For those who don't speak Latin, the phrase means "God in the machine." The phrase has its origins in the distant past, and was basically the "default" explanation of people for any complicated "machine" that they could not understand. The more commonly used term today (at least by those in the field of physics) is "black box."
The concept is often encountered in such things as electronics, in which a single component (such as an op-amp) is composed of several smaller components (such as transistors, resistros, etc.). In such cases as a black box is encountered, we as scientists will search for a scientific explanation of the object. Certainly, tests can be run to analyze how the object behaves and thus to deduce its internal workings. But an important question arises: can every unknown object or system be reduced to a simple black box, or is there still some since of the Deus ex Machina? In other words, is there a scientific explanation for everything, or are there some phenomena that will never be able to be explained by science? More importantly, are there philosophical explanations that can go along with the scientific ones?
Consider, for example, quantum physics ("QP"). One important aspect of QP is the uncertainty principle. This principle states that the precision of the product of the position and momentum dxdp, or alternatively the energy and timespan dEdt, of an object has an ultimate limit that can't be exceeded. In other words, if the exact position of a particle is known, then its momentum cannot be known at all, and if the exact energy of a particle is known, then its liftime cannot. Scientifically, this is derived from the Fourier Transform of the wavefunctions of a given particle.
However, philosophically, there is no good explanation. The theory is mathemaically proven, has been observed (for example, it is how the nucleus of a particle is able to exert the strong nuclear forces that bind the positively charged particled together). But what causes this theory? Why should particles follow our mathematical formulae?
These are questions to which no scientific answer will likely ever be found. Rather, they are the realm of philosophy. The God in the Machine can be explained away scientifically, but only to the extent of reducing the machine's function to mathematical formulas. Why these formulas work, why reality appears to be a slave to them, these are not scientific questions. Science tells us that nulcei are coherrent because short-lived particles appear inside of them, but it can't ultimately answer the how. Where do these come from? God may be removed from the machine, but the machine is not necessarily removed from God.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Monday, October 17, 2005
A Shout from Hell
...Or something like that. Any one who's checked in on this site recently will have noticed that I haven't posted anything for a while. Well, there's an explanation for that. Or maybe several explanations. First and foremost, we still haven't set up the internet at my place. I actually don't mind that too much, since we didn't have it last year at all. It just means that I won't be doing anything online from home anytime soon.
This isn't really what's stopping me from posting. My schedule is (more-or-less). I happen to have something of a break right now, but these have been rather rare are are usually used for things like eating and sleeping, with a few exceptions made for going to Mass on Sundays. Oh, and going dancing, and a few other social activities (usually on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights, but only one of those in a given week); I have forced time to fit for that, otherwise I would go completely crazy.
This brings up the question as to why I have a crazy schedule. I narrowed it down to two things: being a physics TA, and taking the "Optical Electronics" course. The former is costing me four hours in the lab, plus one office hour, plus a one-hour training seminar, plus about an hour of lab-prep time each week, and then the time spent grading stuff. The latter of these things was about 8 hours during the first week and 2 during the second, the difference being that 1) I stopped writing prolific comments on everybody's papers when they did the problems wrong and 2) that for the second set I had a pre-made answer key with suggested scoring guide, as opposed to having to make my own keys and scoring guides. I also had more papers to grade for the first week. In theory, i should be spending about 2 hours/week grading after this, except during weeks after an exam (I expect to spend about 0 more hours grading during each of these). This peters out to 9 hours for an "easy" week and 17 for a harder week. Unfortunately, there are 3 "harder" weeks and 7 "easier" weeks (plus whatever my requirements for finals week will be). Thus, I will average about 11.5 hours per week doing this job.
The optics class requires slightly more time than this. For a single class worth what ought to be 1/4 of my workload, I'm spending about 5 hours/week on homework, and about 6-9 on the lab write-ups. I then have pre-labs, post-lab quizzes, a lab journal, and a small project. Plus, I have to go in outside of the scheduled lab time to actually do the lab experiments; this occurs on Thursday nights and takes between 2-6 hours of my life. The town I live in is more-or-less a party town that kicks off Thursdays because the business majors don't have class on Fridays. Total cost of class: about 18 hours/week (not counting time spent in class), plus the ability to go out Thursday nights.
On top of this physics class (which is worth 4 credits, I think, or maybe 3), I also have two more upper-division physics courses worth 3 credit hours apiece. They probably take about 4-6 hours per week total, if all I do is the homework (ie blowing off the readings). Thus, my net total time for classes (counting TAing) is about 35 hours/week outside of class, and another 20/week in class. After that, I just have my job and all of the clubs/organizations that I'm involved in, but these aren't quite so important to the point of this article (yes, a point will be made here, and it's not just about complaining of the workload).
Now that I've metnioned that there is a point to all of this, I guess I should state what it is. The main point is, not all majors are equal. The workload that I have is slightly more than the typical workload for an engineering or physics undergraduate on the 4-year plan (assuming that the said individual is here for 3 terms/year, all four years, ie no me-cop program, no study abroad, etc). However, the total workload for these majors is between 20-30 hours/week in homework. Compare that to most other majors, and the realistic total average over the term will be much less. Note that I'm not including assigned readings as a part of the homework load. Most other majors (namely, liberal arts, business) might possibly have a week or two during the term with this much actual homework; it is most certainly not an average workload. Also, the work assigned for technical fields tends to be harder work than that assigned for, say, excercise science (read: health) majors.
The result of this is that people are less inclined to become engineers or physicists. Thus, some other incentive must be given to convince people to enter these fields. That incentive takes the form of higher paychecks (usually). Hence, an electrical engineer will make more money at entry level than say, a former English major with an equivalent degree.
Oddly enough, when I look around myself in my physics classes, I see predominantly white males. Actually, white males are the only people in my "Math Methods" class; there is one (white) female in my "E.M." class (she's a physics minor), and there are two in my optics class (one is white, the other is Asian). Each of these classes has upwards of 20 people (the optics class probably has close to 40 and is composed of physics majors and electrical engineering majors). And for the most part, the engineering classes straight across the boards maintain this kind of ratio, at best 20:1 male:female, with almost all of those enrolled being white (the other significan group is Asians, either from India/Pakistan or Japan, China, Korea, etc.). There are very few women or "disadvantaged" minorities enrolled in either the physics or the engineering programs.
Yet, the university claims that something between 10-20% of the student population is minorites (and I'm fairly sure that Asians don't count in that statistic). I've certainly seen plenty of blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, etc. on campus, suggesting that these groups are well-represented. And certainly around 50% of the campus population is female (I believe that its 49-51 or else 51-49 male:female). This brings up the question, "What do all of these other people study?" Well, certainly some of them study in the other hard sciences (Chemistry, Biology, Bio-Chem/Bio-Phyics, Pre-MedVet/Pharm etc.); but most of these majors seem to still be predominatnly white and non-disadvantaged minorites, and they're certainly not comprised entirely of women. The simple fact is, many of the groups that are said to be disadvantaged are studying as liberal arts majors, exercise science majors, etc.
Thus, there should be no surprise at all when it is found by generic polls that men are making more than women. The simple truth is that we're taking jobs that have higher salaries, because we're entering those fields from the get-go. Ditto for whites vs. "favored" minorities.
This isn't really what's stopping me from posting. My schedule is (more-or-less). I happen to have something of a break right now, but these have been rather rare are are usually used for things like eating and sleeping, with a few exceptions made for going to Mass on Sundays. Oh, and going dancing, and a few other social activities (usually on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights, but only one of those in a given week); I have forced time to fit for that, otherwise I would go completely crazy.
This brings up the question as to why I have a crazy schedule. I narrowed it down to two things: being a physics TA, and taking the "Optical Electronics" course. The former is costing me four hours in the lab, plus one office hour, plus a one-hour training seminar, plus about an hour of lab-prep time each week, and then the time spent grading stuff. The latter of these things was about 8 hours during the first week and 2 during the second, the difference being that 1) I stopped writing prolific comments on everybody's papers when they did the problems wrong and 2) that for the second set I had a pre-made answer key with suggested scoring guide, as opposed to having to make my own keys and scoring guides. I also had more papers to grade for the first week. In theory, i should be spending about 2 hours/week grading after this, except during weeks after an exam (I expect to spend about 0 more hours grading during each of these). This peters out to 9 hours for an "easy" week and 17 for a harder week. Unfortunately, there are 3 "harder" weeks and 7 "easier" weeks (plus whatever my requirements for finals week will be). Thus, I will average about 11.5 hours per week doing this job.
The optics class requires slightly more time than this. For a single class worth what ought to be 1/4 of my workload, I'm spending about 5 hours/week on homework, and about 6-9 on the lab write-ups. I then have pre-labs, post-lab quizzes, a lab journal, and a small project. Plus, I have to go in outside of the scheduled lab time to actually do the lab experiments; this occurs on Thursday nights and takes between 2-6 hours of my life. The town I live in is more-or-less a party town that kicks off Thursdays because the business majors don't have class on Fridays. Total cost of class: about 18 hours/week (not counting time spent in class), plus the ability to go out Thursday nights.
On top of this physics class (which is worth 4 credits, I think, or maybe 3), I also have two more upper-division physics courses worth 3 credit hours apiece. They probably take about 4-6 hours per week total, if all I do is the homework (ie blowing off the readings). Thus, my net total time for classes (counting TAing) is about 35 hours/week outside of class, and another 20/week in class. After that, I just have my job and all of the clubs/organizations that I'm involved in, but these aren't quite so important to the point of this article (yes, a point will be made here, and it's not just about complaining of the workload).
Now that I've metnioned that there is a point to all of this, I guess I should state what it is. The main point is, not all majors are equal. The workload that I have is slightly more than the typical workload for an engineering or physics undergraduate on the 4-year plan (assuming that the said individual is here for 3 terms/year, all four years, ie no me-cop program, no study abroad, etc). However, the total workload for these majors is between 20-30 hours/week in homework. Compare that to most other majors, and the realistic total average over the term will be much less. Note that I'm not including assigned readings as a part of the homework load. Most other majors (namely, liberal arts, business) might possibly have a week or two during the term with this much actual homework; it is most certainly not an average workload. Also, the work assigned for technical fields tends to be harder work than that assigned for, say, excercise science (read: health) majors.
The result of this is that people are less inclined to become engineers or physicists. Thus, some other incentive must be given to convince people to enter these fields. That incentive takes the form of higher paychecks (usually). Hence, an electrical engineer will make more money at entry level than say, a former English major with an equivalent degree.
Oddly enough, when I look around myself in my physics classes, I see predominantly white males. Actually, white males are the only people in my "Math Methods" class; there is one (white) female in my "E.M." class (she's a physics minor), and there are two in my optics class (one is white, the other is Asian). Each of these classes has upwards of 20 people (the optics class probably has close to 40 and is composed of physics majors and electrical engineering majors). And for the most part, the engineering classes straight across the boards maintain this kind of ratio, at best 20:1 male:female, with almost all of those enrolled being white (the other significan group is Asians, either from India/Pakistan or Japan, China, Korea, etc.). There are very few women or "disadvantaged" minorities enrolled in either the physics or the engineering programs.
Yet, the university claims that something between 10-20% of the student population is minorites (and I'm fairly sure that Asians don't count in that statistic). I've certainly seen plenty of blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, etc. on campus, suggesting that these groups are well-represented. And certainly around 50% of the campus population is female (I believe that its 49-51 or else 51-49 male:female). This brings up the question, "What do all of these other people study?" Well, certainly some of them study in the other hard sciences (Chemistry, Biology, Bio-Chem/Bio-Phyics, Pre-MedVet/Pharm etc.); but most of these majors seem to still be predominatnly white and non-disadvantaged minorites, and they're certainly not comprised entirely of women. The simple fact is, many of the groups that are said to be disadvantaged are studying as liberal arts majors, exercise science majors, etc.
Thus, there should be no surprise at all when it is found by generic polls that men are making more than women. The simple truth is that we're taking jobs that have higher salaries, because we're entering those fields from the get-go. Ditto for whites vs. "favored" minorities.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
