Starting Our Journey
FEST log
Entry #001
March 08, 2024
Leaving The Harbor
The current log, like a logbook used by ancient mariners, will describe at somewhat irregular intervals the journey that we are about to embark on. We are going to leave the established harbor of the current state of science, which is almost exclusively using matter-based tools. With a pedigree spanning more than four centuries in its current form, it is by now a relatively safe haven. It has established ways of operation, in mostly well-defined fields and subfields.
Our first goal is to develop a complementary branch of science that mainly employs mind-based tools. In short, we will explore the use of the mind to study the mind. A more distant goal will be to explore the possibility of establishing a unified form of science that combines on equal footings matter-based and mind-based science, a Fully Engaged Science and Technology, FEST for short.
A quick overview can be found in the previous entry, a maniFESTo. Note that an important change has occurred already after entry #000, while we were still anchored in the harbor. In that entry I outlined the FEST vision, which I have nurtured in one form or another for the last 3/4 of my life. During that time I have formed or joined various small groups of like-minded people on small adventurous expeditions, still in sight of the harbor.
This time, however, my insight has matured to a quality level that I associate with the books and articles I have published in (astro)physics and other disciplines. I now feel comfortable choosing an initial direction in which to set sail, leaving the coastal waters behind. My hope is that others with similar aspirations will join, and will help to make course corrections whenever needed, given that we will soon explore unknown waters and new coastlines.
What Is Science?
Before we engage in developing extensions to science, it will help to get a clear picture of what defines current science. While looking back at the harbor, let me give a sketch of what I consider to lie at the core of science. I will base this on my own research as well as my observations while engaging in discussions with other scientists in a wide range of disciplines, during the more than twenty years since 2002 that I have been Head of the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, where I was appointed as a Professor in Astrophysics in 1985.
What is the bar for qualifying an investigation as scientific? 1) Experiments always win out over theories. 2) Any theory has to take the form of a working hypothesis. 3) Experimental confirmation of a theory needs to be validated through intersubjective agreement between a self-governing community of peers. This excludes governing bodies that solely or mainly consist of non-scientists.
As a further refinement of the first point, we can distinguish between four different types of experiments:
Field observations (Galileo's discovering four moons of Jupiter)
Lab experiments (Galileo's rolling objects down inclined planes)
Thought experiments (mental simulations, aided by pen and paper)
Computer experiments (digital simulations on computers)
Let's have a look at these different categories.
Field work as passive experiments
Field observations may seem different from experiments, but if we take the term experiment broadly, observations in astronomy, for example, can be viewed as experiments that are performed not by us, but by nature. We may not have the power to let galaxies collide, but we live inside the Universe, which is a perfect lab in which to study the setup of two galaxies on a collision course, to study what plays out during collisions, and to analyze the remnants. A good astronomer's T-shirt could read something like:
I am a scientist
I live in my lab
My lab is the Universe
Galileo's notebooks, logs for his astronomical observations, read like lab logs. He described, for example, how the moons of Jupiter could be found in different places with respect to Jupiter, even comparing two subsequent days.
To add a footnote: readers familiar with galactic-scale train wrecks may object that such collisions take a few hundred million years to complete, an awfully long time to follow an experiment. Astronomers have a trick, though: by observing a sample of dozens or more such cosmic mishaps they can put those snapshots end to end, according to different stages of the onslaught. This way they can construct a statistical history of collisions between typical galaxies, well within the time it takes to complete a PhD.
Laboratory experiments
Lab experiments are like field experiments, but under controlled conditions. The difference between doing science in the field and in a lab is huge. Not only can you choose and finetune the initial setup of an experiment, but you can also protect the subsequent run of the experiment from dust and dirt, and whatever else may affect the outcome.
That said, within the vastly improved setting of a lab, what is actually going on remains similar in stages to that of field experiments. Scientists first play the role of nature, in setting things up. They then play the role of observers, describing (in a lab log!) what happens after things are set in motion. And finally they analyze the outcome of whatever was observed.
Their analysis involves using theories to attempt to fit the data. In the process they quite often are forced to change or at least fine tune those theories when they turn out to be inadequate. Improve experiments, which will force theories to improve in order to fit the new data, which in turn will suggest more accurate experiments in order to keep those newer theories honest, and so on: this is the ratchet of science!
Thought experiments and computer experiments
Thought experiments are similar to lab experiments. The way in which they are set up, carried out, and analyzed, follow the same playbook. There is only one difference: in these experiments, everything is done purely by thought, albeit sometimes aided by pen and paper.
And finally computer experiments are like thought experiments, but for a hypothetical person with perfect recall, who thinks billions of thoughts at the same time, and each one at the speed of light, rather than the speed of neurons, which is a few hundred million times slower than light. That's the quantitative answer.
There might be a very different qualitative answer: when deeply engaged in a thought experiment, scientists sometimes come up with completely new ideas. Whether AI will be able to replicate such "Aha!!" moments in the future is still an open question. Stay tuned!
The use of working hypotheses
Any work done in exploring anything in science ideally is based on one or more hypotheses, of a very special kind. Each hypothesis describes a possible way that nature is structured, or that nature behaves. In entertaining a possibility, the scientist does not believe that the hypothesis is true. But, equally important, the scientist does not believe that it is false. In that spirit, scientists can suspend judgment concerning the truth of such a hypothesis, and ideally in that way they will not be biased.
The beauty of science is that you can receive credit for proving a theory right as well as for proving it wrong, your own or someone else's, it doesn't matter. If you disprove your own theory you can even get double credit, as long as your theory was interesting enough to draw significant attention. As a result, there is no strong incentive to take sides or try to push your own theory like a lawyer. It is a win-win situation. So long as you clarify new aspects of the theory, pro or con, everybody wins! Footnote: scientists are also all too human. I know a few who live up to that ideal, and I've tried to do so myself, throughout my career. But I certainly know a good many who champion their own theory.
The use of working hypotheses may be unique to science. Hypotheses as such have no meaning. But once you use them as tools, and with the reward structure inherent in science, they act as ratchets to increase the quality of our theories, as we've seen already. This is definitely something we should keep in place while developing a science of mind, just as we should develop a proper lab culture and very important: lab guidelines.
Peer review
A final essential ingredient in science proper is peer review. Each individual scientist can easily make mistakes, in many different ways. To be human is to make errors. But if we have a critical mass in terms of a large group of peers, the larger the group, the less likely it is that a mistake will go undiscovered for a long time.
Here the term "peers" is essential. If one's colleagues are not qualified, as judged by their peers, there is no guarantee that science will make progress. Peers need to be selected within the community of scientists from their own community. If they are appointed for political or financial or other such reasons, science will grind to a halt.
To be clear: there are certainly examples of individuals with extraordinary intuition and creativity who lack the official credentials for being regarded as a peer in any particular field, yet who make interesting and valuable contributions to those fields all the same. In practice, such individuals, when recognized, can be elevated to peer status quite quickly.
Further ingredients
The above four aspects, theory, experiment, working hypotheses and peer review, are absolutely essential for an area to deserve recognition as a field of science. This is not to say that these criteria are sufficient, but if one of them is lacking, then that activity can no longer be considered scientific.
There are other auxiliary ingredients, some of them very important in practice. Funding helps! For sure. A climate of respect for science in society helps too, to attract some of the brightest members of that society to become scientists. Equally important is a climate of respect for anyone who is willing and able to study science, independent of gender, color, or whatever discriminating tendencies may exist in any given culture. Related to all this: good channels of communication, in both directions, between scientists and politicians, economists, and really any sector of society is important.
– Piet Hut