Meeting notice: The 02.Nov.19 meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave. If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. More details below. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Suggested topic: NT & Mimetic Science Historically specific technologies have often been linked to the development of allied sciences. Lens-making & optics and steam & thermodynamics are two famous examples. NT may be associated less with a discipline than a revolution in the way science itself is conducted. One can divide the business of doing science - - any science -- into two modes: Mosiac and mimetic. Mosiac science is about discovering the "laws" that Nature "obeys"; Mimetic science is about building dynamic, autonomous, simulations that mirror as much of the natural world, as closely, over the longest period of time, as the collective skill of the society can manage. While examples of mimetic science have existed for thousands of years in the form of such devices as the orrery, by and large any significant development of that mode was impossible until the invention of computers (and quite powerful computers at that). Mosiac and mimetic sciences both address the desire to understand nature, both make predictions, and both are equally susceptible to disproof. However, the modes differ in significant ways. Mimetic science can address questions than Mosaic science cannot, specifically the structure of natural processes that are so complex and chaotic (like the atmosphere) that the idea of explaining them with a few "Laws" is preposterous. Mosiac science isolates processes from their environment in the name of isolating "pure cases", "ideal cases", or "normal cases". Mimetic science captures that environment, or tries to, and this permits it to deal with much deeper questions. Finally, it is much easier to pool the efforts of very large numbers of scientists, especially across disciplines, with mimetic techniques. Mosiac science has the defect of relying on "publishing" to communicate its results, ie, on low- bandwidth text articles that never convey a tenth of what a scientist in a related but different discipline would need to know to make use of the material. (I have heard scientists say that as a rule of thumb only about six colleagues -- in their own discipline! -- ever understand the unarticulated context of a scientific article enough to really understand it.) The inadequacy of publishing has forced the scientific enterprise to ramify into finer and finer disciplinary subdivisions, all in the name of filtering for colleagues who can understand each other from a text alone. This problem goes away with mimetic science, since a good simulation is in part a standards- setting process that allows guys in different disciplines to profit immediately from each other's data collections and interpretations. It is much easier for a geneticist to investigate an issue involving locomotion if he can turn to a simulation that already integrates both systems. While nanotechnology is certainly not essential to the development of very large mimetic systems, it seems clear that it will be impossible to develop the technology without devoting lots of resources to building enormous simulations, integrating many quite distinct issues, potentially running from the equations of the chemical bond to consumer behavior. Not the least benefit we can expect NT to bring to the society will be the second- and third-order returns of learning to mirror our world(s) on the very largest scales. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> In twenty years half the population of Europe will have visited the moon. -- Jules Verne, 1865 <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Legend: "NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group. The Group meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little else. If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a sample via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg' to majordomo@world.std.com. Unsubs follow the same model. Discussion should be sent to nsg- d@world.std.com, which must be subscribed to separately. You must be subscribed to nsg-d to post to it and must post from the address from which you subscribed (An anti- spam thing). Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: nsg@pobox.com.