Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 329.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 07:46:13 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: messy science
Having just finished the book I can recommend with fresh enthusiasm James D
Watson's The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the
Structure of DNA (New York, 1968). It of course makes a very important bit
of science accessible to the likes of us (delete yourself if you're a
biochemist or similar). But what particularly fascinated me was the close,
daily account of the "context of discovery", as it is called, and the role
of physical modelling in discovery. The messiness of it all is instructive,
and a useful defense against arguments that would have algorithmic thought
(in the form, say, of an expert system) as an adequate representation of
what actually happens when new knowledge is discovered -- or perhaps more
accurately, made.
The setting -- the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge and environs, with some
attention to wrongly neglected activity at King's College London -- might
lead one to think that for cultural reasons the portrayal is of casual,
even quirky but brilliantly effective research. Watson is an American,
however, and Linus Pauling, another American (who almost got there first),
is famous for equally unalgorithmic approaches to research. A child at play
comes to mind. No, it would seem there's something very important about how
knowledge is made in this account, don't you think?
Comments?
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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