unsupported generalities (hand-waving).
The lack of identifiable errors does not mean that scientists have to accept molecular manufacturing. What they should do is say "I don't know," and wait to see whether the engineering works as claimed. But scientists hate to say "I don't know." So we at CRN must say it for them: No scientist has yet demonstrated a substantial problem with molecular manufacturing; therefore, any scientist who says it can't work probably is behaving improperly and should be challenged to produce specifics.
*
www.amazon.com/exec/obido...814-0469464
-------------------------------------------
To donate to the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, go to crnano.org/support.htm, click on "Donate Now", and remember to specify CRN. Thanks!
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology(TM) (CRN) is an affiliate of World Care(R), an international, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization. All donations to CRN are handled through World Care. The opinions expressed by CRN do not necessarily reflect those of World Care.
If you'd like to read the HTML version, with nicer formatting and working hyperlinks, just go here: crnano.org/newsletter.htm#18
CONTENTS
Slashdot Does CRN
CRN Busy-ness
The new C-R-Network
Blog improvement suggestions?
Tell us about enabling tech!
Feature essay: Science vs. engineering vs. theoretical applied
nanotechnology
------------
Slashdot Does CRN
Slashdot.org* is a large techie news blog. CRN was featured on their front page today. Many of the 650 comments posted to the article* show that readers are aware of the power and the problems created by molecular manufacturing. Now we just have to get the news to nanotech policymakers!
* slashdot.org/
* slashdot.org/article.pl
CRN Busy-ness
Mike and Chris* are both very busy with CRN activities, as well as other pesky aspects of real life that keep intruding. Chris, for example, is in the process of moving this week to a new home in Miami. For his part, Mike spent four days last week in England at a Board of Directors retreat for another NGO that he works with. But no complaints; we both love our lives and our work.
Speaking of work, we’re both laboring mightily to prepare for important conference activities next month on behalf of CRN. As we’ve told you before, Chris will be jetting to China in mid-May to give a talk at the World High Technology Society's Life Spring Forum* in Dalian. Following that conference, he will give talks in Nanjing on progress toward molecular manufacturing, and in Shanghai on advanced nanotechnology and human rights.
While Chris is in China, Mike will be in California for the Foresight Institute's Senior Associates Gathering,* where he has been invited to be a featured speaker. Perhaps some of you will be there to meet him and hear his talk. Here is the abstract:
"""""
The challenges brought by advanced nanotechnology will have to be addressed by a diverse collection of people and organizations. No single approach will solve all problems or address all needs. The only answer is a collective answer, and that will demand an unprecedented collaboration of leaders in science, technology, business, government, and NGOs. It will require participation from people of many nations, cultures, languages, and belief systems. Never before has the world faced such a tremendous opportunity—and never before have the risks been so great. We must begin now to develop common understanding, create lines of communication, and build a stable structure that will enable humankind to pass safely through the transition into the nano era.
"""""
By the way, the Foresight Institute has extended a nice offer to CRN supporters. They will give C-R-Newsletter readers a discount of $200 off the standard fee to join Foresight and register for the Senior Associates conference. Visit this page* to register at the long-expired "Super Early" rate and put "CRN" in the comments field.
* crnano.org/about_us.htm#Principals
* whts.org/lifespring/en-2004.htm
* www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/s...l#Speakers
* www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/spring2004
The new C-R-Network
Since our founding in December 2002, CRN has experienced significant growth. People often tell us how impressed they are by all that we’ve accomplished in a short time. It’s nice to hear such things, of course, because sometimes when one is so close to the actual work, it’s hard to appreciate how much progress is being made.
Some members of our Board of Advisors* have told us that we should prepare ourselves for even faster growth. Evidently these people, who have more experience in startup organizations than we do, can sense that CRN is nearing a “tipping point”, and that things will start moving even faster for us.
A piece of advice they have offered is that we need to be more proactive about developing a strong working network of supporters, researchers, and potential collaborators. As such, we’ve decided to form the C-R-Network, and we want you to join! If you’re interested in being a part of the solution, please click on the link above.
* crnano.org/about_us.htm#Advisors
Blog improvement suggestions?
As most of you know, we started a weblog in January 2004 called Responsible Nanotechnology.* Response has been great. We’re averaging well over 300 hits per day and we get three to four times as many posted comments as we make blog entries. But everything can be improved, right?
If you are a regular reader of the blog, please tell us what we can do to improve it. We think it’s an important way to stay in touch with our constituency, and the feedback we get to our ideas is truly helpful. So tell us how we can make it more useful or interesting to you. And if you’re not a regular reader of the blog, maybe you should be!
* crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/
Tell us about enabling tech!
One of the things that indicates CRN was founded at the right time (not a moment too soon, and we hope not too late!) is the rapid development we’re seeing in enabling technologies. From nanoscale lasers to dip-pen lithography, and from nanoscale fasteners to nucleic acid building blocks, the molecular manufacturing toolbox is filling up rapidly.
It’s very important for us to keep abreast of these developments. We’ve got our ears close to the ground, but if you come across something you think we should know about, please tell us. Perhaps you work in a field that is doing relevant work, or maybe you’ve just read something that we didn’t catch. In any case, don’t hesitate to email Mike* or Chris* with new information.
* mtreder@crnano.org
* cphoenix@crnano.org
(Suggested subject: "Enabling Tech")
Science vs. engineering vs. theoretical applied nanotechnology
by Chris Phoenix, CRN Director of Research
When scientists want an issue to go away, they are as political as anyone else. They attack the credentials of the observer. They change the subject. They build strawman attacks, and frequently even appear to convince themselves. They form cliques. They tell their students not to even read the claims, and certainly not to investigate them. Each of these tactics is being used against molecular manufacturing.
When facing a scientific theory they disagree with, scientists are supposed to try to disprove it by scientific methods. Molecular manufacturing includes a substantial, well-grounded, carefully argued, conservative body of work. So why do scientists treat it as though it were pseudoscience, deserving only political attack? And how should they be approaching it instead? To answer this, we have to consider the gap between science and engineering.
Scientists do experiments and develop theories about how the world works. Engineers apply the most reliable of those theories to get predictable results. Scientists cannot make reliable pronouncements about the complex "real world" unless their theory has been field-tested by engineering. But once a theory is solid enough to use in engineering, science has very little of interest to say about it. In fact, the two practices are so different that it's not obvious how they can communicate at all. How can ideas cross the gap from untested theory to trustworthy formula?
In Appendix A of Nanosystems*, Eric Drexler describes an activity he calls "theoretical applied science" or "exploratory engineering". This is the bridge between science and engineering. In theoretical applied science, one takes the best available results of science, applies them to real-world problems, and makes plans that should hopefully work as desired. If done with enough care, these plans may inspire engineers (who must of course be cautious and conservative) to try them for the first time.
The bulk of Appendix A discusses ways that theoretical applied science can be practiced so as to give useful and reliable results, despite the inability to confirm its results by experiment:
"""""
For example, all classes of device that would violate the second law of thermodynamics can immediately be rejected. A more stringent rule, adopted in the present work, rejects propositions if they are inadequately substantiated, for example, rejecting all devices that would require materials stronger than those known or described by accepted physical models. By adopting these rules for falsification and rejection, work in theoretical applied science can be grounded in our best scientific understanding of the physical world.
"""""
Drexler presents theoretical applied science as a way of studying things we can't build yet. In the last section, he ascribes to it a very limited aim: "to describe lower bounds to the performance achievable with physically possible classes of devices." And a limited role: "In an ideal world, theoretical applied science would consume only a tiny fraction of the effort devoted to pure theoretical science, to experimentation, or to engineering." But here I think he's being too modest. Theoretical applied science is really the only rigorous way for the products of science to escape back to the real world by inspiring and instructing engineers.
We might draw a useful analogy: exploratory engineers are to scientists as editors are to writers. Scientists and writers are creative. Whatever they produce is interesting, even when it's wrong. They live in their own world, which touches the real world exactly where and when they choose. And then along come the editors and the exploratory engineers. "This doesn't work. You need to rephrase that. This part isn't useful. And wouldn't it be better to explain it this way?" Exploratory engineering is very likely to annoy and anger scientists.
To the extent that exploratory engineering is rigorously grounded in science, scientists can evaluate it -- but only in the sense of checking its calculations. An editor should check her work with the author. But she should not ask the author whether he thinks she has improved it; she should judge how well she did her job by the reader's response, not the writer's. Likewise, if scientists cannot show that an exploratory engineer has misinterpreted (misapplied) their work or added something that science cannot support, then the scientists should sit back and let the applied engineers decide whether the theoretical engineering work is useful.
Molecular manufacturing researchers practice exploratory engineering: they design and analyze things that can't be built yet. These researchers have spent the last two decades asking scientists to either criticize or accept their work. This was half an error: scientists can show a mistake in an engineering calculation, but the boundaries of scientific practice do not allow scientists to accept applied but unverified results. To the extent that the results of theoretical applied science are correct and useful, they are meant for engineers, not for scientists.
Drexler is often accused of declaring that nanorobots will work without ever having built one. In science, one shouldn't talk about things not yet demonstrated. And engineers shouldn't expect support from the scientific community -- or even from the engineering community, until a design is proved. But Drexler is doing neither engineering nor science, but something in between; he's in the valuable but thankless position of the cultural ambassador, applying scientific findings to generate results that may someday be useful for engineering.
If as great a scientist as Lord Kelvin can be wrong about something as mundane and technical as heavier-than-air flight, then lesser scientists ought to be very cautious about declaring any technical proposal unworkable or worthless. But scientists are used to being right. Many scientists have come to think that they embody the scientific process, and that they personally have the ability to sort fact from fiction. But this is just as wrong as a single voter thinking he represents the country's population. Science weeds out falsehood by a slow and emergent process. An isolated scientist can no more practice science than a lone voter can practice democracy.
The proper role of scientists with respect to molecular manufacturing is to check the work for specific errors. If no specific errors can be found, they should sit back and let the engineers try to use the ideas. A scientist who declares that molecular manufacturing can't work without identifying a specific error is being unscientific. But all the arguments we've heard from scientists against molecular manufacturing are either opinions (guesses) or vague and unsupported generalities (hand-waving).
The lack of identifiable errors does not mean that scientists have to accept molecular manufacturing. What they should do is say "I don't know," and wait to see whether the engineering works as claimed. But scientists hate to say "I don't know." So we at CRN must say it for them: No scientist has yet demonstrated a substantial problem with molecular manufacturing; therefore, any scientist who says it can't work probably is behaving improperly and should be challenged to produce specifics.
*
www.amazon.com/exec/obido...814-0469464
-------------------------------------------
To donate to the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, go to crnano.org/support.htm, click on "Donate Now", and remember to specify CRN. Thanks!
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology(TM) (CRN) is an affiliate of World Care(R), an international, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization. All donations to CRN are handled through World Care. The opinions expressed by CRN do not necessarily reflect those of World Care.
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