Optimizing Interdisciplinarity

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Not so sure - James Watt was an instrument maker at Glasgow University before coming to Birmingham to work with Bolton on the stunning condenser steam engine.

Faraday was a bookbinder's apprentice, before moving to the Royal Institution - but way before that, I think it was a physician who came up with the sulphur ball on a spindle method of powering an electric telegraph.. Wasn't evolutionary genetics worked out by a monk?

Photography - that was a bitumen on glass method initially, if I recall....

BrianW

Brian Whatcott wrote

Doesnt qualify as 'the more dissimilar the fields' and toy steam engines had been around for a hell of a long time before they were ever used for something practical like pumping in a mine, and its hardly surprising that an instrument maker would have been aware of toy steam engines.

Tho I guess you could claim that that particular one does involve rather different fields since instrument making and mining are quite different fields.

Doesnt mean that the discovery of electricity had anything to do with bookbinding tho.

Nope. Thats just plant breeding and everyone ran the line that you couldnt breed even a donkey and a horse and get any progeny that could reproduce.

Different matter entirely to establishing that evolution is what happened naturally.

Thats as silly as saying that Chas Darwin was involved with religion before he twigged to evolution.

Still nothing to do with dissimilar fields, just the use of what worked by someone who had enough of a clue to think of that approach.

bookbinding tho. According to reports Faraday read a lot of the books that came into the shop where he worked. A lot of those books were science oriented. Thus he received a leading edge education on the science of the day. Of course he was very intelligent, that helped. Then his particular religion was well suited for science investigation and theorizing, different than Newton's, but had similar effects.

naturally.

twigged to evolution.

There's one unifying discipline that has absolutely pervaded all the sciences, all of technology, and nearly all the arts: electronics.

John

Sir Frederick wrote

fields.

bookbinding tho.

Thats not interdisciplinarity, just an unusual way of getting and education.

Still not interdisciplinarity, just his personal circumstances.

naturally.

he twigged to evolution.

Nope, most obviously with the biological sciences early on, before electronics was even invented.

Ditto in spades with the physical sciences too.

Wrong again, most obviously with the industrial revolution and military technology before electronics was even invented.

Wrong in spades before electronics was even invented.

Fraid not.

was even invented.

I said "has pervaded." Having trouble with tenses? Or history?

It's rare that any modern physical experiment isn't instrumented with electronics, and its data analyzed and published using computers. Electronics has revolutionized biology (gene sequencing, molecular analysis) and physics (making quantum mechanics measurable, detecting particles and quanta) and chemistry and practically any discipline you can name.

So to do any science or engineering, especially inter-discipline stuff, it's a huge advantage to be good at electronics, as most really good scientists are.

Something as simple as Bret's crossover heat exchanger is going to need some good measurement and control electronics to keep it at its optimum point, whatever that is. Several delts-p's, lots of temperatures, maybe the power input to the pumps.

John

John Larkin wrote

sciences,

electronics was even invented.

Never ever could bullshit its way out of a wet paper bag.

Pity electronics doesnt qualify as a 'unifying discipline' in that sense either.

Thats as silly as claiming that the printing press is a 'unifying discipline' in all those fields. Fraid not.

Thats as silly as claiming that chemistry is a 'unifying discipline' in all those fields. Fraid not.

That last is just plain wrong. Very few of them are.

And f*ck all plant breeding does.

Dont get much of that with painting pictures.

Hey, Bret, we get the idea. You want to f*ck with these newsgroups because they trounced your idea for battery powered tractors.

Could you please stop now? It's getting quite boring.

Thanks, Bob Monsen

zed

Don't forget chemistry. Hot oxygen over silicon, to make all those semiconductors...

Michael

lized

The atomic scientists were the first to realize that biotech would take over.

If the algae diesel folk can get 50K gallons / acre - year then the physicists were correct.

The converse may or may not be true.

Bret Cahill