Three Freds
There is little doubt that the dominant mood in the United States today is one of measured pessimism, brought about by the widespread perception that our political institutions have somehow failed us. One virtue of reading is to get away from today’s gloom to a more hopeful earlier period when progress seemed to occur at a more rapid rate. One such period was the 1920’s. Quite by coincidence, three men with “Fred” buried in their name had a huge amount to do with that progress. This little note is intended to pay homage to their forgotten reputations, and to recommend the books that bring their accomplishments to life.
The first Fred was Dr. Frederick Banting, who between 1920 and 1923 was the driving force behind the isolation and purification of insulin, which offered instant hope for thousands of diabetic individuals who were otherwise condemned to death by slow starvation. His chaotic exploits are well chronicled in a recent book written by Thea Cooper and Arthur Ainsberg, Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, The Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle. To read that book is to be reminded of the importance of sheer force of will in search of a paramount goal. As I have written recently, it is not likely that Banting’s work could take place into today’s hot house environment.
The second Fred was Alfred Loomis, who was written up in Jennet Conant’s Tuxedo Park. Loomis was both financier, scientist, administrator, and philanthropist of the first order. His financial work included finding ways to finance rural electrification in the 1920’s. He left that business for good at the start of the New Deal, when he too decided that he could not cope with the increased level of government hostility and investigation.
The third Fred is Alfred P. Sloan, who as President and Chair forged the modern General Motors in the 1920s. Sloan was also one of the two founders, along with Charles Kettering, of the renown Sloan-Kettering Institute for cancer research, of the Sloan School of Management at his alma mater MIT, and the Sloan Foundation. His book My Years with General Motors offers yet another account of large scale business innovation, which took place before GM’s ugly confrontation with organized labor in the 1930s.
None of these gents was perfect. Far from it. But one theme unites these three books. Regulation stifles innovation.
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Nov '10
Re: Three Freds
"fo sheezy"
Jun '10
Re: Three Freds
I’ve asked this question before and gotten a variety of responses, mostly accusing me of being a myopic Luddite. But, let me ask it of the Ricochet rabbit warren. Before I do, I’d like to state for the record that I am enthralled by science and that this is not an anti-scientific question nor is it a question locked in time’s aspic. So here goes: Have we discovered all the general laws or principles that will govern our science from here on? Is all that is left simply engineering? There is a great difference between science and engineering, to be sure, but my question is based on the fact that fundamental scientific discoveries seem to be getting spread out over ever longer periods of time. To put it another way, we seem to be making fewer “real” scientific discoveries while using the science we know better. Yes, we are still seeking the holy grail in a great unifying theory, and, perhaps relatedly, no one seems to be making any real progress sorting out quantum physics, nor have we cured cancer, but when we do all the foregoing will it be done on known scientific principles?
Nov '10
Re: Three Freds
Cas,
We haven't even made it past the moon. As far as I am concerned, we don't know jack. Get us outside the solar system and we might start discovering stuff (life forms, phenomena, elements) we've never dreamed of.
Thats what I think anyway...
Jun '10
Re: Three Freds
Ken Owsley: Cas,
We haven't even made it past the moon. As far as I am concerned, we don't know jack. Get us outside the solar system and we might start discovering stuff (life forms, phenomena, elements) we've never dreamed of.
Thats what I think anyway... · Dec 18 at 9:57pm
I agree with everything you write, Ken, but the general principles that get us to the moon are the same principles that get us past the moon. I'm not asking about discovery so much as I am about the foundational principles of science. What gets us past the moon is ever better engineering, not necessarily better science. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but take for example anti-matter, we know it exists because scientists have created it at CERN, what remains to be "discovered" is how to control this new force. In my view that's engineering (applied science if you will) and not necessarily "new" science. That's what I'm trying to get at with my question, and so far in all the times I've asked the question I haven't gotten a good answer.
Nov '10
Re: Three Freds
I get what you are saying, and I'm just suggesting that given how large the universe is, it's a good possibility that there are new phenomena to discover that will change those foundational principals.
Nov '10
Re: Three Freds
As for your question, Cas, the answer is no, we definitely haven't answered all the big questions. There is a list somewhere online of the major unanswered questions of science, but off the top of my head I can name a few whose answer would earn an instant nobel prize. One of them, as you mentioned, is the grand unified theory, which we aren't even close to answering because the experimental physics is lagging so far behind the theoretical. (In Fermi's day, proving the veracity of quantum mechanics was just a matter of waiting a couple of years until someone built a strong enough particle accelerator. Today's theories predict phenomena occurring at a scale 20 orders of magnitude smaller than we can examine using current technology. It will be decades before we know which, if any, of the competing theories are right.) Another big question is what is holding galaxies together? Most current theories predict that the density of many galaxies is too low for gravity to keep them from flying apart due to their angular velocities.
Nov '10
Re: Three Freds
Incidentally Lord Kelvin claimed, at the turn of the century, that "It seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have now been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice…. An eminent physicist has remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
Only five years later, the world described by Newton was turned on its head by special relativity at the macro level, and by quantum mechanics at the micro.
Nov '10
Re: Three Freds
One last thing, (man I'm really bumping up my post count tonight):
In doing some reading for a class on parasitology, I cannot tell you how many times the author pointed out that a major antiparasitic drug of remarkable effectiveness was not approved for use by the FDA. We're talking about debilitating and sometimes fatal diseases with few known treatments, and the bureaucratic poodles choose to wait for further testing. But when the human costs of withholding approval are invisible, I suppose it's the safest move on their part.