KNOWLEDGE IS JUST ONE UNIVERSE AFTER ANOTHER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29916, 1 September 1962, Page 8

KNOWLEDGE IS JUST ONE UNIVERSE AFTER ANOTHER

[By a Staff Correspondent of the "Sydney Mofning Herald")

SYDNEY, August 22. “I Want you to imagine a society,” said Dr. G. Schlesinger at the A.N.Z.A.A.S. Congress, “with an eighteenth-century conception of geometry but a highly developed technology: its geometry is still Euclidean, but its intergalactic rockets can travel anywhere in the universe.”

Dr. Schlesinger turned to a blackboard and drew the following diagram:—

It was a tall order, but the audience at Sydney University remained unruffled. Dr. Schlesinger, senior lecturer in Philosophy at the School of General Studies, Australian National University, was delivering a paper entitled: “What Is Science For?” and he was now beginning to discuss the function of scientific explanation.

“Let us further suppose.” he said, “that the universe is housed in a huge shell many bullions of light years thick. One day a cosmic Christopher Columbus set out from earth to cross the ocean of emoty soace inside this shell, but long before he reached the 'ar side he came to another shell—like this.”. “In this second shell our cosmonaut found a galaxy exactly like the M.ilky Way which he had left billions of light years behind him, and in that galaxy he found a planet identical with Earth. On that planet he found a house identical with his own house, and the lady of that house was identical with his own wife. She was surprised to see him back so soon. “Now how does the cosmo---ut explain this situation? He cannot postulate that he has come back to where he started from, for he has been travelling in a straight line and Euclidean geometry says that if you travel in a straight line you get further and further away from your starting point.

“The only possible explanation is that there are infinitely many concentric universes, and that everything is synchronised; when the cosmonaut left home, his doubles in all the other universes were also leaving home on similar journeys. He must also postulate something even more complicated—that, as he approaches the centre of all

these universes. measurements of time and distance are con tracking. Own Planet “Let us now assume that one day non-Euclidean geometries are discovered. Topological properties different from these of Euclid are understood, and it is no longer logically impossible to go in a straight line yet still return to your point of departure. The space traveller may simply have come back to his own planet and his many postulations are no longer necessary.” Although the conclusions which Dr. Schlesinger now proceeded to draw from this elaborate hypothesis need not concern us, the hypothesis '‘self is a useful analogy to the A.N.Z.A.A.S. Congress. To go in a straight line through all 16 sections of the congress—from Section A (astronomy, physics and mathematics) to Section P (geography and oceanography)—is merely to circumnavigate the one and only universe of science. But a layman untutored in nonEulidean geometry can only assume that he is. in fact, passing through a series of separate and identically bewildering universes. Listen, for example, to to Mr J. G. Jenkin, a nuclear physicist from the Australian National University, reading a paper in Section A:— "The reactions 810 (p.n) CIO and Fl 9 (p.n) Nel9 have been investigated using proton energies up to 10.5 MeV. The former reaction yields smaill cross-sections due to the large Delta J-13 difference between the ground states of the target and residual nuclei. Excitation functions will be presented for both reactions and are used to determine the position of energy states of Cll and Ne2o.”

In the zoology section we hear Professor J. M. D. White of Melbourne University:— “The thelytoky of Moraba virgo must be either apomictic or of an automictic type which is equivalent to apomixis. It seems probably that the CD inversion of the M2 chromosome dates from a very early period in the phylogeny of Moraba Virgo, and mav have been handed down from bisexual times': whereas the fusion and the dissociation found only in the southernmost population have presumably been acquired since the species became theiytokous.” In chemistry (rheology subsection). Dr. Leopold Dintenfass. of Sydney University:— "The plots of viscosity against the rate of shear on a log-log scale show that the thixotropy of normal blood is pronounced only below six reciprocal seconds; the abnormally thixotropic blood was characterised by the critical rate of shear of about 60 reciprocal seconds and by the values of the apparent viscosity being about 10-fold larger than that of normal blood.”

And in pharmaceutical science, Mr B. L. Reynolds, of Adelaide University:— ' ‘These compounds contained a common uridine-5-pyrophosphate amino sugar moiety and the principal accumulation compound contained a peptide composed of D-glutamic acid, L-lysine and three residues of DLAlanine. The sugar which is the 3-0-latic acid ether of N-Acetyl-glucosamine was first isolated by Strange and Dark (1956) who named it Acetylmuramic acid. Strorninger and Threnn (1959) showed the aminoacid sequence in the peptide to be (L) alamine-(D) glutamic acid-(L) Lysine-(D) alanine(D) alanine.” This sense of passing

through unconnected and ever-diminishing universes towards an unattainable centre is delusionary. of course, and the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement cf science does what little it can to remind the lay public and scientists that, in the words of its 1952 handbook: “There is one science, as therq is but one world, and the need now is to see that wvrld as a common challenge which all scientists take up in cooperation." “In accordance with the aims of A.N.Z A.A.S. of bringing science to the people." stated one Press release this week, “the congress this year has a larger than ever number of features which will be of interest to the public generally.” The congress has included introductory lectures, an exhibition cf scientific films, and a televised symposium on “Metropolitan Passenger Transport.”

On a more esoteric level, the organising committee has tried to bring separate disciplines together in areas of common interest. Different branches of science have met. for example, in a symposium on "Plants. Anjmals and Man In the Arid Zone.” microbiologists have come together from zoology, botany, medicine and agriculture; and different brandies were linked tenuously by crossdisciplines like rheology (the study of flow and deformation. which concerns phys cs, chemistry, biology, medicine, mathematics, geology and agriculture), crystallography and soil chemistry. Admirable though they are. these attempts at simplification and integration are little more than superficial. Beneath the surface of “lectures at a readily understandable level” and inter-disci-pline symposia, most of the 3000 A N Z.A.A.S. delegates stay well inside their own sections and talk only to their professional colleagues. And how could it be otherwise? Many branches of science are now so specialised as to be mutually unintelligible.

“While the furrows in the Held of knowledge have become deeper.” writes Professor A. P. Elkin, honorary secretary of the congress, “they have also become narrower. Even branches of one science are now almost closed orders.” One doubts whether the chemist who read a paper on “Polydeoxyribonucleotides” would have caught all the nuances of papers delivered by other chemists on "Aplications of Proton SpinSpin Decoupling” and “Polyfunctional catalysis in the Hydrolysis of Esters and Amides.”

And does the plasma physicist (who studies the discharge of gases) really know what is going on these days in solid state physics (which tries to explain the properties of solids as distinct from liquids and plasmas)? How much less does the physicist understand modern chemistry, or the chemist understand zoology or botany? As knowledge continues to expand it is becoming increasingly difficult, for the scientist no less than the layman, to remeber that the different universes of science—like those in Dr. Schlesinger’s hypothesis—are really one and the same. Unintelligible “During the first half of this century,” said Professor N. S. Bayliss, president of A.N.Z.A.A.S., this week, “knowledge of chemistry alone doubled every 13 years. Since then, it has doubled in eight years. Last century it was possible for one man to know all there was to know about science, but today we have an increasing number of workers each sharing a decreasing fraction of the expanding frontier of knowledge. A technical paper in one science may now be just as unintelligible to experts in another science as it is to the laymen.”— Associated Newspapers Feature 'Services.