重新思考哪一个领先：科学还是技术？

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1、重新思考哪一个领先：科学还是技术？重新思考哪一个领先：科学还是技术？ 想一想在没有显微镜、望远镜以及像DNA自动检测技术等一些最近的技术进步的情况下，科学的发展将会怎样。 科学将依然根植于人类的认知和推理中。但是他远 不如现代科学那样威力强大，现代科学还能够在技术上通过计算机来拓展人们的感知，解密现实世界，从宇宙本身到最难以理解的亚原子微粒希格斯玻色子等，任何东西？ 流行的观点是，技术是可科学的奴婢更少的纯粹性，更多的商业性。但是在技术的本质：它是什么和它如何进化一书中，W. Brian Arthur，一个经济学家，作为思索关于创新的综合理论的努力的一部分，重新构架了科学和技术之间的关系。按照

2、Dr. Arthur的观点，科学和技术之间的关系比大体上认为的更具有共生性。科学和技术以一种共同进化的方式来共同前进。科学并不领先。 “当我涉及的那个工程的时候，我开始意识到每一件事情都出自技术，”Dr. Arthur在一次最近的采访中说 “正是技术产生了现代科学和经济，然而我们趋向于认为那是相反的科学产生了技术，经济产生了技术。但是技术比两者之中的任何一个都重要。” 很容易看到一个已然成为硅谷领先思想者的人是如何会持有那样的观点的，但是在技术的本质中表达的想法并不是那样片面的观点。 在试图解释创新时，他扬弃了达尔文主义和机械主义关于技术变革的方法，尝试建立一种围绕他所描述为技术进化的“联合”

3、模型的理论框架。 技术进化，Dr. Arthur 写道，基于混乱和现存技术的持续不断的重新合并。以这种观点，所有的技术突破都是以现存技术元素的创新合并而出现，它自身通过同样的方式产生。同时，他认为技术和科学的进程，在人们寻找一种到达他们早已定义的终点的方法时而被驱动。 那是深刻的社会创新观点。按照Dr. Arthur的观点，单独的发明人事实上就是一种发明，美国经济神话的一部分。表面上独立的天才总是那些对现存技术深刻了解，并且拥有以新的方式组合它们的灵感的人。 技术的本质是对Thomas S. Kuhn所著的科学的变革结构的呼应。Dr. Kuhn 发展出“范式转变”的概念来解释科学的进程。随着新

4、的证据的发展，科学理论将逐渐积累巨大，直到一场引导新的范式或技术模型的危机的出现。以Dr. Arthur技术变革观点，市场在新技术的出现过程中扮演着仲裁者的角色。 一个这样鲜明变化的例子是在商业飞机上的喷气式发动机的转变。 Dr. Arthur，曾被培训成为一个工程师，数学家和经济学家，以对经济中的增加回报的早期研究而著称。他证明，尤其是在以技术为根源的工业中，早期的优势和偶然的事情能够导致垄断位置。他的研究在司法部在90年代是对微软的反托拉斯的案件中产生了影响。 他也研究了第三世界的人类生育情况，最终于1996年在斯坦福大学主持一个受资助的关于复杂性理论和在Santa Fe 研究所关于经济职

5、位。他对达成技术的概括性定义的努力愈发感兴趣。 “我开始意识到我们的财富和我们优越生活都出自于技术，”Dr.Arthur说。 “技术有点像音乐，其中以个人技术而为人所知。在音乐中，我们知道每一个留有记录的创作者的价值 。我们知道每一个作品中的每一条信息。但是如果你问音乐是什么，音乐中的那一部分来自哪里，你将陷入一种深深的哲学性的对哈中。 他取得了这样一种理论，试图参照达尔文的物种起源而非照搬它。他认为，从Samuel Butler 写机械达尔文以来，达尔文的著作出现后仅四年，就有了将技术进化论奉为潮流的努力。 Dr. Arthur试图解释从喷气式发动机到GPS等重要新技术的出现。他正确地指出，

6、喷气式发动机既不是来自活塞式发动机的小小发展的稳定积累，也不是来自于作为机械技术下一代的现代计算机的突破。 他指出，人类解决问题的本性是一种通过对现存技术的重新组合来发展出新一代的技术的力量。按照珊瑚礁是活着的观点，技术也是活的。珊瑚礁是很多物种的生态系统，同样地，最广泛的定义下，技术是具体地、不断地变化着的结构，由成千上万个单个技术作出的，这些技术本身又由单独的技术组成。 如果我们明白了技术来源于哪里，我们然后就知道它走向哪里吗？如果Dr. Arthur在重新确定科学中的技术的角色时时勇敢的，那么他现在在预测它的前进方向时就要谨慎一点了，或者可能就得这样。 硅谷的想象者预测了技术的发展方向流

7、行了好长时间。幸运的是由于记者总是寻找新的文章，新的预测，他们经常是错的。当前的潮流是预测“奇点”网络或机械智能的自发出现在何时发生。有很多会议、甚至是学校庆祝以指数变化速度的迅速的技术融合，从电脑的能力到基因检测。 但是Dr.Arthur反对这些。 在他的最后一章中“通过我们的创造我们身处何地”他认为像哲学家马丁 海德格尔和社会学家雅克 埃吕尔一样的各种作者们一直表面的那样，技术已经变成了弗兰肯斯坦的东西了（科学怪人），通过它本身的意志分离了我们。 Dr. Arthur的观点是，技术是一件定义我们是人类的东西。最终，我们将能够控制一系列技术不是奴役我们，而是拓展我们的人性。Rethinkin

8、g What Leads the Way: Science, or New Technology? Consider what the state of science would be without the microscope, the telescope, or a more recent technical advance like automated DNA sequencing.There would still be science, rooted in human perception and reason. But it would be far less potent t

9、han modern science, which has technologically expanded the senses, and with computers, the intellect, to explore and decipher reality, from the universe itself to the most elusive subatomic particle. Higgs bosons, anyone?The popular view is that technology is the handmaiden of science less pure, mor

10、e commercial. But in “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves,” W. Brian Arthur, an economist, reframes the relationship between science and technology as part of an effort to come up with a comprehensive theory of innovation. In Dr. Arthurs view, the relationship between science and

11、 technology is more symbiotic than is generally conceded. Science and technology move forward together in a kind of co-evolution. And science does not lead.“What I began to realize as I got into the project is that everything emerges out of technology,” Dr. Arthur said in a recent interview. “Its te

12、chnology that gives rise to both modern science and the economy, and we tend to think of it in reverse that science gives rise to technology and the economy gives rise to technology. But technology is more fundamental than either one.”It is easy to see how someone who has become one of Silicon Valle

13、ys leading thinkers would take that view, but Dr. Arthurs argument as laid out in “The Nature of Technology” is not a one-sided manifesto.In trying to explain innovation, he steps away from both Darwinian and more mechanistic approaches to how technologies change and tries to build a theoretical fra

14、mework around what he describes as a “combinatorial” model of technological evolution.Technologies evolve, Dr. Arthur writes, based on the chaotic and constant recombining of already existing technologies. In this view all technological breakthroughs emerge as novel combinations of existing technolo

15、gical components, which have themselves come into existence through the same process. And, he argues, both technological and scientific progress are driven by humans looking for a means to an end they have already defined.It is a profoundly social view of innovation. In Dr. Arthurs view, the “lone i

16、nventor” is in fact an invention, part of American economic mythology. The apparently independent genius is always someone who has a deep knowledge of existing technologies and has the inspiration to combine them in new ways.“The Nature of Technology” is evocative of “The Structure of Scientific Rev

17、olutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn. Dr. Kuhn explored the idea of “paradigm shifts” to explain scientific progress. Scientific theories would gradually accumulate anomalies as new evidence was developed, until a crisis led to a new paradigm or theoretical model. In Dr. Arthurs view of technological change,

18、 the market plays the role of arbiter in the emergence of new technologies.One example of such a striking shift was the changeover to jet engines in commercial aircraft.Dr. Arthur, who was trained as an engineer, mathematician and economist, is best known for early research on the impact of increasi

19、ng returns in economies. He demonstrated how, particularly in technology-oriented industries, early advantages and random events can lead to monopoly positions. His research gained influence during the Justice Departments antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft during the 1990s.He has also studied human

20、 fertility in the third world and ultimately left an endowed chair at Stanford in 1996 to focus on complexity theory and the economy at the Santa Fe Institute. He became increasingly interested in the effort to arrive at a general definition of technology.“I began to realize that our wealth and our

21、well-being all emerge out of technologies,” Dr. Arthur said.“Technology is a bit like music in that there is an enormous amount known about individual technologies, and in music we know the scores of every composer who left records. We know every note in every composition, but if you ask what is mus

22、ic, and where does the musical part of music come from, youre in a quite deep philosophical conversation.”What he has arrived at is a theory that tries to parallel Darwins “On the Origin of Species” but not repeat it. He notes that since Samuel Butler wrote “Darwin Among the Machines,” just four yea

23、rs after Darwins book appeared, there have been efforts to fashion a theory of evolution of technology.Dr. Arthur tries to explain the emergence of radical new technologies from jet engines to GPS. He correctly points out that the jet engine did not arise from the steady accretion of small improveme

24、nts in piston engines nor did the modern computer burst forth as the next generation of mechanical calculator.He points to the human propensity to solve problems as the force that leads to new generations of technology through recombination of existing technologies. Technology is “alive” in the sens

25、e that a coral reef is alive. The reef is an ecological system with many species, and technology in the broadest sense is an elaborate and constantly changing structure made up of thousands of discrete technologies, themselves composed of separate technologies.If we understand where technology is co

26、ming from, can we then discern where it is headed? If Dr. Arthur is bold in his reassessment of the role of technology in science, he is cautious, and probably rightly so, in his prediction about where it is headed.It has long been fashionable for Silicon Valley visionaries to prognosticate about th

27、e direction of technology. And fortunately for reporters always looking for new articles, and new predictions, they are wrong far more often than right. The current fashion here is to speculate on when the “singularity” the spontaneous emergence of a network or machine intelligence will happen. Ther

28、e are conferences and even a school celebrating the convergence of a growing number of exponential rates-of-change ranging from computer power to the falling cost of gene sequencing.But Dr. Arthur demurs.In his final chapter “Where Do We Stand With This Creation of Ours?” he notes that writers as di

29、verse as the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the sociologist Jacques Ellul have suggested that technology has become something of a Frankenstein, set apart from us with a will of its own.Dr. Arthurs view is that technology is something that defines us as human and that, in the end, we will be able to control a set of technologies that rather than conquering us will extend our humanity.