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Newton and Li Shizhen.

one

1683, Harley, Hooke (the discoverer of Hooke's law) and Ryan (the astronomer) were having dinner in London, and suddenly the topic turned to celestial motion, and the topic of planetary motion trajectories was discussed. Harley is deeply fascinated by this problem.

1684, Harley went to Cambridge University to visit Isaac, a famous professor of mathematics. Newton. Harley asked, "If the gravity of the sun is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the planet and the sun, what will be the curve of planetary motion?" Newton answered without thinking, "Ellipse." Harley gaped and asked, "How do you know? Newton said, "calculated.

Harley offered to have a look at the calculation data. But Newton couldn't find it anyway. At Harley's urging, Newton promised to do it again. In the next two years, Newton stayed at home, thoughtful and vivid, and expanded his research on astrophysics.

1687, 44-year-old Newton published his masterpiece Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. He solved the laws of everything in the universe with several concise formulas, extended the methodology established by Euclid through logical reasoning to the field of natural science, and extended Ptolemy's description of celestial laws with mechanical motion models to the description of any laws in the world. This is the first complete scientific world view and scientific theoretical system that human beings have mastered.

1727, Newton died, then the English poet Alexander? Pubo wrote him a famous epitaph: "Nature and its laws are hidden in the vast darkness. God said: Let Newton be born! " So it's bright. "

Why is Newton so awesome? Before Newton, human beings lacked confidence in their understanding of nature, such as why apples landed and why the sun, moon and stars rose and fell, which were incomprehensible at that time. China people say that heaven and earth are ruthless and everything is a dog; Westerners say that God has an angry whip. Humans are full of fear and superstition about nature.

Newton's discovery brought unprecedented confidence to mankind. It turns out that we live in a precise system that can be calculated by mathematics, and everything has rules to follow. Newton was the first person to knock on the door of law. He showed later generations that the pursuit of law might help human beings control nature and make continuous progress.

Later generations summarized Newton's methodology as mechanical thinking, and its core ideas are: ① the law of world change is certain; ② Laws can not only be recognized, but also be clearly described by simple laws or language; ③ Laws should be universally applicable and can be applied to various unknown fields to guide practice.

The wider influence of mechanical thinking is the criterion to guide people's behavior, and its core idea can be summarized as causality and predictability. Every reason has its result. If the result is to be accepted by people, we must know the reason. Using this methodology, western society can be described as invincible, and many new inventions and creations have emerged.

two

109 Before the publication of Newton's Principles, there was a book in the East called "the greatest scientific achievement of the Ming Dynasty" by Joseph Needham, which was Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica. At this time, Li Shizhen was 6 1 year old, and he had been preparing for this moment for 27 years.

Li Shizhen was born in a medical family, and his grandfather and father were both doctors. 65,438+04-year-old scholar in the exam, 65,438+07-year-old, 20-year-old, 23-year-old, participated in the rural examination three times, but failed in the exam. From then on, he decided to give up his official career in the imperial examination and concentrate on studying medicine. While visiting famous teachers and learning from them, I practice medicine and accumulate experience.

1559, Li Shizhen was recommended to work in Tai Hospital, which gave him the opportunity to browse the medical books collected by the royal family, copy a large number of drug collections, pharmacopoeias and ancient prescriptions, study and identify medicinal materials all over the country, obtain a large number of folk herbal materials, and see a large number of medicinal specimens that are difficult to see at ordinary times, which greatly enriched his writing materials.

Compendium of Materia Medica is about1.9000 words, with a total of * * 52 volumes, divided into 16 parts and 60 categories, containing 1.892 drugs, 165 illustrations and 165 prescriptions.

After 1603, Compendium of Materia Medica was reprinted dozens of times in China, with more than 50 versions, and was translated into Latin, French, Japanese, German, English, Russian and Korean abroad. There are 1 1 reprints in Japan alone, and more than 40 rewritten textbooks and research books are all over the world.

Different from Newton's mechanical thinking, Li Shizhen wrote Compendium of Materia Medica, relying on a large number of predecessors' accumulation, historical experience and his own method summary, only what, no why; Only if we don't seek the relevance of the extraordinary solution, there is no causal relationship arising from it. It is known that drugs are effective, but what are the principles and laws behind them are not very clear and have not been thoroughly studied.

Without reliable causality as a support, some serious correlations can't stand the test and even look like jokes. Li Shizhen collected many strange folk remedies, for example, a woman's blood collapse, burning ashes with old sow dung, treating with wine and San Qian; People wet the bed, use it to heat a meal, pour it on the bed, mix it and eat it, and don't let the patient know. These seemingly inexplicable and ridiculous prescriptions entered a magnificent masterpiece at that time.

In fact, many of China's historical and technological achievements have been created in this way. China was brilliant in ancient science and technology, leading the world in almost all aspects such as astronomy, calendar and agriculture. We invented many technologies, but almost all of them were obtained by experience and accident. Many technologies are in the stage of scientific experiments and recording empirical phenomena, and have not formed a complete scientific theory and system.

three

In the Opium War, the methodology of the two civilizations met, and the first contest was in the military field. The Qing dynasty was on the verge of collapse and lost again. At that time, the gunpowder in Qing Dynasty and Britain was at the same stage of development, both were black, with pyrotechnics, and the main components were nitrate, sulfur and carbon. But in 1825, Chevalier put forward the best reaction equation of black powder: 2kNO3+3c+s = k2s+N2+3co2, and formed the best powder formula. According to this equation, Britain prepared propellant (75% nitrate, 10% sulfur, 15% carbon) and propellant (78% nitrate, 8% sulfur, 14% carbon). These two formulations are determined as standard propellant formulations, which are very powerful.

The development of gunpowder in Qing Dynasty mainly depends on the accumulation of experience. Few theoretical layers reveal that the gunpowder made by Qing army has the same formula for hundreds of years (80% nitrate, 10% sulfur, 10% carbon), and the nitrate content is too high, which is easy to absorb moisture, inconvenient to store, and the explosion effect is low, which is far from being able to compete with the British army. This is a typical technical comparison between China and the West.

The Opium War opened a century-long history of humiliation for the Chinese nation. The advanced military strength, science and technology, political system and ideas of the great powers are constantly scouring the ancient culture of China. We began to doubt, then reflected, shouted loudly, launched reforms, and strived for strength. You sing and I come on stage, the system reform is repeated and finally unified, and the ideological reform has not yet been completed.

Bai Yang's Ugly China People and Chu Yu's Criticism of China People's Thinking are both criticisms of our traditional thinking concept. The scientific thinking of bold hypothesis and careful verification, some evidence, some truth-seeking spirit of words, the wise are still shouting and people are still fighting for it. With the development of the times and the progress of technology, mechanical thinking based on causality has become the mainstream of society, which is a progress worth celebrating.

Using the method of correlation to study the problem, knowing what it is, but not knowing why, has already become the target of public criticism, and everyone cries out. Why there has always been a huge controversy in Chinese medicine is because the principles of Chinese medicine cannot be integrated into mechanical thinking and cannot be explained by causality. My favorite Luo Pang and Wan Weigang are both opposed to Chinese medicine because of this, and I feel that they are very sad about it. Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes the overall relevance and opposes treating headaches and feet. Mechanical thinking thinks so. Because of headache, you should treat your head; Because my foot hurts, I need treatment.

four

However, this world is not absolute, and there are exceptions to everything. In this world, there are also problems that the law of causality can't solve. In the information age, the limitations of mechanical thinking are becoming more and more obvious.

Simple systems and general problems are easy to find, and the methodology of mechanical thinking is also easy to use, which can be described clearly with simple laws and languages. However, when it comes to the human body system, social system and microscopic particle field, which are more complicated than the cosmic system, we will find that the world is inherently uncertain and unknowable, and there are things that cannot be explained by the law of cause and effect, and God is also secretly rolling dice.

The real world is an interrelated and interactive network. Many factors are mutually causal, many reasons * * * work together to form a result, and one reason forms a bifurcation to produce multiple results. You affect me, I also affect you, affect the whole body. In the social field and ecosystem, it is almost impossible for us to find a simple law like in the fields of mathematics and physics, and we can deduce a conclusion from one reason.

Some causes and effects are known, but there are too many variables in the middle, and our human computing ability can't reach, such as calculating face when the dice fall to the ground; Some problems are unknown to us humans, such as observing the speed and position of electrons. In short, there are many things in the world that are difficult to express with clear formulas or rules.

five

In recent years, artificial intelligence has developed rapidly and the construction of big data is in full swing. People suddenly found that even if they don't know the reason, they can find the answer directly from a large number of data. For example, the statistical results of big data show that advertising credit cards and mortgages on coffee reviews and sales websites is very effective. Why? It's completely mixed up.

Are we willing to accept this unexplained answer and jump out of the mechanical thinking of simply pursuing causality?

Some time ago, the popularity of "You can't survive but you can't die" caused a lot of discussion. Why are effective new drugs so expensive? The reason lies in the current drug research and development mechanism, which usually needs to analyze the causes of diseases, find substances that can eliminate this cause, and then synthesize new drugs. This is a very long process and the cost is very high. It took more than ten years to develop a prescription drug seven or eight years ago, and invested 654.38 billion US dollars in scientific research. Now the time and cost are further increased. No company will be willing to invest in research and development of new drugs if it can't earn billions of dollars within the validity period of the patent.

But with big data, we can change the research and development mechanism of this new drug. For example, there are only more than 5,000 kinds of prescription drugs in the United States, and there are about 6,543.8+0,000 kinds of diseases that people will get. If you pair each medicine with each disease, you will find some unexpected surprises. Stanford University School of Medicine found that a drug originally used to treat heart disease is particularly effective in treating a certain stomach disease. Although clinical experiments are needed to confirm this, it only takes three years and costs only $65.438+0 billion to find a medicine for treating stomach diseases.

This method does not rely on causality, but on strong correlation. As for why it is effective, the next study is actually to find the reason in turn. This practice of getting the result first and then deducing the reason is completely opposite to the previous practice of deducing the result through causality.

Wu Jun emphasized in the book "Intelligent Age" that "when the causal relationship is uncertain, the data provides us with a new way to solve the problem. The information contained in the data can help us eliminate the uncertainty, and the correlation between the data can replace the original causal relationship to a certain extent and help us get the answers we want to know. This is the core of big data thinking." "Big data thinking and the original mechanical thinking are not completely opposite, it is more a supplement to the latter."

Then, is the experience accumulated in Li Shizhen 500 years ago and the tested practice of China people 5,000 years also a kind of big data to be developed? It is only due to the limitations of human cognition, practice and records that the original materials of traditional Chinese medicine are not huge enough, the textual research is not accurate enough and the preservation is not complete enough. So it's not very useful, and there are many fallacies.

However, there must be a strong correlation between Chinese medicine and saving lives. As long as we can continue to develop and improve by means of the information age and explain and improve with Newton's causal thinking, Chinese medicine will surely glow with new brilliance, and it will never be the fart of a dog in some people's mouths.