Does Human Knowledge Double Every 5 Years?

Time to Get Serious

If you type the search string "human knowledge doubles every five years" into Google today, it will return about 1,580,000 results.

The first result is from a Bellagio newsletter reporting on a conference, and it uses the sentence as if it were a given. The second is from President Clinton's 1998 speech to the AAS, where he asserts it as a given. The first post in this weblog quotes from it.

The third result is why I started this weblog. Here is part of the opening from The Low Beyond, by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

1: The End of History

It began three and a half billion years ago in a pool of muck, when a molecule made a copy of itself and so became the ultimate ancestor of all earthly life.

It began four million years ago, when brain volumes began climbing rapidly in the hominid line.

Fifty thousand years ago with the rise of Homo sapiens sapiens.
Ten thousand years ago with the invention of civilization.
Five hundred years ago with the invention of the printing press.
Fifty years ago with the invention of the computer.

In less than thirty years, it will end.

At some point in the near future, someone will come up with a method of increasing the maximum intelligence on the planet - either coding a true Artificial Intelligence or enhancing human intelligence.  An enhanced human would be better at thinking up ways of enhancing humans; would have an "increased capacity for invention".  What would this increased ability be directed at?  Creating the next generation of enhanced humans.

And what would those doubly enhanced minds do?  Research methods on triply enhanced humans, or build AI minds operating at computer speeds.  And an AI would be able to reprogram itself, directly, to run faster - or smarter.  And then our crystal ball explodes, "life as we know it" is over, and everything we know goes out the window. "

Yudkowsky, like Ray Kurzweil and other advocates of what is known as the Singularity, extrapolates progress in computing sciences from past performance increases in computer efficiency, networking and falling prices for computation and memory. At some point in our lifetimes, computing will be so fast, so efficient, so networked and have access to so much memory, that we will be able to create artificial intelligence (AI). We will then be able to assign this AI the task of creating an even better computing machine, as well as assisting human intelligence in solving real world problems. Because of the increased capabilities of AI (which include indefatiguability and no need for coffe breaks as well as very high intelligence and concentration), progress will be so rapid that life as we know it will change dramatically and in a very short timeframe.

I really want this to be true. But I am afraid that a) we are exaggerating our progress on many fronts and b) even if we can build this better box, we will need to improve our knowledge exponentially before the box is built so we know what to put into it. And I see no evidence as yet that we'll be able to fill the box.

We'll be talking a lot about this--and I hope to involve some of the protagonists in the discussion. But if this isn't your cup of tea, you can adjust your visits to this site accordingly.

The Other Half Of This Experiment

Of course, the other half of this experiment is to see if I can do something relevant and important with free tools available to all. If I can double human knowledge regarding the doubling of human knowledge, all for free and for fun, I think that might be important in and of itself.

Happy Coincidence

A chart I put up on the weblog cited Derwent's World Patents Index as a source. It is found at Thomson.com, and it has information regarding 31.66 million patent documents. (Okay, let's future proof this--in 2012, will it have information on 63 million patent documents?)

They charge to get in and look around, so I'm hovering on the periphery, seeing if I can find more meta-data about the database. For example, an article titled 'Open access to the medical literature: How much content is available in published journals?' by Marie McVeigh and James Pringle, published in 2005, indicates that about 20% of medical literature published in 174 journals since 1992 is 'open access', that is, freely available online. They estimate that a bit less than 60% of medical literature in that time period can be accessed electronically. We also find that Thomson's ISI Web of Knowledge has 20 million users from 81 countries accessing a database of 22,000 journals, 23 million patents and much more. All good supporting data for my second hypotheses, about the increasing availability of human knowledge. But I would love to see the growth rate for new data coming into that database, and I can't find it.

However, I did find this--an article called 'Eastward ho! --The geographic drift of global R&D' written in March 2007 by Bob Sternbridge. It touches on a number of topics I've written about below, and has some interesting numbers:

• The number of computing patents filed in China has risen from 2,000 to 20,000 in five years! Clear doubling in the right time frame. (Pity the increase was not replicated in Japan or Korea, which were also included in the study)
• The number of communications patents filed in China has also risen in the same time frame, from 8,000 to 30,000--again a doubling! Sadly, again not replicated in Japan or Korea.
• More importantly, the total number of Chinese patent applications is growing by 25% per annum. But the article then says that Japan and US patent filings have been flat or declining in recent years. And a lot of the patent filings are by multinational corporations
• R&D spending in China has risen from 89.6 billion yuan in 2000 to 245 billion yuan between 2000 and 2005
• The number of researchers in China grew 77% over the ten years from 1995 to 2004

I think it will take me a couple of hours to digest this and incorporate it into previous posts. More later.

An Anecdote Regarding Hypothesis 2

The second hypothesis I am investigating with this weblog is that the availability of existing human knowledge is expanding exponentially. If true, I think it would reduce the burden of expectations on those who think new human knowledge is doubling every five years, if that turns out not to be the case. If a brilliant Chinese programmer can see the appropriate article online today, where he couldn't in the past, it might guide his efforts more effectively--pretty common-sensical, I think.

So, this article from the Dalhousie News is interesting. In it, we see that the Nova Scotian university now has access to 15,000 academic journals--up from 4,000 five years ago. Essentially, these common-sense Canadians formed a buyer's club and got good deals on academic journals online. Good for them.

I'm starting to like Hypothesis Number Two. Every time I search for evidence regarding the increased availability of human knowledge, I feel like I'm swimming with the river, easily finding data that seems reliable and pertinent. Every time I look for evidence about the primary hypothesis (that actual human knowledge is doubling every five years), I really feel like I'm swimming against the current.

Whew--We Find That Something Has Doubled

It would have been truly strange not to find some area where there is evidence of a doubling of activity. I actually think we'll find more as we go on. But the past two weeks have been somewhat discouraging, so I'm happy to report that we see clear evidence of a doubling in the growth rate of patent filings in China over the past 5 years, and a doubling of the total number of academic patent filings worldwide between 1995 and 2000.

An article titled 'Rapid Patenting Growth By Academic Institutes In The People's Republic Of China' by Simon Pratt, published in June 2005 shows a doubling of the growth rate (not the actual numbers) of patent filings by academic institutions in China, and a doubling of academic patent filings worldwide by universities between 1995 and 2000 (see chart below). Sadly, that growth rate has not been sustained since 2000.

It is not unalloyed good news--worldwide, academic patent filings are a response to governmental decisions to allow universities to retain, license and exploit intellectual property, so there may just be substitution here--the same patent might previously have been filed by an individual at the academic institution or someone who had access to the reseach. But I'm so happy to find something relevant that has doubled in five years that this seems like a minor quibble.

Here is the chart showing the number of academic patent filings worldwide since 1980. As with all the charts on this weblog, clicking on the chart will bring it up in a readable size.

More on Human Knowledge and Global Warming

In an article titled 'General Circulation Models of the Atmosphere,' Spencer Weart tell us that John von Neumann began advocating using computers to study the climate back in 1946, shortly after his computer ENIAC became operational. Getting grants from the Navy, the Air Force and the Weather Bureau, the study of climate began.

So 1946 was the starting point. For the next 25 years, the American Meteoroligical Society's  entire spectrum of journals (including the Journal of Applied Meteorology, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Journal of Physical Oceanography, Monthly Weather Review and more...) published a total of 111 papers containing the phrase "climate models" somewhere in the text or title. The first one was titled 'The Unusual Weather and Circulation of the 1948-1949 Winter,' by William H. Klein. It was published in April 1949, 58 years ago. Two articles were published containing that phrase in 1950.

Let's pretend that each paper published with the phrase "climate models" is one unit of advancing human knowledge. If human knowledge doubles every five years, how many papers should be published in 2005? We know that the percentage growth should be 14.87%, and we know we should expect to see 2,048 articles in 2004. So... drum roll please... it's 881. Less than half of what we would expect. Lest you think it was just an off year, in 2005 it was 899 and in 2006 it actually dropped to 894.

I can think of a dozen possible explanations--a presidential administration unfriendly to the concept, waiting on the IPCC to publish findings in 2007... but the fact is, if we have doubled our knowledge of climate models in the past 5 years, we're not writing about it in America.

Is the rest of the world making up for America's shortfall? Well, not if you're depending on the International Journal of Meteorology, which returns 8 results for a search on climate models over a 25-year span. (But I think it's a search issue.) The International Journal for Climatology returns 37 results. I'm sure I'm missing important sources, but none are jumping up and biting me. The Royal Meteorological Society has 36 results. The UK government is considerably more supportive of research into global warming than the current American administration. I really thought there would be more.

Human Knowledge and Global Warming

A Google search for "improvements in climate models" returns 2.64 million results. Of those, Google Scholar claims 138,000 articles about the search term.

Of the first 20 results in Google Scholar, only one was written after the year 2000. Published in the Journal of Climate, it describes The Community Climate System Model, Version 2.  However, searching with the same term on the Journal of Climate's search engine returns 3,348 results.  Sorting in reverse chronological order, the first 10 were published this month, April 2007. In fact, I counted 279 entries published in the past year. Here are the annual results for fifth years historically:

2006: 273

2001: 203

1996: 162

1991: 54

1986: 49

1981: 24

1976: 14

1971: 3

1966: 0

Global warming is a popular field for researchers and government funding is there. Advances in computer hardware and software means that improvements in global climate models are possible, as well as desirable.

The fact that the last time entries doubled over a five-year span was between 1991 and 1996 is a bit disturbing. A new field of science with optimum research conditions that cannot sustain doubling of cutting edge knowledge after a mere 25 years cannot bode well for those who depend on doubling every five years.

Maybe the papers are four times as good...

Will Emerging Countries Double Human Knowledge For Us?

Maybe not--they may not even replace the shortfall in scientists and engineers in the OECD.

In December 2005, Vivek Wadhwa, a professor at Duke University, wrote an article that was published in Business Week. He was trying to allay fears of India and China as outsourcing monsters that would eat engineering jobs. Wadhwa said that Duke students were wondering if they should even enter the profession if the jobs would migrate to Asia. Wadhwa, Professor Gary Gereffi and some Duke students researched the topic. They published a report (large PDF) that may indeed lay some outsourcing fears to rest.

However, for those who are anticipating that a surge in Asian technical knowledge workers will step into the shoes of Western students who are abandoning technical fields of study, the report brings no comfort.

In China in 2004, 644,106 engineers graduated. However, only 351,537 were four-year degrees. Worse, due to differences in definitions, the latter figure includes motor mechanics and industrial technicians.

In India in 2004, a total of 215,000 engineering graduates were produced. However, only half (112,000) were four-year degrees--the remaining being 3 years.

In the US, a total of 70,000 engineers graduated with 4-year diplomas, a figure that rises to 222,325 if computer science graduates are included. Indeed, the number of science and engineering doctorate degrees awarded in the United States dropped by 7 percent from 1998 to 2001, according to a
separate National Science Foundation study made public this week. However, enrollment in science and engineering graduate programs rose in 1999 and 2000.

As I have not found historical data for China and India, I don't know if their output has not only doubled, but also taken over the load for the disappearing Western graduates--including the implied doubling that we are looking for. We do know that they have been pumping out engineers for quite a while, so their figures are unlikely to be doubling--just growing as fast as they can. So, this post isn't really finished. But it doesn't look as though the results will support the principal contention in Hypothesis 1, that human knowledge is doubling every five years.

More to follow.

A Marker is Put Down

Derek J. de Solla Price, writing in 1965 in Science, gives us a benchmark. In a paper entitled Networks of Scientific Papers, (PDF) exploring the links between citations and references, de Solla Price writes:

"We can calculate roughly that, since the body of world literature has been growing exponentially for a few centuries and probably will continue at its present rate of growth of about 7 percent per annum, there will be 7 new papers each year for every 100 previously published papers in a given field." A footnote refers to his 1963 book, Little Science, Big Science, published by Columbia University Press.

So, we return to the Rule of 72 website to find that a 7% growth rate would result in the doubling of scientific publications every 10.3 years.

Not good news, but that was in 1965. Is there more recent information?

Yes, and its worse news. The National Science Foundation published a chart showing growth in scientific and technical papers for selected countries. It's here--click on the image to see a readable version.

For the OECD, it shows very slow growth (1.5%) between 1987-1994, and no growth (0.1%) from 1995-1999.

This is really bad news. The higher growth rate doubles in 48 years, the lower growth rate in 720 years. I hope we've been making up for lost time since 1999...

One indication why this may have happened is reduced government funding for research and development. The graph above comes from a 2002 report called Science and Engineering Indicators. It writes, "The decline in the share of government funds for R&D is a key trend common to all major industrial nations and many other OECD countries. In the mid-1980s, these nations derived an average of 45 percent of their R&D funds from government sources; by 1998, this figure had fallen to less than one-third. The relative retrenchment reflects the broad growth of industrial R&D, reductions in defense R&D in some key nations, and broader economic and spending constraints on governments. As a consequence, government funding for industrial R&D performance also fell, averaging 23 percent in 1983 but only 10 percent in 1998 for OECD as a whole."

An Almost Eureka Moment

Bless you Tatyana Dorokhova, and bless the Astronomical Observatory of Odessa National University!

In your Abstract for your article, Exponential Growth of Scientific Information and Orientation in World Wide Web (published in the July 2-5, 2002 issue of Library and Information Services in Astronomy IV), you write,

"A swift growth in the number and length of publications in the  narrow, but advanced field of astronomy is shown with certain research examples."

However, although your title refers to exponential growth, your numbers do not. You quote H. Abt, an editor of the Astrophysical Journal, as writing "The average number of papers increased exponentially by nine percent before mid 1970's and by four percent per year thereafter."

Sadly, this look at postwar astronomy seems to show an explosion of knowledge after the war, aided by improvements in astronomical tools (radio telescopes, etc.), and then a return to a very respectable growth rate that would double human knowledge in this sector in 18 years. (Lest you think I actually did the math, I refer you to the Rule of 72 website, which has a doubling calculator.) Even the 9% growth rate before the mid-1970's would yield a doubling only once every 8 years.

Once again, we are frustrated in our attempts to show doubling of human knowledge every five years.