Nobel, Chemistry, 1901

TL;DR -- Significant to us were the Prizes for Physics, Chemistry and Medicine. In this post, we point to the 1901 award. As such, that is a good start with van der Walls and Hoff for physics and chemistry. 

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We mentioned the 2024 Nobel Prizes earlier with more references to the Physics award which dealt with  machine learning. At the time, we emphasized the importance of the one for chemistry and for medicine. 

This post looks at the 1901 prize. It can be categoried as dealing with theoretical chemistry. After studying the advance of science and pondering what might bridge the gaps that are currently found in knowledge as we see observe the problems of technology, we settled upon theoretical chemistry as a central theme. Looking at the first Nobel prize in Chemistry is a good place to start. 

Nobel, Chemistry, 1901

In Physics, van del Waals was the first Awardee for his work in thermodynmics but focused on his PhD thesis from 1873. Contemporary with van der Walls in doing the early work in thermodynamics was Josian Willard Gibbs who was an American and who we wrote of as a descendant of Thomas Gardner and Margaret Fryer through their son George. 

In Chemistry, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (Wikipedia) was the first Awardee for his work in the "the discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions" and demonstrated the importance of physical chemistry. 

Tying back to the 2024 Prizes, we see that the mathematical aspects of physics and its kin has advanced tremendously with an acceleration that accompanied the growth, recently, of computing prowess. Both the physics and chemistry prizes acknowleged advanced computing which applied knowledge brought forth by studies in mathematical physics. 

Another topic that will be constantly at hand is the Philosophy of Physics. Wikipedia provides a good overview, except the material is rated as "original research" as an indication of value, improperly source information, and perhaps even viewpoint. There is also an article on the Philosophy of Chemistry (Wikipedia) which does not have the problem. They quote Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling as their first philosopher. One interesting twist? Is it thing or action that is important? That issue resonates to this day. A resolution was to accept both and make the situation the focus. 

BTW, philosophy of science is important by default, almost, to the upcoming discussions. 

Note: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Chemistry; Modeling and Chemical explanation).  

Remarks: Modified: 12/20/2024

12/20/2024 --

Battles of Lexington/Concord, MA

TL;DR -- This post has a 250th theme. Our work of fourteen years has generated a lot of data. With this anniversary, we will go back and connect with that done over 100 years ago. 

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The title refers to the conflict in Massachusetts in April of 1775 between the military forces of England and the militas of New England. One might say that the 250th of the U.S. celebration can use that as a starting point. England's troops were pushed to Boston. And, later were allowed to leave that area, too. 

Now, in a real sense, the 250th started before. There were meetings several years in advance. We will name names as we look at the historical/genealogical aspects. Some events were well known: the Boston Tea Party. 

Where could the English troops go? North to Canada, for one thing. BTW, "troops" would include several types of military resources that the old country had. The whole of the time of the Revolutionary War has been researched and written about by historians. Our interest goes further as we have the genealogical and family historical aspect to cover, too. 

For instance, one of our tabs is "TMM" (The Massachusetts Magazine) which was an effort of a Thomas Gardner descendant. As an MD, he was a medical officer with a group in Salem MA; but, he did a lot of research which was done during the time of the late 1800s and early 1900s. We honor his work and will continue referring to it. 

On looking at the first issue of the TMM in 1908, we counted the number of refernces to Lexington. Every Issue (Quarterly) had an article on a military group (Regimental History Series, background and motivation) that had been at the Boston Siege. Most of these were at the earlier event, as well. 

• See TMM tab and look at TMM, Vol I, 1907 provided by archive[.]org. Each Volume had four Issues. 

So, over 100 years later, in 2025+, we can continue the research with lots more facilities available. For one, the computer is now quite capable. We have more sources that are digitized (offical records; eye witness accounts; &c). In terms of personal experience, pensions were offered. Much of the data consists of application data. 

Regimental History Series, background and motivation

In terms of interest, the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. has a mission related to honoring the start of Massachusetts, particularly after the establishment of the Plymouth colony. That is a 400-year view about which we have spent time and effort doing our own research. Now, we have the 250th arrive related to the Revolution and the start of the U.S.

At the same time, we have added Technology as a special interest. In particular, computational systems in all of their aspects will be the focus especially with respect to knowledge systems dealing with particulars from the specifics of mathematics up through the 12-floors of science using physics as an example, such as Gibbs and thermodynamics. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/18/2024

12/18/2024 --  Put in a link to the Gibb's post. 

Josiah Willard Gibbs

TL;DR -- Josiah is a descendant and a well-known contributor to the development of a major theory in physics: thermodynamics. We will look at both his work and his pedigree. 

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In our studies related to the Science of Technology, we will be running into many names. Some will not be American (such as Noether). Some will be American, and, of those, we will look for New England associations. The series on the Harvard Presidents is an example. We started this when we ran into a New Yorker article on James Bryant Conant. That got us to looking at all of the Presidents. 

Recall, one motivator for this work related to technology is machine learning (ML) masquerading as artificial intelligence (AI). But, in general, we want to follow the evolution of STEM along with the advance of the U.S. whose 250th is coming up. 

The Nobel prizes this year were a motivator,as well, with the focus on computation: Physics (neural nets); Chemistry (protein folding); Medicine (microRNA).  

Now, back to New Englanders, some will be descendants of Thomas Gardner and Margaret Fryer. We ran into one this week. Josiah Willard Gibbs (Wikipedia; WikiTree). How did we get to him? In our technology studies, we are looking at the foundations of science. In that regard, thermodynamics is important. There are many other types of dynamics. Right now, we are considering those related to science and engineering but will broaden the scope as we go along. 

A well-known treatise on the subject was written by Max Planck (archive.org). Planck references several prior researchers, such as van der Waals. But, Gibbs is a frequent reference. On looking further, we found his association with James Clerk Maxwell (well-known contributor to mathemattican physics) and one of his detailed books on entropy that published his experimental work: On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances. We will use this work to leverage several discussions about knowledge and machine learning. 

So, Josiah will feature in future posts. He is a descendant of Thomas and Margaret via their son George. He is mentioned in later edition of Dr. Frank's book (1933: pg 63). 

Postnote: It is fortunate for us that we can use a Thomas descendant to scrutinize machine learning along several frameworks in our technology research. As such, this focus will cover both the U.S. and European contributions, indexed according to the times of the Nobel prizes with Planck's efforts as central to the discussion. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/21/2024

12/21/2024 --  Added Josiah to the "Descendants of George" list. 

Science of technology

TL;DR --  We will be more technical and explicit about such in 2025. Our slogan: Unsafe at any locale or use. What? Yes, AI. 

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Note: this is cursory and will be edited over the next few days.

As 2024 winds down, we are closing out some activity while preparing to continue our work in 2025 and beyond. We have several irons in the fire and stop to look at two in this post. 

• The 250th is closer but has been approaching with notable reflections for a while. Lexington/Concord will come into view in April of 2025. At some point, Bunker Hill will be the focus. We have been researching an area of Los Angeles, CA that was named Bunker Hill West. 
• Gibbs of New England was a serious thermodynamics researcher. He worked with Maxwell. Our emphasis, in part, is technology. So, let's look at science's role. 

.Gibbs and Maxwell  

Maxwell's 3D model (scuplted by hand) of Gibbs' thermodynamics equations in action. ... 

As many have said, AI is not safe. We can think back to the time of Nader and his look at the Corvair. That was a case of design trumping engineering. We have seen that over the decades of progress. The past two decades of computing (as driven by the west coast) can be seen in this light. 

Gibbs and Maxwell were way before computing came on the seen so their work is of interest to an approsch that looks at human abilities. This is to lay out some basis to establish a means of comparison. 

Oh yes, statistical mayhem? That is part of the problem. 

Also pedagogy will get a look or two. Education seems to forget that science is provisional. Gibbs is a perfect example as he laboriously wrote 600+ pages of calculations which were related to numeric review of ideas that were about measurable processes and results. As opposed to? Russell and Whitehead's long and drawn out look at logic which they stopped. 

Basically, if we looked at the guts ot AI, we would see millions and upon millions of lines of code. Perhaps, we ought to use billions (there isn't an exasy way to establish this - but, it will be important in the future with the obvious waste of the AI approach of untethered machine learning. 

Back to human learning which is culture. Look at the photo from a 1946 cover of a Fortune magazine issue: Maxwell and Gibbs.  

Remarks: Modified: 12/14/2024

12/14/2024 -- 

Nobel, Physics, 1901

TL;DR -- Let's spend some time using the Nobel prize to track the history of advances in science. After all, people do the science. And, some factors related to people come out of genealogical and historical (cultural) studies. 

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We have paid more attention to the Nobel prizes this year than ever before. This might become a habit since the 2024 prizes referenced, indirectly, the bugaboo of the modern world, AIn't. The Physics Prize was for machine learning; the Chemistry Prize was for protein modeling. In looking at the Nobel material, it seemed obvious that the material presented about the work of het honoree was remarkable. We can follow the prize over the year to obtain material for analysis.  

As an aside, we mentioned a Balch descendant who was a Peace Prize honoree: Emily Greene Balch. But, we need to get more particular. 

Looking at Physics, first, the inception of the prize was in 1901: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. Here is the link to the Award Ceremony Speech. There are many years to cover. 

With the 2024 Prizes for Physics and Chemistry dealing with computational approaches which is our technology interest, we have a natural categorical framework with which to start. We will not do a linear search but will follow some interesting parallels. For instance, the 1918 Prize for Physics went to Planck for his work in quantum mechanics. Who we have referenced him in several place. In 1922, Einstein got the award for his work with blackbody radiation in 1905. Einstein presented his relativity theory in the meantime; the committee felt that there was not enough proof for an award. We'll go more into that later. 

This thematic bit of research will cover a lot of ground. Well, with respect to machine learning, we are talking the sum total of knowledge that can be handled using computational means. 

Switching to the Chemistry Prize, we thought to look at how many awards dealt with the computational in Chemistry. We expect this in Physics. Wiley published an essay that lists prizes, both Physics and Chemistry, that will be of interest to us: The Nobel history of computational chemistry. A personal perspective. 

We looked an early Chemistry prize, 1910, which was for an 1893 thesis: Nobel Week. The theme was remarkable for several reasons, one of which is the history of science as it is unfolded through human effort.Johannes Diderik van der Waals (Wikipedia) showed that elements are molecularly the same as they go through phases. We will get more into that topic as we go along. 

A final note provides a summary by Gemini of Google via Chrome. After all, the Nobel committee opened this door; we ought (actually, must) to use it. 

Courtesy, Gemini of
Google via
Chrome

Remarks: Modified: 12/07/2024

12/07/2024 -- 

Deadly consequences

TL;DR -- Metaphor? That's about all that we can do more. How to change the situation? 

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We got used to the blue screen of death. It represented billions and billions of costs that were never recovered. And, that mode became the norm. Unfortunately. 

It's a new day. With AIn't and GenAI, we now have real death lurking (hence, the title). Oh? Is that right? You bet. We would not have to take you far to show you this and try to discuss with you how it came to be. 

Try? Yes, lots of information is cloaked. We can only surmise or try to reserve engineer which might actually be considered illegal in some situations. 

It's mess, folks. We at the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. say, wait. Stop (like William F. Buckley argued somewhat tongue in cheek). And consider. John knows how to do this. 

So, a metaphor. This photo represent, supposedly, some bit of American life. North Dakota. Here is the photo. As said, it was unknown in provenance but appeared on Meta/Facebook. 

GenAI depiction

This is John's response on LinkedIn which points to the FB post (which might disappear which is why we captured the image). Too, there is a comment taken from the FB post. 

There's work to be done. Let's use 2025 to get it started. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/14/2024

12/14/2024 -- We will be back to work, on a regular basis. 

Review, restart

TL;DR -- The past two years has seen some tremendous changes. Some of this was predicted. Much was not. So, 2025 will be a review year as we settle into the grove after fifteen years. 

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A recently read post provided an interchange with ChatGPT in early February of 2023. The realization of OpenAI's release was late, as that event was in November of 2022. 

Now, one month later, there was a post about recent findings of documents that gave more information about the early years. There were several posts, such as this one: Square One? Well, in our view, this is not the case; rather, there is more research to be done: Current status. 

Also, we started an OpEd category with which to mark post since 2010 that dealt with events which turned out to have less strong support than thought. So, this all has to be ironed out. 

This year, 2024, has been heavy into research but along several lines which has kept us busy. But, TGS, Inc. will have priority in the future since it will provide the framework for handling discussions about technology and the science behind such. 

See the Nobel posts, for an example. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/14/2024

12/14/2024 -- We will be back to work, on a regular basis.