Re: What makes science powerful?

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

On 05/07/2003 06:44 PM, cliff parker wrote:
> "What makes science such a powerful tool as we try to understand the world around us?

That's a little like asking why the knives in my
kitchen drawer are sharp.
 -- The knives didn't sharpen themselves.  I sharpened
    them.
 -- They didn't move into the drawer by Brownian motion.
    I put 'em there.

Science is powerful because over the years people
have collected powerful methods and called them
"science".

I know that sounds like a trivial answer.  Maybe
it's trivial, but it's not circular, and I think
it is the right answer to the question as stated.

Now let me answer a slightly different question
(which may or may not be closer to the intended
question), namely why is it even _possible_ to
find powerful things that we can call science.

Science has to do with information.
Power has to do with energy.

So we can rephrase the question:  How/why is it
possible to turn information into useful energy?
You can't make energy from scratch, but you can
collect energy in useful forms.  An amusing
illustration of the value of pure information is
a long-distance boat race, e.g. from California
to Hawaii.  If you have good information about
the weather patterns, you can choose a route that
has favorable winds.  This can easily make the
difference between winning the race versus losing the
race and/or endangering yourself.  The wind-energy
would have been there whether or not you took that
route, but you get to control whether that energy
is brought to bear on your goal or not.

So in some sense, the reason smallish amounts of
information can be turned into largeish amounds of
energy is this:  We live in an environment that is
very far from equilibrium!  Huge amounts of energy
are going to waste at every moment.  We get to
decide what our goals are, and then arrange for
some of that energy to be brought to bear on our
goals.  Science allows us to avoid waste.

If we lived in a world of tepid murk, near equilibrium,
smallish amounts of information would be far less
valuable.  It would be impossible to waste anything;
everything would be already wasted.