Does Human Knowledge Double Every 5 Years?

Real World Consequences of These Issues

Let's try to look at real world effects of this dangerous illusion we are discovering.

The illusion is that a rapid growth in human knowledge (doubling every five years) is happening all around us, naturally and painlessly. As we hope to have shown on this weblog, human knowledge about a particular subject can increase that fast or faster, but it is always as a result of putting money, institutional resources, interested and bright people to do the research, together. It doesn't hurt to have an urgent public need (HIV) or potential private gain (nanotechnology) as a carrot.

But where these inputs are not provided, human knowledge about a subject grows at a much slower pace. Let me explain what I mean.

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It Should Be Lumpy, Right?

We wouldn't expect a uniform doubling of human knowledge within a 5-year timeframe, right? Even if this is a law as inexorable as Moore's (and that doesn't seem as inexorable as it once was, or am I reading the Dell ads wrong?), one would reasonably expect that human knowledge would advance a little in some areas and a lot in others. You with me?

Given what the world's attention has been focused on since 2002, here are some of the areas where I think human knowledge should have increased fastest:

• Epidemiology, thanks to SARS and Avian flu
• Biofuels
• Vaccines
• Proteome
• Oil extraction from rock and shale
• Mars
• Genetically Modified Organisms
• Fishery management
• Global warming
• Solar activity
• The Long Tail
• Stem cell cultivation
• Infectious diseases

I will treat this as a proxy list of subject areas to explore. I'm going to be digging around to see if we've seen dramatic advances in any or all of these. I'll probably dedicate a few posts to each of them. Got any suggestions?