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Science vs. engineering vs. theoretical applied nanotechnology
By Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
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
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
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.
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology™ is headquartered in New York. CRN is an affiliate of World Care®, an international, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization. For more information on CRN, see www.CRNano.org.
Mike Treder, Executive Director
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research
Reprinted with premission.
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