[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

    So, in Britain a few years ago there was a radio show where someone chooses the three music discs that they would take with them to play if they became stranded on a desert island, that was called "Desert Island Discs".

     Let's do a science version of that.   Moreover, why doesn't the TNS radio show do a version of this? 

     Due to some problem, civilisation is leaving earth and will try to colonise some other planet and start a new world.   You can take the material that describes three theories in science.   Which three theories would you choose to take?


    Thinking time allowed:   I don't mind but 5 minutes is adequate, it's fun not something that is happening.   Yes, you will be critically judged based on your answers but it's better than doing some personality quiz.   I may give out the prestigious award of a "thankyou" mark for the first few answers and possibly the more prestigious award of a "best answer".   Then again, I may not but instead just thoroughly deride the response you make.   Life must have some risk.

Best Wishes.   

[paul cotter]

(1) Thermodynamics, (2) optics and (3) electrical theory. More advanced theories such as relativity and quantum would not be of great use initially but would become important at a later stage when the basics have been taken care of.

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

Optics seems an unsual choice.
   Overall, it all seems like something I would have expected you to choose and say.
You seem to be choosing on the basis of what will be useful to do practical stuff on the short term.   Your personality profile is that of an engineer based on this task.
   

More advanced theories.... when the basics have been taken care of.

    You're biased toward the view that science will emerge from the need to solve practical problems.

Best Wishes.

[paul cotter]

That's what I came up with after a couple of minutes thought, as prescribed. A longer perusal of your question might have yielded a different answer. After such a move the basics for survival take precedence and advanced science will have to wait.

[alancalverd]

Desert Island Discs is still running on Radio 4. The limit is 8 discs (now tracks), one book, and one luxury.

Presumably we are leaving on a rocket, so I'd take Newtonian mechanics, the atomic theory of chemistry, and probably the Krebs cycle if I'm not allowed the whole biochemistry library. Then my descendants would understand how we got here, and religion (the reason why we left Earth) might not take root.

DID participants are asked to name the one track they would save above all else. Gerry Mulligan's "Golden Notebooks"

encompasses the apex of civilisation in four minutes and should set the tone for humanity's next gig.

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

    So far, I'd say @alancalverd is more likely to get the best answer award and 2 people is about half of the entire forum.

Why is the later reply better?   
1.    Some thought has been put into how your choices may shape the new society.
2.    Some consideration of non-physical sciences like Biology has been made even though the original question used the therm "theory" and nearly everything with that name belongs to the physical sciences.

Counter-arguments:
1.     People are getting more insight into how to respond with each previous reply.
2.     I'm not sure I can endorse a statement that opposes all religions.   Moreover, isn't it likely that a society left in that position starts its own religious beliefs anyway?   Aren't you leaving science at risk of becoming a religion?

.... and probably the Krebs cycle if I'm not allowed the whole biochemistry library. Then my descendants would understand how we got here...

    They are likely to believe  "this is how it was"  rather than "this is some attempt at explaining things and most certainly not exempt from future examination and adjustment".

What might be left to do for anyone wanting that coveted "best answer" award?
     It's up to you to come up with ideas.   Here's a couple of things you could try but I'm sure you can find something else.

1.  You might try writing something with a bit of comedy, however I won't too favourably on anything that's just comedy.
2.   You might go strongly in an unusual direction and be able to argue for it.   For example, perhaps we would better off not taking ANY of the old science theories forward into the new world.

Best Wishes.

[Petrochemicals]

something with a bit of comedy

Chemistry, Biology and Physics.

It must be useful there and then, nuclear physics just isn't going to be worthwhile. Depending on the constraints, material properties, material extraction and material production. If that's one as Materials Science then medicine and agriculture. Depends really whether you take this science as common knowledge.

[alancalverd]

Religion is all about selling undisprovable hypotheses in order to control people's actions. Science is all about offering disprovable hypotheses to help people make their own decisions. You want to export civilisation, not parasitism, conflict and oppression.

Dawkins pointed out that the one thing all religions have in common is that they tell you to despise all the others. Science, on the other hand, is about being sceptical of your own hypotheses. As Eddington said, the student of physics must become accustomed to having his common sense violated five times before breakfast, and certainly the practice of engineering, where we extend the boundaries of achievement by taking a lot of science for granted, frequently gives us pause to wonder whether our axioms were valid outside the old boundary - and there's a difference between "back to the lab" and a fatwah against the infidel.   

So

They are likely to believe

is a dire warning about exactly the sort of people we don't want to export. I always tell students that I will not teach them what to think, but how to think, including how to think about how they think and what they think they know! The stuff in the book, even Kaye & Laby  or Landolt-Bornstein, is only our best guess to date at the numbers and how things work, and if your experiment shows otherwise, everyone else may indeed be wrong. You won't find many priests selling that line.

[alancalverd]

You're biased toward the view that science will emerge from the need to solve practical problems.

It's a reasonable extrapolation from "thermodynamics owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to thermodynamics", "necessity is the mother of invention", etcetera.

I was struck by the story of the American captain who, lost in fog somewhere outside the Bristol Channel, managed to get one sun sight and calculated his position from first principles, thus establishing an entirely new chapter in coastal navigation and avoiding an expensive shipwreck. I only wish I could remember the technique, or his name!   

Probably the only counterexample was the laser, which was derided for at least 20 years as a solution looking for a problem.

[paul cotter]

Hi ES, a couple of points. I think you meant "non physics" science rather than "non physical" science. As regards religion it is inevitable that new religions would arise if the existing ones failed to transport to the new location. Man has always sought complete answers to various physical and metaphysical problems and science cannot answer all these and most likely never will.

[alancalverd]

The notions that (a) metaphysics means anything and (b) there are complete answers to it, have no foundation in fact.

They are the basis of the most immoral form of advertising, and serve only to excuse bad behavior. 

If humans really need this garbage, it would do the universe a great disservice to export humans, and the project should be abandoned.

[paul cotter]

Questions such as (1) why are we here, (2) why is there good and evil, (3) what is the nature of human consciousness, (4) why does the universe exist, and many others may not trouble a logical being like your good self but a lot of humans seek answers to these questions and science cannot provide the answers. Like it or not these questions have been asked for millennia and will continue to be asked in the future. PS: I missed part of your reply- I am not suggesting that there are complete answers to various questions but that man, by nature, seeks complete answers.

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

Religion is all about selling undisprovable hypotheses in order to control people's actions.

   No, that just sounds like human selfishness, corruption and some desire for power by a few people who have come to be in charge of the religion or else in charge of something else and just citing religion as supporting them.    Religion is about not wanting to be alone, left feeling pointless, worried about not existing any longer, seeking the answers to fundamental questions  etc. etc.   Things that you aren't going to make disappear just by not bringing any religion to the new world.
   c.f.   @paul cotter  's reply.
- - - - - - - - - -

I think you meant "non physics" science rather than "non physical" science.

    Physical sciences involve studying the inanimate stuff while Biological science is the study of the animate (living) stuff.   There's definitions on the web and it's reasonable to split science into these two broad categories.   I think I can say non-physical sciences and just hope people understood I meant Biological sciences rather than the study of nonsense with no physical basis.

- - - - - - - - -

It must be useful there and then

    Thanks for your time and response.   It's good and perfectly understandable.   It does have some comedy but is otherwise similar to the response first given by @paul cotter so probably won't get the best answer award.....  Which really doesn't matter anyway and would not change your life.

Best Wishes.

[alancalverd]

Religion is about not wanting to be alone, left feeling pointless, worried about not existing any longer, seeking the answers to fundamental questions  etc. etc.

AFAIK no other species suffers from any of these, though many prefer the company of their fellows for protection and efficient hunting. In my experience they are not innate concerns but have to be taught by the people who will profit from the fear they inculcate.

The question "why does the universe exist" is absurd. "Why" implies an ulterior purpose and therefore some entity outside of the system being studied, that will benefit from that system. But by definition the system being studied is "everything" so there cannot be an external entity and the question is meaningless. "How does the universe work" is an entirely legitimate question, to which the answer appears to be physics, chemistry, and nothing more. 

Turning good and evil into nouns is one of the despicable tricks of religion.  Rational man holds his fellow man entirely responsible for his actions, to which we apply good and evil as adjectives. Perverts and criminals claim in their defence that they are subject to forces beyond their control, hence the nouns.

The nature of human consciousness is another meaningless phrase. Nobody seems to agree on a definition of consciousness, and certainly not one that is uniquely human. 

Religion provides an excuse to treat other humans worse than animals - witness any public debate on birth control, abortion, assisted suicide, or the rights of women. It is the antithesis of civilisation.

[paul cotter]

Science can answer the "hows", most of the time, but man has sought answers to the "whys" as long as he has inhabited this planet and it is this searching nature of man that has spawned the various religions. I fully get that you consider these questions as absurd but many, many people past , present and future have sought these answers.

[alancalverd]

I have never asked "why" for the very reason I pointed out above - the question is meaningless.

Religious professionals do not "seek" an answer but make a living by selling a defective one that they have invented.

I understand that, as a consequence of deep religious thought and study,  the perverts in charge of Afghanistan have today announced further restrictions on the education of women.  The penalties for unbelief remain as savage as you could wish for. Do we really want to export this filth to another planet?

[paul cotter]

Alan, you have not asked that question and I fully accept your answer in that regard. Others do ask such questions and whether you approve or not it will continue. I am not arguing against your position regarding organised religion but just stating the simple fact that these unanswerable questions have been posed for as long as we have historical records and most likely for much longer. I cannot envisage a future where these questions will not arise.

[alancalverd]

So in order not to export the worst of human behaviors, we must either find some means of preventing people from asking meaningless questions, which would be difficult to do, or agree that pretending that such questions are important, or inventing unprovable answers to them, would be a criminal offence.  I'm very much in favor of the latter approach as we already have workable precedents in the Sale of Goods Acts, Insolvent Trading, Impersonation, and suchlike consumer protections: broadly, it is an offence to advertise or solicit if you do not have the intention or capability of delivering goods or services.

Beware of calling such questions "unanswerable". That raises them from the level of contemptible and dangerous absurdity to a spurious importance such as "what is 0/0?"

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

....we must either find some means of preventing people from asking meaningless questions, ...

    You can't and probably shouldn't even try to censor peoples thoughts or prevent them from asking questions.   However, that's some issue you could read about in a Dystopian novel or else move to a country that doesn't allow such novels if you want to experience something similiar to it in practice.

   None-the-less, thank you for your time and responses, @alancalverd .   Your views are valid and .... left uncensored.

   I've re-read one of your earlier replies and decided that including the atomic theory of chemistry may be some attempt to help a new society get past some of the bigger problems that were faced by science.   For example, perhaps someone would feel that the most important theories to take are the ones that seemed to have been the biggest hurdles for our society and has the greatest risk of de-railing or slowing the development of science if we didn't have it.   With your example, that might be allowing a society to by-pass alchemy and get straight to something resembling modern chemistry.

Best Wishes.

[paul cotter]

Most of the "whys" are unanswerable but you cannot stop the questioning nature of man short of universal lobotomy. These questions will always arise and since there are no valid answers, this is how religions arise. Man, by nature, is prone to asking philosophical questions- any study of anthropology will affirm this. Alancalverd's thought police to the rescue!!