Letters : Millennium myth
Harlow, Essex
David Atkinson’s dire warning about “most” computers in the world failing
after 1999 (Feedback, 13 January) prompted me to do some research on the
subject. As far as the computers themselves are concerned, this myth is
completely bogus. No computer that is currently used in any quantity will
crash.
Some may fail to distinguish between 1.1.1900 and 1.1.2000鈥攖hese hold the
“system date” as yymmdd鈥攂ut the worst that can happen is that time stamps on
files will be wrong and that this may confuse a few programs. IBM mainframes,
PCs and most other systems that hold the system date as the number of days since
a reference, which together make up over 90 per cent of all computers, will be
completely unaffected.
The only common modern computers I have found that will be affected run Micro
ware’s Os-9 real-time operating system. PCs will handle dates between 1980 and
2099, so they have a little time in hand before a problem appears.
Again, no harm is done unless the application calculates differences between
dates鈥攕omething many financial systems do when ageing unpaid invoices,
calculating interest, and so on. I imagine that any users of applications using
forward dates (those dealing with mortgages, long loans, life insurance and the
like) have already run into this problem and rectified it.
The ability to set the system date past 31.12.1999 doesn’t show whether your
all-important applications can handle such a date. A better test is to attempt
to enter such a date into applications concerned.
Letters : Nothing more
Ilminster, Somerset.
I don’t think there can be any argument with Paul Davies’s claim that if
all of existence began with the big bang, then time must have begun with it too
(Letters, 17 February, p 49). This would not be “counterintuitive” but an
inescapable truism. The “negative emotion” arises not from the thoroughly
intuitive contention that, in this case, time (along with space, matter and
energy) had its origins in the big bang but from self-contradictory statements
about the nature of the (supposedly) absolute nothingness from which the big
bang emerged (Letters, 28 October 1995, p 57, and 6 January, p
43).
Some of the confusion that Davies refers to in responding to John Enderby and
E. Paull is linguistic. Davies uses “prior” in its explanatory sense (B explains
A although A came first); Enderby takes Davies’s statement about the laws of
gravity being symmetric in time to mean that Davies believes they had to exist
before the big bang as well as after it. This is not Davies’s meaning but the
fault is not entirely with Paull and Enderby. Davies writes carelessly, so that
we are compelled to gather what he meant to say, in spite of what he actually
said. I can’t help thinking it is unfair to expect such feats of semantic
gymnastics from us poor laymen.
I have one more bone to pick with Davies. He mentions the need for scientific
claims to be disproved on scientific grounds. There is no such need. The only
need that exists (for scientific claims or for any other claims) is that they be
proven by their proposers and the more general requirement that they are
falsifiable. Actual disproof of a claim, while certainly useful, is not a
requirement. The onus of proof always rests with the hypothesiser, not with his
opponent.
Letters : …
Amsterdam
Davies argues that the laws of physics are more fundamental than the
complicated Universe they describe.
He might very well think that; I could not possibly comment.
However, Davies misconstrues the concept of logical priority. The claim that
the laws of physics are logically prior to the structure of the Universe is
utterly vacuous (not wrong, just meaningless).
The point is that logical priority has no metaphysical significance
whatsoever. Logical priority is merely and only a matter of convenience and
choice. In any system S of mutually consistent statements, any subset A of
statements taken from S can be regarded as a set of axioms, provided that (i)
the statements in A logically generate the statements in S outside of A; (ii) no
statement in A is logically generated by any group of the other statements in
A.
To take the example posed by Davies, Pythagoras’s theorem is usually regarded
as a theorem, not an axiom, of geometry. In this (and only this) sense the
canonical axioms are logically prior to Pythagoras’s theorem. But there is at
least one axiom which can be dropped in favour of this theorem; the result would
be an equivalent geometry which sports “Pythagoras’s axiom”.
Davies confuses the logical axiom/theorem distinction, which is a mere
technicality, with some sort of law/consequence distinction in physics. Perhaps
one can sensibly hold that some statements in physics are “more fundamental”
than others, but one cannot do so by appealing to logic.
Letters : …
Fairford, Gloucestershire
In his defence of science, Paul Davies asks “Why should the deep
processes of the Universe obligingly conform to human common sense?” He uses the
example of the Sun going round the Earth to illustrate how wrong common sense
can be. I should like to reply with a conversation Ludwig Wittgenstein had with
his translator G. E. M. Anscombe. As Anscombe relates:
“He [Wittgenstein] once greeted me with the question: ‘Why do people say that
it was natural to think that the Sun went round the Earth rather than that the
Earth turned on its axis?’ I replied : ‘I suppose, because it looked as if the
Sun went round the Earth.’ ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what would it have looked like if
it had looked as if the Earth turned on its axis?’ This question brought it out
that I had hitherto given no relevant meaning to ‘it looks as if’ in ‘it looks
as if the Sun goes round the Earth’. My reply was to hold out my hands with the
palms upward, and raise them from my knees in a circular sweep, at the same time
leaning backwards and assuming a dizzy expression. ‘Exactly!’ he
said.”
Perhaps Davies might pause to think about that.
This correspondence is now closed, but look out for a feature on this
topic in April鈥擡d.
Letters : Flawed greatness
While I accept the accuracy of most of Adriaan Kortlandt’s points in his
comments on my review of Konrad Lorenz’s early work, I defend myself because my
aims were not to write a history of ideas, but to reflect upon the flavour of
British ethology in the 1950s and 1960s (Review, 10 February, p 40, and Letters,
9 March, p 52).
I acknowledge that Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen had their antecedents. Lorenz
frequently spoke and wrote about the Heinroths and also about Fabre, Whitman and
Craig. However, it remains the case that there are, in most fields, people who
become catalysts, as it were, and who come to the fore in this role as much or
more than for their other contributions.
Lorenz’s 1950 paper in the Symposium of the Society for Experimental
Biology for that year had an enormous influence in the monoglot
English-speaking world. It was the right stuff at the right time for the British
and Americans; Lorenz’s formidable powers as a communicator did the rest.
I must defer to a Dutch person’s knowledge of Lorenz’s social and political
views and I was saddened by what I learnt. I did not mean to gloss over his
faults, but they were those of a young man. He went on to greater things, he did
open our eyes and I agree with Kortlandt: he became a great man.
Letters : Fascists on the Net
No address supplied
Re Netropolitan’s views on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s call for fascist
groups to be banned from the Internet (Technology, 27 January, p 23), your
opinion that “such ideas can only be countered by argument, and not by
repression” is false.
You are obviously not experienced in combating fascists and Nazis. This is
not an argument about philosophy: it is a factual argument about how to solve a
global problem. If I were an expert on global warming, you would believe my
prescriptions for how to solve the problem. I know much more than you seem to
about fascism, and I can tell you that your liberal opinion, though motivated by
laudable sentiments, is very, very unhelpful.
Fascism is worthy of extremely determined opposition, because once it gets
established, it does appalling damage. It is not really a political philosophy;
it has no place at all in the democratic process. It must be stamped out. If you
don’t believe me, read Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan
Bullock.
Letters : Oil from coal
Cheltenham
Andy McQueen (Letters, 3 February, p 56) questions and Harry Harrison
(Letters, 2 March, p 50) discusses the possibility of coal-fired aircraft. But
aircraft have been powered by coal for decades. The bombers which destroyed my
parents’ home in the Second World War were powered by coal that had been
converted into aviation spirit.
Almost all the petrol and oil which powered the German war machine was made
from coal. Germany could not obtain crude oil from the US and the Middle East,
which were in the control of the Allies. This is why the RAF was bombing the
Ruhr valley by night and the US Air Force was bombing it by day. The Ruhr valley
contained the coal conversion plants and the coal mines which supported
them.
These facts changed the course of history. Adolf Hitler was so desperate to
get oil for his armed forces that he diverted his eastern attack to capture the
Caucasian oil fields. The winter then set in before he reached Leningrad, giving
the Russians time to assemble tanks and deliver them to the battle front. The
Russians then won the battle of Kursk鈥攖he largest tank battle in history鈥攁nd
Hitler lost the war.
After the Second World War the South Africans adopted the German method for
making oil from coal. They developed it into the SASOL process. Over the decades
that South Africa was subjected to sanctions, the SASOL process was used to
provide most of South Africa’s oil.
The synthesis of oil from coal has a very long history. Marcellin Berthelot
first did it using a reduction process in 1896. But until recently, drilling oil
out of the ground was much cheaper than mining coal and converting it into oil.
It seemed this would always be so, but the recent development of the liquid
solvent extraction (LSE) process allows oil products to be made as cheaply from
coal as from crude oil. Use of the LSE process would reduce emissions of
polluting sulphur. Anyone who wants to know more about it can find the facts in
my 1995 paper “Cheap, clean European transport fuels” in the International
Journal of Energy Issues, (vol 8, p 74).
Letters : Free the forests
The call for a coherent forestry strategy by Oliver Tickell (Forum, 24
February, p 47) can be put another way. Forests are important in Britain for
many reasons, including wood products, conservation, recreation and watershed
protection. Loss of forests occurs when the value of using land for forestry is
less than the value of putting land to an alternative use, such as
agriculture.
One of the main problems in national planning strategies has been a failure
to recognise the full value of forests and use this as a basis for future
policy. For example, the rather small River Derwent, which rises on the North
York Moors, is used by Yorkshire Water as a major supply. This is because it is
relatively clean after running through a series of nature reserves such as Forge
Valley Woods, an ancient broad-leaved woodland. It is thus cheaper to use River
Derwent water rather than to spend money decontaminating a polluted
source.
Investment in paper recycling actually diminishes the value of forests and so
encourages their replacement by other land uses.
The importance of maintaining the economic value of a land use which also has
a high value for biodiversity conservation can be illustrated by the loss of
hedgerows from the countryside. Hedgerows were once an important part of a
farm’s economy. They acted as fencing and supplied a range of wood products.
Once wood was no longer needed for wagons, yokes or wattle, fences were made of
wire. Hedgerows could be grubbed up without disadvantage to the farmer, but with
a consequent loss of habitat and biological diversity.
Plantations do not need to be ugly. Forest Enterprise, the management wing of
the Forestry Commission, is moving towards multipurpose forestry in which timber
production is just one of a number of goals. For example, increasing spacing
between plantation trees and extending rotation time results in a loss of about
15 per cent with respect to timber production, but the plantations have a wider
range of biodiversity and an increased amenity value.
If we want more forests, then they have to pay their way on a small
overcrowded island.
Letters : …
Cardiff
I was amused to read Harrison’s disclosure that John Campbell did not
believe that a coal-fired flying ship would work, because he was a “a physicist
as well as an editor”. This, of course, was the Campbell who thought that the
Dean antigravity drive (a ludicrous arrangement of eccentric weights and
solenoids) would work. It can also be argued that he helped to make “radionics”
and “scientology” what they are today. Some physicist.