In my efforts to bring order out of chaos in my household, I occasionally look at my bookshelves and, gulp, remove books. This time I found something called —
ITEST
A Seminar with Father Stanley Jaki
ITEST Workshop
October, 1991

I thought it was the perfect candidate for removal to another home, especially since I have no idea why it’s here. I flipped through it just to make sure it wasn’t a hidden gem, and tripped over this comment on the last page made by Father Robert A. Brungs, S. J.

…. I am talking about the current shift in science to computer-driven methodologies. I think that if science is going to collapse anywhere in the near future in terms of its heritage, it’s going to collapse in this switch from data-controlled experimentation to computer-simulated modeling. This is not to say that this will not in the longer run, produce good science.

I am saying that we need to realize what we are doing and to be careful doing it. … right now … the experimentalist is and has been the controller of the directions of science. He or she is and has been the verifier of the theories. We’re moving beyond that now.

With computer simulated science, we’re not working directly out of an experimental data base any more.

We’re beginning to work out of an already interpreted data set which then goes into the computer as the assumptions on which we’re going to build our science. We’re one step farther away from the experimental object.

And I think we’d better watch that change carefully.

I’m fascinated by how far back a warning about computer modeling surfaced, even though Father Brungs thinks it might be a good thing, IF carefully done. The reference to ‘heritage’ probably made more sense in terms of the rest of the discussion this group had participated in.

Thirty-three years ago, in 1991, computers could do far less than they could now. Of course, the difference in computing power between 1958 and 1991, also thirty-three years, is pretty staggering. In 1958, there were still large rooms with vacuum tubes doing the computing. But then, in 1991 the Internet was not yet easily searchable, the mountains of data, including things like the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Summa Theological (just for examples) had not yet been put up and made available for anyone to search. Cell phones were still large objects though they were rapidly getting smaller. In 1987 a ‘portable phone’ was at least as big as a ream of computer paper. I even remember working in a parish office, around 1986, and rejoicing in 10 Kilobytes of data space on a computer! We could put all the names and addresses of our parishioners into our lovely new device. 10 KB.

The book recommendation I have is not the ITEST bulletin. It is Steven Koonin’s book Unsettled, (BenBella Books. Dallas, TX. 2021) about how people study climate. Koonin was President Obama’s climate czar. He was also someone who did computer modeling very early — like in the 1990’s. He has a clear discussion in this book about how modeling can or cannot be used, and about the limits climate modeling faces.

I read this book several years ago and it was fascinating. In light of the quote above I think I might go reread it. Or I might buy the newer edition and compare the two!