Comment by DanInTokyo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanInTokyo | Hacker News Reader

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Part of me immediately scoffs at the definition of "nanotechnology" assumed by the article, but this plays to something that's been bothering me of late - to what degree does humanity actually innovate/invent, vs. rubbing things together and seeing what happens?

Cooking: I put this plant in and set fire under it and it tastes good.

Chemistry: I put these two substances together and they explode.

Nanotechnology*: I put tiny ground-up bits of gold in this and it turns red.

This may be waaaaay side-tracking, but at what point do we step back and realize that everything we do consists of just... writing down what happens with different combinations of things? And today's nanotechnology is just the result of tons upon tons of writing down things like the linked article's results and then adding whatever the next logical(?) step might be?

(Makes me think the Asheron's Call spell research back in the day captured all of human ingenuity boiled down)

"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants." -- Isaac Newton (1676)

Hilariously enough, he apparently said that to put down Hooke, who was quite short. It was meant as an insult.

Not necessarily even the shoulders of giants (with all due respect to Newton), but on the shoulders of normal, inquisitive men and women who are standing on the shoulders of countless other normal men and women.

It's turtles all the way down.

"You can stand on the shoulders of giants, or a big enough pile of dwarfs. Works either way." - (wish I knew the source)

Sounds Pratchett-esque to me...

Which is a pretty big feat by itself in a time when most people were afraid of standing up from their crouching positions.

I always say that I'm a midget standing on the shoulders of giants.

Well, innovation means introducing new things or methods. Invention is creating something with ones own ingenuity, as opposed to replicating something.

So I don't quite see how experimenting and observing effects goes counter to that. Predictive science is great, but the theoretical models you use stem from observation as well. The only difference is that you get to experiment virtually, and that you can narrow down things.

So yeah, innovating/inventing requires rubbing things together and seeing what happens. Imagine innovating without eventually rubbing things together (in a wider sense of course). It wouldn't make sense.

I don't disagree, it's just been a change in my own perspective of late... kind of like when you stop believing in magic and start understanding the reactions of a variety of elements. It starts to seem so... straightforward. Puts discovery into perspective.

You basically just described part of what we call Science.

1: Experiment

2: Observe

3: Think

4: Guess

goto 1

Start at any one of 1..4.

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