Next: What we observe: signal
Up: Why Create Models?
Previous: Trading memorizing for thinking
Index
Click for printer friendely version of this HowTo
As we progress in our education, we find ourselves specializing in a
specific discipline. Some of us study physics, others study genetics
or statistics. These different disciplines have, over the years, been created
by a rather arbitrary process. Where does biology stop and chemistry
start? Or, where does chemistry stop and physics begin? Thus, it
comes as no surprise that real problems do not always fall nicely
into a single discipline. In fact, it is the gray areas that fall
between disciplines that often offer us the most interesting problems
because it is only these problems that allow us to see the big
picture. As a result, multi-disciplinary is becoming the new
buzz word in the scientific community.
Hundreds of years ago there were so called Renaissance Men.
Men and women
that understood the details in many different fields and could
successfully contribute significant findings to all of them. Over
time, however, each discipline became more and more of an island due to
the massive amount of discovered knowledge and the
impossibility of one man being able to master it all. Each
new concept was built on an increasingly
formidable hierarchy of existing theory within a particular discipline.
While the general trend for each discipline to become more and more
specialized as it becomes rich with knowledge has not changed, our
ability to access the information has.
When books and libraries were our only source of information, it
was not feasible to have collections of reference books for all
disciplines within reach on our desk at
the same time. Not only was the possibility of having a library that
contained them all incredibly small, but our desks were simply not big
and strong enough to hold them. Even if we did have access to the
books we would need to become our own renaissance man, there was no
means to efficiently search through them.
With the internet and search engines, we solve all three problems
Our desks only need to be strong enough to support a computer (and often
times, a laptop computer does not even need a desk), almost all of
modern scientific knowledge can be accessed through the internet and
we can efficiently search through it all with google. Quick and easy
access to information allows us to now focus on the main ideas without
having to be bogged down with memorizing all of the details. The
details are right at our fingertips when we need them.
This body of work that you are now reading represents information
obtained from personal experience, which has allowed us to
isolate and identify what we are calling ``main ideas''
from our own thinking, books and the internet.
When this project began, almost all of the text was derived from
books and personal experience. However, at this point, the vast
majority of the writing is
inspired by information found on web pages.
Next: What we observe: signal
Up: Why Create Models?
Previous: Trading memorizing for thinking
Index
Click for printer friendely version of this HowTo
Frank Starmer
2004-05-19