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… ON … HANDLING THE DATA
BY M. I. MAYFIELD
Illustrated by Freas
Sometimes a story is best told by omission—!
September 16, 1957
Dr. Robert Von Engen, Editor
Journal of the National Academy of Sciences,
Constitution Avenue, N. W.,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir:
I am taking the liberty of writing you this letter since I read yourpublished volume, “Logical Control: The Computer vs. Brain”(Silliman Memorial Lecture Series, 1957), with the hope that you canperhaps offer me some advice and also publish this letter in theeditorial section. Your mathematical viewpoint on the analysis betweencomputing machines and the living human brain, especially the conclusionthat the brain operates in part digitally and in part analogically,using its own statistical language involving selection, conditionaltransfer orders, branching, and control sequence points, et cetera,makes me feel that only you can offer me some information with logicalarithmetic depth.
The questions raised in this letter are designed principally to reachthe embryonic and juvenile scientists … the scientists-elect, so tospeak. (I think the “mature scientists” are irretrievablylost.) For many reasons, some of which will be explained in thefollowing paragraphs, I think that it is of the greatest importance thatsome stimulatable audience be [138]reached. As yet, the beginners have no rigid scientific biases and thusmay have sufficient curiosity and flexibility about the world in whichthey live to approach experimentation with a mind devoid of “thehierarchy of memory registers which have programmed in erroneousdata.”
What I have to say will not surprise nor shock you, or those who areat present engaged in scientific investigation. In fact, I have readmany science-fiction stories that deal with the same problem. Perhapsthat is the only way that it can be approached, through the medium of astory? Yet why not present it for what it may be? Let me tell it my ownway, and then, please, let me have your coldly logical opinion.
As to my background, I am a graduate student in the Zoology Departmentof a midwestern university working toward a Master’s degree, oractually a doctorate—we can bypass the M.S. if we choose—in the fieldof Cellular Physiology. My sponsor is an internationally known man inthe field. The area of research that I have selected is concerned withthe effects of physical and chemical agents on the synthesis of nucleicacids of the cell. Obviously, this is a big field, and I hope to selectfrom among the different agents, one or two that will give“positive results.” I have been doing active research forabout half a year testing the different agents. As for the fundamentalquestions raised, I am positive that it would make no difference inwhat field of science I were to work.
By now I have had enough course work to realize that when performing anyassigned laboratory exercise—they should not be calledexperiments—even of a cook-book type, little or even majordiscrepancies arise, and always on the initial trials, no matter