Talk:Exponential growth

It looks like SARS didn't exactly grow exponentially as expected. Maybe a different example would be better? ;) Revolver

The nuclear reactor example doesn't really work. The damping of the control rods (hopefully!) prevents exponential growth in decay rate. Needs work.--Rwinkel 15:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 What about a graph 2 increasing rate 3 Does science grow exponentially? 4 human population

What about a graph

I think we could use a graphic as an example for this article. There might be a good exponential one already on Wikipedia, so if anyone has the time to check out... — Kieff | Talk 09:11, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

increasing rate

The opening paragraph still needs work. I seem to keep missing Michael Hardy's points, so maybe I'm not the best person to write it. My understanding is that the usual case for an exponentially growing (as opposed to decaying) function is that it grows faster the larger it gets. Of course, other functions can also do this, but exponentially growing ones always will. Can someone supply a counterexample if that's not the case? Lunkwill 22:17, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll return to this soon and do some work that's not as hasty as the terse edits I've done lately. Michael Hardy 02:22, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Does science grow exponentially?

I removed "science" from the list of things which grow exponentially, and another user wanted to know my reasoning behind it, so here it is:

Saying "science grows exponentially" has little meaning to begin with. Do you mean scientific knowledge? Scientific practice? Scientific ambitions? Scientific institutions? Scientific practitioners? Scientific method? Are you referring to all branches of science, or is it a statement based on idealized versions of physics or biology? (Does immunology grow exponentially? How about botany?) So first you'd have to be more specific about your metric before claiming anything about it, there is no monolithic science when you get down to it, the term refers to a bundle of things, many of which are historically contingent (i.e. the role and demographic of scientific practitioners changes radically between 1880 and 1930).

Second, you'd have to have the data to measure it. Can we measure "scientific knowledge"? How would we do so? Is science about quantity or quality? Would a thousand papers about phologiston theory count as scientific growth? Even something as mundane as a list of the number of scientists in the world at any given time -- when do you start the list? Do we stretch science all the way back to the Greeks? The Middle Ages? Or are we talking about science as an independent profession, one which doesn't really get under way until the late 18th century?

Lastly, are we assuming this is some inherent property of science itself? Because science does not compel itself to grow (or even work) -- it requires a number of outside variables. Scientific funding seems to be the most important one (no money, no science), and there's no reason at all to expect that to be exponential. In the 20th century, scientific funding (both in amount and its sources) hugs very closely to political and economic trends of the times (i.e. science in Russia grew tremendously between the 19th century and the 1980s, and then it collapsed almost completely after the collapse of its funding source, the USSR).

So anyway, I don't think it is a very meaningful statement. I modified it a bit on the history of science page to be descriptive rather than prescriptive ("science has grown" vs. "science grows"), and changed it to something more specific ("scientific practice" vs. "science"), but even then it ought to be questioned whether it is anything more than hyperbole. And if it is in doubt whether it is hyperbole, then it should only be hyperbole on a relevant page: we don't need hyperbole about science on a page about exponential growth, but could tolerate it on a page about the history of science.

Do I make sense? That's why I think it is a meaningless statement, and likely incorrect at best. I also don't know why scientific growth would be exponential and not, say, linear. Does each scientific discovery produce two or three more? I don't see any general rule to it which would make me think it could be reduced to mathematics. I'm just not sure it makes sense. --Fastfission 14:04, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your explanation is very interesting to me, as it reminds me how oversimplistic and flawed are such vague statements. It also offers me many new insights. If you agree, I will include the information given in your post, especially from the section about outside variables, in the article "history of science". What was that about growth of science in Russia?! ;)

One more question and sorry for bothering you - What could be said about the growth of different aspects of science in time (scientific knowledge, number of scientists...)? Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me and other Wikipedians. Happy wiki-ing! --Eleassar777 14:53, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Loren Graham has a book (What have we learned about science and technology from the Russian experience?) which poses a number of fun questions about science using Russia as an example; the best one (and most relevant to this discussion) is "What is more important to science, money or freedom?" where he basically concludes that while freedom might be nice in an idealistic sense, without money, science grinds to a halt, while without freedom, science finds ways around the difficulties (it works with the system). Very enjoyable.

On the number of scientists, a lot of that depends on what one defines as a "scientist." One metric often used is number of PhDs granted in a given field. In physics, for example, from 1900-1940 there is a fairly linear growth; after WWII the US government encouraged more physicist and it jumped up to a huge amount during the Korean war and after Sputnik. But the market started to slow up and by 1970 the number had peaked and dropped. See figure 1 and 2 in: David Kaiser, "Scientific Manpower, Cold War Requisitions, and the Production of American Physicists after World War II," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (Fall 2002): 131-159 (available online here (http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/ColdWarReq.pdf)).

A great book which tries to spend a lot of time picking out many different questions about what we mean by "science" and "scientific practice" is Bruno Latour's Laboratory Life -- very recommended if you are interested in thinking about this sort of thing. --Fastfission 17:25, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

human population

"Human population, if it is not hindered by predation or environmental problems" Wrong, unless refraining from procreating (voluntarily or by government decree) is considered an environmental problem.

Yeah, I don't know about this. It seems to be directly linked also to the number of children in a family, which seems linked to all sorts of circumstances. In the end, I feel like saying, "Human population when the number of children born is at least X per family," which basically is, "Human population, when the population increases at an exponential rate" which is somewhat circular! --Fastfission 17:30, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Several weeks ago I responded to the objection above by editing the article so that it says the following:

Human population, if the number of births and deaths per person per year remains constant.

Michael Hardy 02:22, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

But is that true? I mean, if the number of deaths per year is more than the number of births, even if they remain constant it won't be exponential growth, will it? Again, doesn't this just mean, "if the number of births and deaths per year is a function of exponential growth, and they remain constant, then human birth rate is exponential growth"? --Fastfission 17:31, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)