Hello all,
This is my first post here.
I would need several hard-to-find information for my project and would be grateful to anyone that could point me to the direction of papers that could contain such information or provide those info directly.
First, speaking about long-established science fields like mythematics, chemistry, sociology, etc. (or their subdisciplines), what is the approximate quantity of knowledge information currently reached in those fields (in bits or bytes)?
Second, how big is the quantity of information that an expert in a specific field has stored in his/her brain?
I'm fully aware that the precise quantification is impossible. What I look for are approximations, like that of Georges Anderla, who took all the human knowledge in the year 1 AD as a unit and then made a study of the estimated decrease in the time necessary for it doubling, but I need similar data specified across particular scientific disciplines.
Now, I must presume that the quantity of facts stored in an individual's memory doesn't change much with time and progress (Thomas Landauer made a nice study about the estimate of "bits in the brain" used for storing learned facts and came up with 10**9 bits) so, as the scope of the knowledge broadens, an expert will hold in his memory the ever diminishing percentage of the whole quantity of knowledge in his specialized field.
I would like to know some estimated figures (not necessarily the newest ones, in fact, the historic ones would be very useful for comparison), I'm sure they must exist somewhere.
Thank you very much in advance,
Hrvoje