Gardner's Beacon, Vol XIV, No 1

This issue of Gardner's Beacon continues our interest in regular presentation of ongoing work as well as reviews of common interests. ...

Topics:

Activity, 2024

LSU, College of Science

Technology

Following the Nobel Prizes 

...

GB XIV, 1 (PDF w/links)

New: Mobile-friendly issue of

GB XIV, 1  

See Vol. XIV, No. 1 of Gardner's Beacon for links to Sources.

Remarks: Modified: 12/29/2024

12/28/2024 --  1st release. 

12/29/2024 -- General release. 

250th and more

TL;DR -- 250th and 400th will resonate through the coming decades as we learn more about then and what might have been missed in the history taught as a general principle. 

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Let's start by pointing to two private groups on Facebook. These two links are to public information about the groups. After this introduction, we can discuss the two anniversaries that are the focus of the groups and which have current attention. 

The focus of the first group deals with the start of the U.S. 

• 250Years America's Founding (link) -- We have mentioned the 250th for some time. Organizations, such as D.A.R. have had this as a focus for over a decade. But, the time is coming up fast: Battles of Lexington/Concord. This part of the turmoil began on April 19, 1775. This group has been presenting information about the times before the turmoil. An example is that the Boston Tea Party was about a year before. After Lexington/Concord, the focus shifted to Boston where the British troops had settled surrounded by the patriots. And, a date that is honored every year is the July 4th signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

In a post this summer, the site offered the report, of General Gage who lead the British troops, about the battle of Bunker Hill. Prior to the opening of those hostilities, the General offered everyone a pardon except for two individuals, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. One we remember via beer. The other had the elaborate signature. 

 The second group goes back further to the first arrival on these shores of people attempting to start a new life. One might say that this is in regard to New England north however it covers most of the colonial activity along the east coast. 

• New England Family Genealogy and History (link) -- This group has been around for nine years and helps with research in the New England of the northern colonial states. The group's purpose: Sharing Research, Stories, Photos & Family Data about New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut). As such, it covers families from colonial times to the present. Here is an example recent post: Nutfield Genealogy. 

For both of these groups, the initial effort was before the anniversary to celebrate; work carried (or will carry) on after the anniversary. There is no end to this type of focus which will allow us to bring to bear the facilities of modern technology to fill in where history, as an industry, fails to take note. 

Remarks: Modified: 01/13/2025

01/13/2025 -- President Carter and Rosalyn both descend from New England (south). We look at a few of The First Lady's patriots. 

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: 12/30/2024

12/30/2024 -- See post (Nobel, Medicine, 2024) for link to those for Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine.  

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: 12/28/2024

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

12/18/2024 -- Gibbs is on this graphic from the Geometric Science of Information site. 

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 --