In the closing pages of The Philosophical Breakfast Club, I noted that the divide between science and the rest of culture–which in some ways was inadvertantly brought about by the innovations of the Philosophical Breakfast Club–had one effect that the members of the club would have especially mourned: that scientists themselves are no longer transmitting to the general public the excitement they feel about science, and the wonder they experience in studying nature. Babbage, Herschel, and Whewell had each written books about natural science and the scientific method, books which were aimed not just at other specialists but at a wider literate public. And these books had a major impact on the public.

Charles Darwin, for instance, was a student when he read Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. He later told Herschel that “scarcely anything in my life made so deep an impression on me” as the book. “It made me wish to try to add my mite to the accumulated store of natural knowledge.” Darwin even admitted to his friend Thomas Henry Huxley that “I sometimes think that general and popular Treatises are almost as important for the progress of science as original work.” Beyond inspiring some, like Darwin, to become scientists, these books informed the public about the latest discoveries, in language they could understand, and shared the excitement and wonder of scientific exploration.

Yet, in general, today’s scientists are not writing books like this (of course there are some exceptions). Interestingly, it seems that television is stepping in to take on that role. A piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine discusses one new series, “Through the Wormhole,” on the Science Channel. What’s terrific about this series is that it is taking on the most abstract parts of today’s science–dark matter, alternative dimensions, etc.–and making them not only understandable but relatable to the public.

And one aspect of the article which is particularly good is how the author, Alex Pappademas, suggests that these theories are at the boundary of science and philosophy. By presenting scientists as “edge-pushing explorer types,” the series gives us “a metaphor for adventurism that is essentially philosphical.” At heart, Pappademas concludes, “Through the Wormhole” is “a commercial for wonder”–a way to help people feel the wonder in the natural world around us that scientists feel.

Another new series, “Curiosity,” on the Discover Channel, also seeks to awaken that sense of wonder. John Henricks, the Founder and Chairman of Discovery Communications and the Curiosity Series Creator, describes the mission of the show this way:

“We all wonder. Curiosity is the driving force in every discovery that has advanced our civilization. From the most obscure details to the biggest questions of our lives, the innate desire to ask why makes us uniquely human. Each week, the CURIOSITY series will capture that fundamental sense of wonder and present an engaging visualization of our minds’ search for answers.”

Even Fox Television is entering the scientific wonder arena; in 2013 it will be broadcasting an updated version of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos,” with the author and astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson.

The fact that all these science programs are being developed is, I think, a sign that people are hungering for greater understanding of science–and for a sense of wonder in nature. The more that scientists can provide this to the public, the better.

In a post at the end of June, I discussed one problem with the notion that science is a self-correcting process. I focused on the fact that scientists tend not to want to spend their time on “de-discovery,” as Carl Zimmer has called it. That is, while scientists may decry an experimental result as incorrect, they very often do not try to repeat the experiment in order to show that the result does not occur, mainly because there are no incentives for them to do so: the scientific journals do not publish papers on these types of “negative results,” and no one makes a career by debunking the claims of other researchers.

The discussion was sparked by controversy over a paper originally published last year by Felicia Wolfe-Simon at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, and colleagues, reporting on an organism that used arsenic rather than phosphorus in its DNA. Many scientists rejected the results, but no one had repeated the experiment.

Now it has been reported that one of the critics, Rosie Redfield of the University of British Columbia, is redoing the experiment. It will be very interesting to see what she comes up with. To ensure that there are no anomalous results and that the experiment is correctly done, she will have to invest and look for professional equipment, in addition to making sure that timings are correct. Either way, Redfield’s experiment will be useful to further discussions on the possibility of non-phosphorus based life, and also to the issue of science as a self-correcting process.

See the story here.

Lately, when I look out at the students in my college philosophy classes, I wonder whether they will end up using their minds to guide our future, or to build machines that will replace their minds and do that work for them. Certainly, they seem to use machines more and more to substitute for, or supplement, the functions of their minds. Daydreaming replaced by web surfing, flirting carried out by text messages, writing by cutting and pasting, making “friends?? on social networking sites-just to name a few. I can’t help wondering whether this is helping, or hurting, the development of their young minds.

As Artificial Intelligence makes new strides every day-creating machines that can play chess and Jeopardy, diagnose long-distance patients, as well as create ai machine learning that’s capable of learning on the go, and so much more-it is worth recognizing that the quest to build a true thinking machine is an old one, as are the worries that such a quest inevitably incites. Whilst the idea of automated machines like autonomous vehicles may have come about a long time ago, it’s only recently that companies like Torc Robotics (https://torc.ai/trucking/) or similar others can be seen developing these machines have actually been performing these tasks. It has taken a long and strenuous journey for the field of technology to get to this point. Thanks to continuously improving technology, artificial intelligence is progressing quickly. These machines are able to benefit from synthetic training data that is helping to teach the machines to identify objects, allowing them to perform more advanced tasks. As machines are now able to do so much more, there seems to be no limit for these computer systems.

In 1770, a Hungarian inventor named Wolfgang von Kempelen brought a remarkable creation to the court of the Empress Maria Theresa-a life-sized mechanical automaton which, Kempelen said, could play chess. Known as “the Turk,?? the machine was demonstrated to acclaim throughout Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years, in the process playing chess against such luminaries as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin and causing audiences to marvel at the specter of a machine that could think as well as the greatest chess masters of the day.

But not everyone marveled-some dreaded the possibility of a thinking machine. A book published in 1784 related that “[o]ne old lady… went and hid herself in a window seat, as distant as she could from the evil spirit, which she firmly believed possessed the machine.??

Yet the age of the thinking machine had not in fact yet come: in 1821 the Turk was revealed to be a grand hoax. A human operator was hidden inside the mechanism, controlling the Turk’s chess pieces by the use of magnets under the chess board. Ironically, the true start of the age of artificial intelligence came at the same time that the hoax was unveiled.

That same year, the brilliant mathematician Charles Babbage began thinking of inventing a calculating machine. His Difference Engine-never fully built in his own time-marked the beginning of artificial intelligence.

Made of brass and steel, with figure wheels representing the digits, Babbage’s invention could calculate any polynomial function set in at the start, and did so with no further intervention from the human operator save the turning of a crank handle. The Difference Engine would have been the first machine to supplant not physical labor-like other recent inventions, the steam engine, the mechanize loom, the locomotive, or the cotton “gin?? (short for “engine??)-but mental labor. Had the machine been built, it would have rendered obsolete the hoards of men and women who calculated tables of mathematical numbers, such as logarithm tables, astronomical tables, and actuarial tables. These calculators were called “computers,?? giving rise to the name of the machines that did, eventually, supplant the human table calculators.

That Babbage’s invention marked the start of a new era was recognized immediately, even before he began to construct the engine. The Astronomical Society, which awarded Babbage a gold medal, described his Difference Engine as a machine that “substitutes mechanical performance for an intellectual process.?? A friend of Babbage’s more vividly remarked that in his machine “the marvelous pulp and fibre of a brain had been substituted by brass and iron, [Babbage] had taught wheelwork to think.??

For Babbage and his friends, the idea that a machine could do the job of human intelligence was empowering. Mathematicians could be freed up for more important work while ensuring a level of accuracy that no human computer could hope to attain-the tables that were calculated by hand were rife with error. But others of his time were not so sanguine about the possibility of artificial intelligence. To them, Babbage’s engine raised troubling questions about the value of human minds, just as the mechanized looms and other inventions had raised questions about the value of human labor, questions that would soon be taken up by a young Karl Marx. If machines could think, were human minds no better than machines? And if a machine could be made to perform the mental functions of mathematical reasoning, were other mental functions far behind? Language, emotions, creativity-would these come next?

The very idea of a Difference Engine provoked much anxiety in the 19th century, not only among the general public but also those engaged in scientific research, and this is one reason Babbage’s machine was never built in his own day.

Just as in Babbage’s day, the specter of a thinking machine worries us. “Long live humanity?? one headline declared defensively, when the physicist and New Jersey congressman Rush Holt won one round against the Jeopardy-playing computer Watson. But Babbage’s failure to build his thinking machines did not stop the quest to create one. Before we get there, we should spend some time thinking about the consequences, both for society and for individual human minds. An od advertisement used to say, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.?? Might it not, also, be a terrible thing to replace?