How Much Science Can You Have at Your Fingertips?

Numerous suggestions are presented for helping men to learn and retrieve scientific information, with or without artificial aids. In a discussion of how much information can be stored in a human brain, and how this compares with the amount of scientific information that has been published, it is argued that the number of "conceivable" states of the brain is much larger than the number of attainable states. It is necessary here to use a definition for the number of effective states of a brain or of any record. It is mentioned that access to published literature is not the only problem in the communication of scientific information. A discussion of how a man might acquire an encyclopedic knowledge emphasizes, for example, that a vital principle in learning and teaching is an explicit belief in the importance of general principles. Knowledge is compared with a network having various impedances in the connections between the nodes, somewhat like a nervous system. Difficulties in classification (and in organization) appear when networks depart very much from having a tree-like structure. Some tentative suggestions for learning arise out of this model. Possible new fields of research, such as saporology, and of new periodicals, such as Half-Baked Ideas, are touched upon. A discussion of the value of mechanical aids concludes with a list of probable new advances in consulting scientific literature in the near future. Sixteen applications are listed for tape recordings of books. The paper concludes with a warning that some of the world's greatest scientists have done their best work when they were given plenty of time to think their own thoughts.