tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/philosophy-of-science-2897/articlesPhilosophy of science – The Conversation2023-12-06T13:27:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2114102023-12-06T13:27:18Z2023-12-06T13:27:18ZIntellectual humility is a key ingredient for scientific progress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563651/original/file-20231205-15-8od38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=108%2C9%2C6484%2C4260&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Would technologies like the airplane ever get off the ground without people balancing commitment to their vision with openness to new ideas?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/on-december-17-at-10-30am-at-kitty-hawk-north-carolina-this-news-photo/1371400707">HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The virtue of intellectual humility is getting a lot of attention. It’s heralded as a part of <a href="https://wisdomcenter.uchicago.edu/news/wisdom-news/what-does-intellectual-humility-look">wisdom</a>, an aid to <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_reasons_why_intellectual_humility_is_good_for_you">self-improvement</a> and a catalyst for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167221997619">more productive political dialogue</a>. While researchers define intellectual humility in various ways, the core of the idea is “<a href="https://www.templeton.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/JTF_Intellectual_Humility_final.pdf">recognizing that one’s beliefs and opinions might be incorrect</a>.”</p>
<p>But achieving intellectual humility is hard. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20190668">Overconfidence is a persistent problem</a>, faced by many, and does <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.02.007">not appear to be improved</a> by education or expertise. Even scientific pioneers can sometimes lack this valuable trait.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="black and white photo of man with white beard" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563649/original/file-20231205-29-legp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">William Thomson, known as Lord Kelvin, poses in 1902 with his compass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/william-thomson-lord-kelvin-scottish-mathematician-and-news-photo/113443136">Universal History Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Take the example of one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Thomson-Baron-Kelvin">Lord Kelvin</a>, who was not immune to overconfidence. <a href="https://archive.org/details/newark-advocate-1902-04-26/page/n3/mode/2up">In a 1902 interview</a> “on scientific matters now prominently before the public mind,” he was asked about the future of air travel: “(W)e have no hope of solving the problem of aerial navigation in any way?”</p>
<p>Lord Kelvin replied firmly: “No; I do not think there is any hope. Neither the balloon, nor the aeroplane, nor the gliding machine will be a practical success.” The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wright-brothers">Wright brothers’ first successful flight</a> was a little over a year later.</p>
<p>Scientific overconfidence is not confined to matters of technology. A few years earlier, Kelvin’s eminent colleague, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1907/michelson/biographical/">A. A. Michelson</a>, the first American to win a Nobel Prize in science, <a href="https://campub.lib.uchicago.edu/view/?docId=mvol-0005-0003-0002#page/15/mode/1up/">expressed a similarly striking view</a> about the fundamental laws of physics: “It seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have now been firmly established.”</p>
<p>Over the next few decades – in no small part due to Michelson’s own work – fundamental physical theory underwent its most dramatic changes since the times of Newton, with the development of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics “<a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/HEIPAP">radically and irreversibly</a>” altering our view of the physical universe.</p>
<p>But is this sort of overconfidence a problem? Maybe it actually helps the progress of science? I suggest that intellectual humility is a better, more progressive stance for science.</p>
<h2>Thinking about what science knows</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aoHQHaAAAAAJ&hl=en">researcher</a> in philosophy of science for over 25 years and one-time editor of the main journal in the field, <a href="https://www.philsci.org/journal.php">Philosophy of Science</a>, I’ve had numerous studies and reflections on the nature of scientific knowledge cross my desk. The biggest questions are not settled.</p>
<p>How confident ought people be about the conclusions reached by science? How confident ought scientists be in their own theories?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="colored etched plate illustrating Earth with planets orbiting around it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563654/original/file-20231205-15-vv17og.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Eventually astronomy moved past the geocentric model of the universe with Earth at its center, which had stood for centuries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/plate-from-the-cosmographical-atlas-harmonia-macrocosmica-news-photo/544173270">VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>One ever-present consideration goes by the name “the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/#PessIndu">pessimistic induction</a>,” advanced most prominently in modern times by the philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Laudan">Larry Laudan</a>. Laudan pointed out that the history of science is littered with discarded theories and ideas.</p>
<p>It would be near-delusional to think that now, finally, we have found the science that will not be discarded. It is far more reasonable to conclude that today’s science will also, in large part, be rejected, or significantly modified, by future scientists.</p>
<p>But the pessimistic induction is not the end of the story. An equally powerful consideration, advanced prominently in modern times by the philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam">Hilary Putnam</a>, goes by the name “the no-miracles argument.” It would be a miracle, so the argument goes, if successful scientific predictions and explanations were just accidental, or lucky – that is, if the success of science did not arise from its getting something right about the nature of reality.</p>
<p>There must be something right about the theories that have, after all, made air travel – not to mention space travel, genetic engineering and so on – a reality. It would be near-delusional to conclude that present-day theories are just wrong. It is far more reasonable to conclude that there is something right about them.</p>
<h2>A pragmatic argument for overconfidence?</h2>
<p>Setting aside the philosophical theorizing, what is best for scientific progress?</p>
<p>Of course, scientists can be mistaken about the accuracy of their own positions. Even so, there is reason to believe that over the long arc of history – or, in the cases of Kelvin and Michelson, in relatively short order – such mistakes will be unveiled.</p>
<p>In the meantime, perhaps extreme confidence is important for doing good science. Maybe science needs people who tenaciously pursue new ideas with the kind of (over)confidence that can also lead to quaint declarations of the impossibility of air travel or the finality of physics. Yes, it can lead to dead ends, <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/another-retraction-looms-embattled-physicist-behind-blockbuster-superconductivity">retractions</a> and the like, but maybe that’s just the price of scientific progress.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="black and white photo portrait of man in tailcoat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563656/original/file-20231205-19-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ignaz Semmelweis used antiseptic measures to slash death rates in his hospital.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ignaz-philip-semmelweis-hungarian-obstetrician-discovered-news-photo/113444168">Universal History Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the 19th century, in the face of continued and strong opposition, the Hungarian doctor <a href="https://theconversation.com/ignaz-semmelweis-the-doctor-who-discovered-the-disease-fighting-power-of-hand-washing-in-1847-135528">Ignaz Semmelweis</a> consistently and repeatedly advocated for the importance of sanitation in hospitals. The medical community rejected his idea so severely that he wound up forgotten in a mental asylum. But he was, it seems, right, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp048025">eventually the medical community came around</a> to his view.</p>
<p>Maybe we need people who can be committed so fully to the truth of their ideas in order for advances to be made. Maybe scientists should be overconfident. Maybe they should shun intellectual humility.</p>
<p>One might hope, as <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203979648">some have argued</a>, that the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-method">scientific process</a> – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326">review and testing</a> of theories and ideas – will eventually weed out the crackpot ideas and false theories. The cream will rise.</p>
<p>But sometimes it takes a long time, and it isn’t clear that scientific examinations, as opposed to social forces, are always the cause of the downfall of bad ideas. The 19th century (pseudo)science of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/phrenology">phrenology</a> was overturned “as much for its fixation on social categories as for an inability within the scientific community to replicate its findings,” as noted by a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.04.011">group of scientists</a> who put a kind of final nail in the coffin of phrenology in 2018, nearly 200 years after its heyday of correlating skull features with mental ability and character.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="masked man in scrubs washing at sink" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563647/original/file-20231205-15-x25n13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Today’s health care workers follow careful sanitary protocols – long after Semmelweis first advocated them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/surgeon-washing-hands-before-egg-collection-news-photo/129377308">Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Intellectual humility as a middle ground</h2>
<p>The marketplace of ideas did produce the right results in the cases mentioned. Kelvin and Michelson were corrected fairly quickly. It took much longer for phrenology and hospital sanitation – and the consequences of this delay were undeniably disastrous in both cases.</p>
<p>Is there a way to encourage vigorous, committed and stubborn pursuit of new, possibly unpopular scientific ideas, while acknowledging the great value and power of the scientific enterprise as it now stands?</p>
<p>Here is where intellectual humility can play a positive role in science. Intellectual humility is not skepticism. It does not imply doubt. An intellectually humble person may have strong commitments to various beliefs – scientific, moral, religious, political or other – and may pursue those commitments with vigor. Their intellectual humility lies in their openness to the possibility, indeed strong likelihood, that nobody is in possession of the full truth, and that others, too, may have insights, ideas and evidence that should be taken into account when forming their own best judgments.</p>
<p>Intellectually humble people will therefore welcome challenges to their ideas, research programs that run contrary to current orthodoxy, and even the pursuit of what might seem to be crackpot theories. Remember, doctors in his time were convinced that Semmelweis was a crackpot.</p>
<p>This openness to inquiry does not, of course, imply that scientists are obligated to accept theories they take to be wrong. What we ought to accept is that we too might be wrong, that something good might come of the pursuit of those other ideas and theories, and that tolerating rather than persecuting those who pursue such things just might be the best way forward for science and for society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Dickson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. This article was produced with support from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and the John Templeton Foundation as part of the GGSC's initiative on Expanding Awareness of the Science of Intellectual Humility.</span></em></p>An intellectually humble person may have strong commitments to various beliefs − but balanced with an openness to the likelihood that others, too, may have valuable insights, ideas and evidence.Michael Dickson, Professor of Philosophy, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153342023-11-28T19:12:04Z2023-11-28T19:12:04ZScience communicators need to stop telling everybody the universe is a meaningless void<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562017/original/file-20231128-27-l3ap7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5615%2C2907&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/silhouette-of-man-standing-on-rock-while-looking-in-sky-0LU4vO5iFpM">Greg Rakozy / Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The scientific worldview has made great contributions to humanity’s flourishing. But, as science advances into territory once firmly held by religion – attempting to answer questions about the origins of the universe, life and consciousness – science communication often paints a fairly pessimistic picture of the world.</p>
<p>Take a few examples. An article in New Scientist claims our perception that pet dogs love us <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2280859-your-dog-may-not-like-you-as-much-as-you-think-it-does/">may be an illusion</a>. Physicist Brian Greene sees humanity’s ultimate fate in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549600/until-the-end-of-time-by-brian-greene/">the demise of the Solar System</a>. Writer Yuval Noah Harari, in his bestselling book Sapiens, posits that <a href="https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens-2/">life holds no inherent meaning</a>. Philosopher David Benatar goes so far as to argue that <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32901"><em>being born</em> is a bad thing</a>.</p>
<p>Scientists themselves may not find the view of the universe presented above to be pessimistic. However, this may bring them into conflict with many things humanity values – or has evolved to value – such as meaning, purpose and free will.</p>
<h2>The Copernican principle</h2>
<p>One essential function of science communication is to mobilise people to act against some of humanity’s most pressing problems – think of the COVID pandemic, or climate change. </p>
<p>However, unlike most people, scientists and science communicators often tend to think humans are in a sense nothing special. This idea is known as the Copernican principle.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/copernicus-revolution-and-galileos-vision-our-changing-view-of-the-universe-in-pictures-60103">Copernicus' revolution and Galileo's vision: our changing view of the universe in pictures</a>
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<p>The Copernican principle (named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who realised Earth goes around the Sun) holds that humans are not special observers of the universe compared to any other beings who may exist elsewhere. </p>
<p>Going further, the principle has been extrapolated to mean that any attempt to ascribe meaning to human life or imply there is something exceptional about human relationships falls outside the realm of science. As a consequence, humans have no unique value – and any suggestion otherwise can be dismissed as unscientific.</p>
<h2>Paradoxes in science communication</h2>
<p>Although science does not deny the importance of human happiness and societal function, we would not expect a physicist, for example, to modify their theories of cosmology to make them more psychologically meaningful.</p>
<p>This leads us to two great paradoxes science communication often tries to straddle.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>We live in a deterministic world without free will, yet we must choose to accept science and prevent climate change. And we must act now!</p></li>
<li><p>The universe is destined to end in a dead, freezing void and life has no meaning. But we must prevent climate change so our planet does not become a dead, overheated void – and we can continue our meaningless lives. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>As a result of these paradoxes, those who do not align with science’s claims about the fundamental nature of the universe may not accept scientific arguments regarding climate change. If agreeing to stop using fossil fuels is linked to accepting your life has no meaning, it’s no wonder some are reluctant.</p>
<p>What’s worse, signing up to “science” may also mean accepting your religion is false, your spirituality is an illusion and your relationship with your dog is based on an evolutionary lie. </p>
<h2>Science communication and beliefs</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photo of a T-shirt reading 'Science doesn't care what you believe'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562020/original/file-20231128-23-p4frq7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">It’s a catchy T-shirt slogan, but not an effective strategy for winning hearts and minds.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/science-doesnt-care-what-you-believe-2086591639">Depock Chandra Roy / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In words you might sometimes see on novelty T-shirts, commonly attributed to astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Science doesn’t care what you believe.” What Tyson actually said was a little less combative: “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” </p>
<p>But if science, by its rational and objective nature, is not able to care what people believe, perhaps science <em>communication</em> should care. </p>
<p>Compare science communication to health communication, for example. The maternity ward at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney contains the word “welcome” in more than 20 languages. The admission paperwork asks for your religion so that care may be taken to avoid insensitivities and also to provide an appropriate spiritual guide if needed. </p>
<p>Public health messaging is adapted to its audience based on research in health anthropology.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cultural-assumptions-behind-western-medicine-7533">The cultural assumptions behind Western medicine</a>
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<p>All of this is done to achieve the best health outcomes and to try to create health care centred on people. This is despite the fact that a virus or a chronic disease care little for your religious or spiritual beliefs. </p>
<p>Just as the World Health Organization’s <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health#tab=tab_1">Social Determinants of Health Framework</a> looks at non-medical factors that influence health outcomes, we also need to look at non-science factors when evaluating science communication outcomes.</p>
<h2>The opposite poles of the debate</h2>
<p>Proponents of science often see themselves in a battle against the forces of superstition and religion, one which geneticist Francis S. Collins has <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Language-of-God/Francis-S-Collins/9781416542742">written</a> is “overshadowed by the high-decibel pronouncements of those who occupy the poles of the debate”.</p>
<p>But if we are trying to use science communication to make the world a better place, we shouldn’t let the drama of this battle distract us from our ultimate goal. </p>
<p>Instead, science communicators would do well to take a more sensitive and anthropological approach to science communication. Understanding what people value and how to reach them may actually help the advancements of science make the world a better place. </p>
<p>We don’t have to change what science discovers, but we perhaps do not have to tell people their life has no meaning in the opening chapter of a popular science book. As Brian Greene <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549600/until-the-end-of-time-by-brian-greene/">put it</a>, “we have developed strategies to contend with knowledge of our impermanence”, which provide us with hope as we “gesture toward eternity”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Ellis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Science is essential for human flourishing. So why does so much science communication paint a bleak, nihilist picture of the world?Chris Ellis, Medical Doctor. Interdisciplinary Lecturer. PhD Student, History and Philosophy of Science., University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165402023-11-20T00:54:20Z2023-11-20T00:54:20ZHow can you define a ‘drug’? Nobody really knows<p>What’s a medical drug? Ask someone on the street and they’re likely to tell you it’s the kind of thing you take when you’re unwell.</p>
<p>This understanding is wrong, as we will see. But after a thorough investigation, my colleagues and I found no other potential definitions are any better. </p>
<p>Despite their centrality to medicine, we have no idea what medical drugs are. We can’t even tell the difference between drugs and food, let alone drugs and so-called “natural” alternatives.</p>
<h2>A Goldilocks definition</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jmp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jmp/jhad035/7206006">recent article</a> in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, my colleagues (Sara Linton, a pharmacist, and Maureen O’Malley, a philosopher of biology) and I tried to nail down a viable definition of medical drugs.</p>
<p>A viable definition should be broad enough to include everything classified as a drug. To get a sense of this “everything”, we used the <a href="https://go.drugbank.com/about">drug bank</a> compiled by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, which lists more than 16,000 substances.</p>
<p>A definition should also be narrow enough to exclude substances not typically considered drugs. Take food, for example. Eating a sandwich is usually never thought of as taking a drug.</p>
<p>In short, a viable definition of what drugs are should occupy a “Goldilocks” zone between these two demands: big enough to include all drugs, small enough to exclude everything else.</p>
<p>Based on an initial study of pharmacology textbooks, we found three broad ways to define drugs: in terms of what they are, how they work and what they’re used for.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, none of these options fall within the Goldilocks zone. </p>
<h2>Are drugs specific chemicals?</h2>
<p>If all drugs were a particular type of chemical, then defining drugs would be easy. But this idea is hopeless: there is nothing, chemically speaking, all drugs have in common.</p>
<p>It is also tempting to think drugs are “artificial” chemicals, made in a lab, whereas “natural” supplements come from nature, and that’s the difference.</p>
<p>But many drugs are “natural” in this sense. Aspirin, for instance, is derived from willow bark.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/modern-medicine-has-its-scientific-roots-in-the-middle-ages-how-the-logic-of-vulture-brain-remedies-and-bloodletting-lives-on-today-213702">Modern medicine has its scientific roots in the Middle Ages − how the logic of vulture brain remedies and bloodletting lives on today</a>
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<p>This has immediate implications for so-called “natural” supplements, such as fish oil. </p>
<p>If “drugs” are chemically indistinguishable from “natural” supplements, supplements should not be considered a “safe” alternative. Supplements are no less, and no more, safe than many drugs. </p>
<h2>Do drugs perform a specific function?</h2>
<p>Perhaps drugs can be defined in terms of what they do. This idea initially seems promising, as many drugs work by binding to receptor molecules in the body. </p>
<p>Think of a lock and key: the receptor molecule is the lock, and the drug is the key that opens it. </p>
<p>The discovery of receptor molecules is significant. For some, it is the “big idea” of the science of pharmacology. </p>
<p>But this definition of medical drugs is also hopeless. Many drugs don’t bind to receptors. Antacids, for instance, work simply by changing the level of acidity (pH) in a person’s body.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-placebo-effect-and-are-doctors-allowed-to-prescribe-them-55219">Explainer: what is the placebo effect and are doctors allowed to prescribe them?</a>
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<p>Many placebos also bind to receptors. Placebos are often contrasted with drugs, but defining drugs as “things that bind to receptor molecules” would include many placebos in the definition. So this definition won’t work either.</p>
<p>Is there a way to define placebos that clearly distinguishes them from drugs? This is not obvious, since defining placebos is also quite hard.</p>
<p>For instance, one might think placebos are substances that have no therapeutic effects. But placebos can have therapeutic effects (the so-called placebo effect), so this definition won’t work. A number of other definitions face similar problems.</p>
<p>Our research paves the way toward an explanation of why it is so hard to define placebos. To properly define placebos, we need to differentiate them from drugs, which we can’t do without a definition of what drugs are.</p>
<h2>Drugs make me better</h2>
<p>This brings us back to wellness. On this view, a medical drug is just any chemical substance used in medical treatment. </p>
<p>This does better: it captures the full range of substances used as drugs in medical contexts.</p>
<p>But now there is absolutely no hope of keeping food and nutrients out. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/poison-or-cure-traditional-chinese-medicine-shows-that-context-can-make-all-the-difference-163337">Poison or cure? Traditional Chinese medicine shows that context can make all the difference</a>
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<p>Consider, for example, total parenteral nutrition. This is a chemical infusion given to people who have trouble absorbing nutrients in the normal way.</p>
<p>Total parenteral nutrition is used in medical treatment. But what it does for your body isn’t really different from what a good sandwich does.</p>
<p>Any treatment-based account of drugs inevitably wipes out the contrast with food.</p>
<h2>So what?</h2>
<p>In our day-to-day lives, we make choices that rely on an implicit understanding of what drugs are. </p>
<p>For instance, we take paracetamol because it is a drug. Many of us may also take fish oil precisely because we believe it isn’t a drug.</p>
<p>Without an account of what drugs are, we risk making serious mistakes.</p>
<p>We might take substances we think are “inert” (placebos) because they are “natural” (like fish oil) when in fact they are active drugs. </p>
<p>Similarly, all legal regulation of medical drugs assumes we already know what a drug is. </p>
<p>But we don’t: our understanding is clearly evolving. This means regulation must also continually change. Substantial resources must therefore be devoted to reworking legislation as we continue to rethink what medical drugs are, as the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/mdma-and-psilocybin-will-be-come-legal-from-1-juy-heres-who-can-get-it/jpf6gj4di">recent reclassification</a> of MDMA and psilocybin as medicines in Australia demonstrates.</p>
<p>Then there’s food. Food is not administered or regulated like a drug in a hospital, with the exception of total parenteral nutrition and similar substances.</p>
<p>But if doctors use food like a drug to contribute to patient wellbeing, then perhaps it should be subject to the same standards.</p>
<p>This may require radically rethinking the way meals are provided in a hospital. Perhaps meals should be administered, and regulated, with the same care as drugs. </p>
<p>Hospital lunches might never be the same. But that could be a good thing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216540/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Everybody thinks they know what drugs are, but a clear definition is surprisingly elusive.Sam Baron, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2079932023-06-28T16:55:23Z2023-06-28T16:55:23ZIs ‘wokeism’ slowly killing scientific merit? Look to the latter for the real threat to science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534051/original/file-20230626-19-t91dl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C4521%2C2984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has become quite common to complain nowadays that, given the overall concern for marginalized groups and the claim that social justice should be of interest to anyone, ideology rules science. Some go even as far as comparing the current research system with <a href="https://ethos.lps.library.cmu.edu/article/id/560/">Lysenkoism</a>, a flawed approach to plant genetics promoted by Soviet and Chinese authorities.</p>
<p>Such as the case with an April 27 op-ed in the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hurtful-idea-of-scientific-merit-controversy-nih-energy-research-f122f74d">“The ‘hurtful’ idea of scientific merit”</a>, by scientists Jerry Coyne and Anna Krylov. Institutions and journals, they asserted, have forgotten “scientific merit” and replaced it with ideology, fearing that the so-called “wokists” are supported by governments and official agencies in the same way that Trofim Lysenko’s false theory of the inheritance of acquired characters was enforced by Stalin. If true, this is terrible news, since in USSR the ideological supremacy of Lysenkoism led to many executions and exiles.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534045/original/file-20230626-7296-eraf42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534045/original/file-20230626-7296-eraf42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534045/original/file-20230626-7296-eraf42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534045/original/file-20230626-7296-eraf42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534045/original/file-20230626-7296-eraf42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534045/original/file-20230626-7296-eraf42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534045/original/file-20230626-7296-eraf42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The adoption of Trofim Lysenko’s pseudo-scientific ideas contributed to the famines that killed millions of people in the USSR and China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko#/media/File:Trofim_Lysenko_portrait.jpg">Russian Federation foundation/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The “anti-wokeist” have raised analogous critiques on many occasions. An example in the humanities was the denouncement of the disclosure of the relations between poet <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/25/british-library-apologises-for-linking-ted-hughes-to-slave-trade?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">Ted Hughes’s family and slavery</a>. In psychology, there was the case where the introduction of the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0963721417753600">notion of “white privilege” in psychology</a> was criticized.</p>
<h2>The tricky concept of scientific merit</h2>
<p>Coyne and Krylov speak of biology, but one would easily admit that the controversies over so-called wokism, social justice and truth are a concern for academia overall, which includes natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and law. Their claim is supposed to hold for academia in general, and “scientific merit” is here synonymous with “academic merit”. (These two terms will be used equivalently hereafter.) But such notion of “scientific merit” is obscure, and in the absence of a reliable method to measure it, invoking it is an empty claim. Worse, the way merit itself is used by institutions and policies proves ultimately much more deleterious to science than any radicalized “social-justice warrior ideology”, if this phrase is even meaningful.</p>
<p>“Merit” in academia means that one should be credited with a robust and measurable contribution to science. Yet when a discovery is made or some theorem is proved, this is always based on former works, as it has been reminded us through an <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5">exhaustive reconstitution</a> of the role Rosalind Franklin played in the worldly praised discovery of DNA (1953) by Crick and Watson, who were awarded the Nobel Prize for this while Franklin died four years earlier. Hence the attribution of merit is complicated by the inextricability of causal contributions, making the notion of “intellectual credit” complex, as is the very idea of an “author”, to whom this credit in principle is due. As in a soccer or handball team, parsing each player’s contributions to the goal the team scored is no trivial business.</p>
<p>Thus, social conventions have been invented to overcome this almost metaphysical underdetermination of the “author” (and hence her or his merit). In science, one of them is the <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198117"><em>disciplines</em></a>: being an author is not the same in mathematics as in sociology, and disciplines determine what is required to sign a paper, hence to be an author within a given field. Another conventional tool is the <em>citation</em> – the more one is cited, the higher their merit.</p>
<p>Citation rankings are therefore supposed to track the genuine <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691125169/on-justification"><em>grandeur</em></a> of individuals. Estimating this requires listing all papers signed by an individual and cited by their peers, and gives rise to metrics such as the <em>impact factor</em> (for journals) or the <em>h-index</em> (for scientists), which are the basis of our merit system in science, since any assessment of one’s academic and chances to be hired, promoted or funded in any country juggles with such combined figures. As Canadian sociologist <a href="https://www.ost.uqam.ca/en/publications/the-transformation-of-the-scientific-paper-from-knowledge-to-accounting-unit/">Yves Gingras put it</a>, while the “paper” had been a unit of knowledge for four centuries, it is now also a unit of evaluation and is used daily by hiring committees and funding agencies worldwide.</p>
<p>Unlike what Coyne and Krylov say, these intend to find the most meriting scientists by tracking the number of citations and publications – the latter allowing one to increase the former, since the more papers you publish, the more citations your work will get. Hearing that China is now the <a href="https://theconversation.com/china-now-publishes-more-high-quality-science-than-any-other-nation-should-the-us-be-worried-192080">first publishing country</a> and worrying about its imminent victory in the race for publications, as we daily hear it, only makes sense if you equate science’s value with these grandeur metrics.</p>
<h2>Where science loses out in the idea of merit</h2>
<p>Yet measuring scientific merit in this way damages the quality of science for three reasons that have been analysed by scientists themselves. The overall result is that such kind of measurement yields “natural selection from bad science”, as the evolutionary biologists Paul E. Smaldino and Richard McElreath put it in a <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.160384">2016 paper</a>. Why?</p>
<p>First, one can easily game the metrics – for example, by slicing one paper into two, or writing one more paper by solely tweaking the parameters of a model. Obviously, this strategy unnecessarily expands the amount of literature that researchers have to read and thereby increases the difficulty of distinguishing signal from noise in a growing forest of academic papers. Shortcuts such as fraud or plagiarism are also thereby incentivized; no wonder that agencies for scientific integrity and trackers of scientific misconduct have proliferated.</p>
<p>Second, this measure of merit induces less exploratory science, since being exploratory takes time and risks finding nothing so that your competitors will reap all the rewards. For the same reason, journals will favour what ecologists traditionally refer to as <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fdec0000033"><em>exploitation</em> rather than <em>exploration</em> of new territories</a>, since their impact factor relies on citation numbers. A recent <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x%23citeas"><em>Nature</em> paper</a> argued that science became much less disruptive in the last decade, while bibliometry-based assessments have flourished.</p>
<p>Finally, even if one wants to keep a measure of merit related to publication activity, bibliometry-based merit is unidimensional because real science – as revealed by its computer-assisted quantitative study – develops as an unfolding landscape rather than a linear progress. Therein, what constitutes a “major contribution” to science could take several forms, depending on where one stands in this landscape.</p>
<h2>Rethinking scientific progress</h2>
<p>At the ISC-PIF (Paris) <a href="https://iscpif.fr/projects/gargantext/?lang=en">researchers have mapped the dynamics of science</a> by detecting over the years the emergence, fusion, fission, and divergence of topics defined by clusters of correlated words (as exemplified in the figure below about the field of quantum computing, where fissions and merging that occurred in the history of the field are graphically visible). It appears that the kinds of work done by scientists in distinct stages of arising, growth, or decline of a field (understood here as a set of topics) are very different, and yield incomparable types of merits.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534625/original/file-20230628-21-uoc72f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534625/original/file-20230628-21-uoc72f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534625/original/file-20230628-21-uoc72f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534625/original/file-20230628-21-uoc72f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534625/original/file-20230628-21-uoc72f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534625/original/file-20230628-21-uoc72f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534625/original/file-20230628-21-uoc72f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Advances over time in the field of quantum computing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>When a field is mature, it is easy to produce many papers. However, when it is emerging – for instance by the fission of a field or the fusion of two previous ones – the publications and audiences are scarce, so that one cannot produce as many papers as a competitor working in a more mature field. Levelling everything through common reference to citation numbers – notwithstanding how refined might be the metrics – will always miss the proper nature of each specific contribution to science.</p>
<p>Whatever the word <em>merit</em> means in science, it is multidimensional, thus all bibliometry-based indexes and metrics will miss it because they will turn it into a unidimensional figure. But this ill-defined and ill-measured merit, as the basis of any assessment of scientists and therefore allocation of resources (positions, grants, etc.), will be instrumental in shaping the physiognomy of academia and thereby corrupt science in a firmer way than any ideology.</p>
<p>Therefore, vindicating merit as it is currently assessed is not a gold standard for science. In turn, such merit is already known to be a deleterious approach to knowledge production, yielding several negative consequences for science as well as for scientists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>While some worry “wokeist” ideology could corrupt scientific merit, it could be our problematic understanding of the latter poses an even greater threat to science, two philosophers argue.Philippe Huneman, Directeur de recherche CNRS, Institut d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneDavid Chavalarias, Research director, Centre d’Analyses de Mathématiques Sociales (CAMS), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2025502023-03-29T09:56:05Z2023-03-29T09:56:05ZGreat Mysteries of Physics 4: does objective reality exist?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517677/original/file-20230327-22-x0ycpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=57%2C0%2C3776%2C2149&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/contemplative-young-hispanic-woman-closing-eyes-2214716217">Bricolage/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/638f4b009a65b10011b94c5e/642304b2dd47b5001151d53f" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="190px"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-807" class="tc-infographic" height="100px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/807/1668471fb1e76a459995c87bd439c36b04b754ac/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>It is hard to shake the intuition that there’s a real and objective physical world out there. If I see an umbrella on top of a shelf, I assume you do too. And if I don’t look at the umbrella, I expect it to remain there as long as nobody steals it. But the theory of quantum mechanics, which governs the micro-world of atoms and particles, threatens this commonsense view. </p>
<p>The fourth episode of our podcast Great Mysteries of Physics – hosted by me, Miriam Frankel, science editor at The Conversation, and supported by FQxI, the Foundational Questions Institute – is all about the strange world of quantum mechanics. </p>
<p>According to quantum theory, each system, such as a particle, can be described by a wave function, which evolves over time. The wave function allows particles to hold multiple contradictory features, such as being in several different places at once – this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when nobody’s looking.</p>
<p>Although each potential location in a superposition has a certain probability of appearing, the second you observe it, the particle randomly picks one – breaking the superposition. Physicists often refer to this as the wave function collapsing. But why should nature behave differently depending on whether we are looking or not? And why should it be random?</p>
<p>Not everyone is worried. “If you want to explain everything we can observe in our experiments without randomness, you have to go through some really weird and long-winded explanations that I am much more uncomfortable with,” argues Marcus Huber, a professor of quantum information at the Technical University of Vienna. And indeed, you can get rid of randomness if you accept that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/great-mysteries-of-physics-1-is-time-an-illusion-201026">future can influence the past</a>, that there’s more than one outcome to every measurement or that everything in the universe is predetermined since the dawn of time.</p>
<p>Another problem is that quantum mechanics seems to give rise to contradictory facts. Imagine a scientist, Lisa, inside a lab measuring the location of a particle. Before her colleague, Nikhil, knocks on the lab door and asks what outcome she saw, he would measure Lisa as being in a superposition of both branches – one where she sees the particle here and one where she sees the particle there. But at the same time, Lisa herself may be convinced that that she has a definite answer as to where the particle is. </p>
<p>That means that these two people will say that the state of reality is different – they’d have different facts about where the particle is.</p>
<p>There are may other oddities about quantum mechanics, too. Particles can be entangled in a way that enables them to somehow share information instantaneously even if they’re light years apart, for example. This challenges another common intution: that objects need a physical mediator to interact.</p>
<p>Physicists have therefore long debated how to interpret quantum mechanics. Is it a true and objective description of reality? If so, what happens to all the possible outcomes that we don’t measure? The many worlds interpretation argues they do happen – but in parallel universes. </p>
<p>Another set of interpretations, collectively known as the Copenhagen interpretation, suggests quantum mechanics is to some extent a user’s manual rather than a perfect description of reality. “The Copenhagen interpretations what they share is at least a partial step back from the full-blown descriptive aim of physics,” explains Chris Timpson, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford. “So the quantum state, this thing which describes these lovely superpositions, that’s just a tool for making predictions about the behaviour of macroscopic measurement scenarios.”</p>
<p>But why don’t we see quantum effect on the scale of humans? Chiara Marletto, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford, has developed a meta-theory called constructor theory which aims to encompass all of physics based solely on simple principles about which physical transformations in the universe are ultimately possible, which are impossible, and why.</p>
<p>She hopes it can help us understand why we don’t see quantum effects on the macroscopic scale of humans. “There’s nothing [in the laws of physics] that says it’s impossible to have quantum effects at the scale of a human being,” she says. “So either we discover a new principle that says that they really are impossible – which would be interesting – or in the absence of that, it is more a question of trying harder to create conditions in the laboratory to bring these effects about.”</p>
<p>Another problem with quantum mechanics is that it isn’t compatible with general relativity, which describes nature on the largest of scales. Marletto is using constructor theory to try to find ways to combine the two. She has also come up with some experiments which could test such models – and rule out certain interpretations of quantum mechanics.</p>
<p><em>You can listen to Great Mysteries of Physics via any of the apps listed above, our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/638f4b009a65b10011b94c5e">RSS feed</a>, or find out how else to listen here. You can also read a <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2630/MoP__Ep4_-_Quantum_Mechanics_TRANSCRIPT.docx_%283%29.pdf?1681213764">transcript of the episode here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chiara Marletto has received funding from Moore Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Eutopia Foundation, FQxi, Templeton World Charity Foundation. Marcus Huber has received funding from the Austrian science fund (fwf), the European research council (ERC), the European commission (EC), the fqxi institute, the Templeton foundation and the Austrian academy of sciences. Christopher Timpson has received funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council; John Templeton Foundation; Templeton World Charity Foundation; The Foundational Questions Institute.</span></em></p>Some physicists don’t believe that quantum mechanics is a perfect description of objective reality.Miriam Frankel, Podcast host, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1889882022-09-18T20:14:56Z2022-09-18T20:14:56ZWhy should we trust science? Because it doesn’t trust itself<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485016/original/file-20220916-26-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C663%2C8609%2C4838&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many of us accept science is a reliable guide to what we ought to believe – but not all of us do.</p>
<p>Mistrust of science has led to scepticism around several important issues, from climate change denial to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID pandemic. And while most of us may be inclined to dismiss such scepticism as unwarranted, it does raise the question: why ought we to trust science?</p>
<p>As a philosopher with a focus on the philosophy of science, I’m particularly intrigued by this question. As it turns out, diving into the works of great thinkers can help provide an answer. </p>
<h2>Common arguments</h2>
<p>One thought that might initially spring to mind is we ought to trust scientists because what they say is true. </p>
<p>But there are problems with this. One is the question of whether what a scientist says is, in fact, the truth. Sceptics will point out scientists are just humans and remain <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-you-say-science-is-right-youre-wrong/">prone to making mistakes</a>.</p>
<p>Also, if we look at the history of science, we find that what scientists believed in the past has often later turned out to be false. And this suggests what scientists believe now might one day turn out to be false. After all, there were times in history when people thought mercury could <a href="https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/opinion/syphilis-and-the-use-of-mercury">treat</a> syphilis, and that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/phrenology">the bumps on</a> a person’s skull could reveal their character traits.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=113%2C46%2C3337%2C2250&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A model of a head with phrenology markings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=113%2C46%2C3337%2C2250&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484991/original/file-20220916-16-cffhqt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Phrenology was a popular pseudoscience in the 19th century that claimed the bumps on a person’s skull could reveal their mental traits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Another tempting suggestion for why we ought to trust science is because it is based on “facts and logic”. </p>
<p>This may be true, but unfortunately it is of limited help in persuading someone who is inclined to reject what scientists say. Both sides in a dispute will claim they have the facts on their side; it is not unknown for climate change <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2009/04/29/climate-myths-andrew-bolts-claims-scientifically-tested/">deniers</a> to say global warming is just a “theory”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vaccine-hesitancy-why-doing-your-own-research-doesnt-work-but-reason-alone-wont-change-minds-169814">Vaccine hesitancy: Why ‘doing your own research’ doesn’t work, but reason alone won’t change minds</a>
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<h2>Popper and the scientific method</h2>
<p>One influential answer to the question of why we should trust scientists is because they use the scientific method. This, of course, raises the question: what is the scientific method?</p>
<p>Possibly the best-known account is offered by science philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper">Karl Popper</a>, who has influenced an Einstein Medal-winning <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991FoPh...21.1357J/abstract">mathematical physicist</a> and Nobel Prize winners in <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2013.0022">biology</a> and <a href="https://www.innovation-intelligence.com/bios/john-carew-eccles">physiology and medicine</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white headshot of Karl Popper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484995/original/file-20220916-12-x8yc3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">British-Austrian Karl Popper (1902-1994) was among the most influential science philosophers of the 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Ffacelab.org%2Fdebruine%2FTeaching%2FMeth_A%2Ffiles%2F2009%2FPopper_1957.doc&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK">For Popper</a>, science proceeds by means of what he calls “conjectures and refutations”. Scientists are confronted with some question, and offer a possible answer. This answer is a conjecture in the sense that, at least initially, it is not known if it is right or wrong. </p>
<p>Popper says scientists then do their best to refute this conjecture, or prove it wrong. Typically it is refuted, rejected, and replaced by a better one. This too will then be tested, and eventually replaced by an even better one. In this way science progresses. </p>
<p>Sometimes this process can be incredibly slow. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves more than 100 years ago, as part of his general theory of relativity. But it was only in 2015 that scientists managed to <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211">observe them</a>.</p>
<p>For Popper, at the core of the scientific method is the attempt to refute or disprove theories, which is called the “falsification principle”. If scientists have not been able to refute a theory over a long period of time, despite their best efforts, then in Popper’s terminology the theory has been “corroborated”. </p>
<p>This suggests a possible answer to the question of why we ought to trust what scientists tell us. It is because, despite their best efforts, they have not been able to disprove the idea they are telling us is true.</p>
<h2>Majority rules</h2>
<p>Recently, an answer to the question was further articulated in a <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179001/why-trust-science">book</a> by science historian Naomi Oreskes. Oreskes acknowledges the importance Popper placed on the role of attempting to refute a theory, but also emphasises the social and consensual element of scientific practice. </p>
<p>For Oreskes, we have reason to trust science because, or to the extent that, there is a consensus among the (relevant) scientific community that a particular claim is true – wherein that same scientific community has done their best to disprove it, and failed. </p>
<p>Here is a brief sketch of what a scientific idea typically goes through before a consensus emerges it is correct.</p>
<p>A scientist might give a paper on some idea to colleagues, who then discuss it. One aim of this discussion will be to find something wrong with it. If the paper passes the test, the scientist might write a peer-reviewed paper on the same idea. If the referees think it has sufficient merit, it will be published. </p>
<p>Others may then subject the idea to experimental tests. If it passes a sufficient number of these, a consensus may emerge it is correct. </p>
<p>A good example of a theory undergoing this transition is the theory of global warming and human impact on it. It had been suggested as early as 1896 that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere <a href="https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf">might lead</a> to global warming. </p>
<p>In the early 20th century, another theory emerged that not only was this happening, but carbon dioxide released from human activities (namely fossil fuel burning) could accelerate global warming. It gained some support at the time, but most scientists remained <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo8670161.html">unconvinced</a>. </p>
<p>However, throughout the second half of the 20th century and what has so far passed of the 21st, the theory of human-caused climate change has so successfully passed ongoing testing that one recent meta-study found more than 99% of the relevant scientific community <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966">accept its reality</a>. It started off perhaps as a mere hypothesis, successfully passed testing for more than a hundred years, and has now gained near-universal acceptance.</p>
<h2>The bottom line</h2>
<p>This does not necessarily mean we ought to uncritically accept everything scientists say. There is of course a difference between a single isolated scientist or small group saying something, and there being a consensus within the scientific community that something is true.</p>
<p>And, of course, for a variety of reasons – some practical, some financial, some otherwise – scientists may not have done their best to refute some idea. And even if scientists have repeatedly tried, but failed, to refute a given theory, the history of science suggests at some point in the future it may still turn out to be false when new evidence comes to light.</p>
<p>So when should we trust science? The view that seems to emerge from Popper, Oreskes and other writers in the field is we have good, but fallible, reason to trust what scientists say when, despite their own best efforts to disprove an idea, there remains a consensus that it is true.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-is-the-most-important-thing-a-scientist-needs-177226">Curious Kids: what is the most important thing a scientist needs?</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scientists aren’t always right, and new evidence can always emerge to disprove a theory. Still, philosophy helps explain why there is good reason for us to trust science regardless.John Wright, Adjunct Research Fellow in Philosophy, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1902772022-09-14T17:00:27Z2022-09-14T17:00:27ZShould we really believe scientific facts will last forever when history is full of revolutions in thinking?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484353/original/file-20220913-4740-ica6sc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C0%2C5760%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Phrenology has long since been overturned, but it was once very popular among scientists.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/phrenology-head-busts-1100787437">Holly Anne Cromer/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Astronomers once believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. In the 19th century, scientists thought the shape of a person’s skull could reveal their mental <a href="https://theconversation.com/neuroscientists-put-the-dubious-theory-of-phrenology-through-rigorous-testing-for-the-first-time-88291">strengths or weaknesses</a>. And in the 20th century, many scientists fiercely opposed the idea that continents drift. All views that have since been completely overturned.</p>
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<p>So can we trust the scientific truths of today? Is it possible to identify scientific ideas and claims that will last forever, and are not susceptible to future scientific revolutions? Some would say certainly not. But my new book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/identifying-future-proof-science-9780192862730?cc=gb&lang=en&#">Identifying future-proof science</a>, combines historical, philosophical and sociological enquiry to argue that it is often possible.</p>
<p>There is a philosophical stance sometimes called <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modesty-humility/">intellectual humility</a>, which involves doubting whether there are ultimate truths by looking at evidence from scientific revolutions and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/">paradigm shifts</a> (changes in systems of belief and knowledge) in history. </p>
<p>At first this seems very sensible, perhaps even rational. One might add that humility is a virtue. Who would dare to assert that some scientific claim, endorsed today, will still be endorsed by scientific communities operating 5,000 years from now?</p>
<p>Those sceptical of scientific assertions often employ a simple argument: scientists were sure in the past, and ended up being wrong. Physicist Albert Michelson (famed for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/light/The-Michelson-Morley-experiment">Michelson-Morley experiment</a>) <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.19.479.380.a">wrote in 1903</a>: “The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.” </p>
<p>This was shortly before physics was dramatically transformed by the development of <a href="https://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html">general relativity</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/">quantum mechanics</a>. There are many other such quotes, apparently demonstrating the overconfidence of even the best scientists. </p>
<p><a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes">Naomi Oreskes</a>, a historian and defender of science, wrote in her 2019 book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179001/why-trust-science">Why Trust Science?</a> that “The history of science shows that scientific truths are perishable,” and “the contributions of science cannot be viewed as permanent.”</p>
<p>Physics Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674011205&content=reviews">has said</a>, “There are truths out there to be discovered, truths that once discovered will form a permanent part of human knowledge.” </p>
<p>But Oreskes’ <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179001/why-trust-science">response</a> is stark: “Weinberg is a brilliant man … But this comment reflects either a shocking ignorance of the history of science, or a shocking disregard of evidence compiled from another field.” She means history.</p>
<h2>Scientific facts</h2>
<p>What are “scientific facts”, then? According to intellectual humility, “facts” only exist in a weak sense: they are fleeting and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/">relative</a> to the current paradigm. In paradigm shifts throughout history, “facts” have often been left behind, with new ones taking their place. </p>
<p>People who subscribe to intellectual humility aren’t necessarily saying that nothing is permanent. They are saying we don’t know which claims (if any) are immune to future paradigm change. They also don’t say that we shouldn’t trust science; Oreskes is absolutely clear on that.</p>
<p>But intellectual humility starts to look absurd once pushed to its logical conclusion. It would mean that we don’t really know that the Sun is a star, that continents drift, that smoking causes cancer, or that contemporary global warming <a href="https://theconversation.com/co-levels-and-climate-change-is-there-really-a-controversy-119268">is real and caused by humans</a>.</p>
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<img alt="image of a polar bear on an ice float." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Climate change is a fact.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/polar-bear-on-ice-floe-melting-1801610557">PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In all of these cases (and many more), scientific community opinion put the matter beyond reasonable doubt long ago. It is absurd to suppose that, in 50 years, following a scientific revolution, we might look back and say, “People used to believe that smoking causes cancer.” </p>
<p>If that were reasonable, one might also suppose that the Earth might be flat. The view slides into “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/">radical scepticism</a>”, where one supposes that we might all be living in a dream, or in <a href="https://philosophynow.org/issues/32/The_Truman_Show">The Truman Show</a>.</p>
<p>But what if I only think this way because I’m a cognitive prisoner, trapped within the conceptual scheme of the paradigm I’ve grown up in? Sure, to me it seems completely undeniable that the Sun is a star, and it seems absurd to doubt it. But perhaps it won’t seem so absurd to those living in a future paradigm. </p>
<h2>Observing the previously unobservable</h2>
<p>There’s a lot to learn from history. Consider the tale of continental drift, for example. It was once merely a speculation that continents move. Then during the 20th century it became a solid theory, and eventually a “scientific fact”, becoming the consensus view among scientists.</p>
<p>At this point, the sceptic might think that the solid scientific consensus proves nothing, since the consensus might have developed for bad reasons such as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/group-think-what-it-is-and-how-to-avoid-it-161697">groupthink</a>”. But look what happened next: we developed instruments which could actually watch continental drift <a href="https://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/post/series.html">happening in real time</a>. Thus continental drift is clearly future-proof: we can see it happening.</p>
<p>Such developments are crucial for showing that a solid scientific consensus can be linked with truth. As my book shows, in cases where a truly solid scientific consensus, followed by the development of instruments which can look and see the thing or process in question, the scientific consensus has been vindicated.</p>
<p>There are many examples. We now have microscopes that can reveal the behaviour of viruses, and <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1231887?versioned=true">we see viruses</a> doing what we already knew they were doing. </p>
<p>We can also use microscopes to see the structures of all kinds of molecules, and once again, in any case where there was a solid scientific consensus regarding the structure (for example <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1176210">the hexagonal benzene ring</a> molecule), we find that the consensus was right. So too, when it comes to <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nl3039162">the double-helix structure of DNA</a>.</p>
<p>These cases show that a solid international scientific consensus can be trusted as revealing the truth. And that includes the cases where we have not yet developed (and may never develop) technologies allowing us to observe what is currently unobservable.</p>
<p>What about the concern that, in the past, scientific communities reached a strong consensus regarding some idea which has now been thoroughly rejected? </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r9QDqwZS704?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>I have worked out that, throughout the entire history of science, when the following two specific criteria have been met, the claim in question has never been overturned, but has instead simply been further corroborated.</p>
<p>First, at least 95% of relevant scientists are willing to state the claim unambiguously and without caveats or hedging. If prompted, they would be willing to call it an “established scientific fact”.</p>
<p>Second, the relevant scientific community is large, international and incorporates a substantial diversity of perspectives (as in, for example, climate science).</p>
<p>These criteria are only met when there is a huge mass of first-order scientific evidence for the claim in question. They stand as the best proxy we can ever have for the impossible alternative, namely to analyse all the scientific evidence ourselves, over many decades, from a large number of different perspectives. In practice, these two simple rules can help us identify future-proof science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Vickers received funding from The British Academy.</span></em></p>Two simple rules can help us identify future-proof science.Peter Vickers, Professor in Philosophy of Science, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1840522022-08-14T20:03:47Z2022-08-14T20:03:47Z‘Life hates surprises’: can an ambitious theory unify biology, neuroscience and psychology?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471067/original/file-20220627-23-zrmadq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C70%2C6659%2C3620&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the early 1990s, British neuroscientist <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/karl-friston-free-energy-principle-artificial-intelligence/">Karl Friston</a> was poring over brain scans. The scans produced terabytes of digital output, and Friston had to find new techniques to sort and classify the massive flows of data.</p>
<p>Along the way he had a revelation. The techniques he was using might be similar to what the <em>brain itself</em> was doing when it processed visual data. </p>
<p>Could it be he had stumbled upon a solution to a data engineering problem that nature had discovered long ago? Friston’s eureka moment led to a “theory of everything”, which claims to explain the behaviour of the brain, the mind, and life itself.</p>
<p>As we discovered when we put together <a href="https://link.springer.com/journal/10539/topicalCollection/AC_5f543c8a783e875b118b0db6a491c6cf">a collection of papers</a>, the theory – known as the “free energy principle” – is controversial among scientists and philosophers.</p>
<h2>Re-engineering nature</h2>
<p>Friston’s initial idea was appealing because the problem facing the brain is similar to that facing an experimental scientist. Both must use the data they have to draw conclusions about events they cannot observe directly. </p>
<p>The neuroscientist uses scan data to infer facts about brain processes. The brain uses sensory input to infer facts about the external world.</p>
<p>The algorithm Friston used to draw conclusions from his data – a mathematical operation called “minimising free energy” – was based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variational_Bayesian_methods">existing techniques in statistical analysis</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478674/original/file-20220811-26-nu336a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Karl Friston thought the method he used to interpret brain scans might be the same as the method the brain itself used to interpret visual data.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging#/media/File:Researcher-test.jpg">NIMH / Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Friston (and others such as computer scientist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton">Geoff Hinton</a>) realised artificial neural networks could easily carry out this operation. And if artificial neural networks could do it, perhaps biological neural networks could too.</p>
<p>But Friston didn’t stop there. He reasoned that the problem of drawing conclusions from limited information is a problem faced by all living things. </p>
<p>This led him to the “<a href="https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/%7Ekarl/A%20free%20energy%20principle%20for%20the%20brain.pdf">free energy principle</a>”: that every living thing, everywhere, minimises free energy.</p>
<h2>The free energy principle</h2>
<p>But what, exactly, is free energy? Why might all living things minimise it?</p>
<p>Start with a simpler idea: every organism is trying to minimise how surprising its experiences are. By “surprising”, we mean experiences that have not been encountered previously by the organism or its ancestors. </p>
<p>Your ancestors were successful enough to produce a lineage that eventually produced you, so what they experienced must have promoted survival. And your own experiences so far have resulted in you still being alive. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-happens-when-your-brain-looks-at-itself-167938">What happens when your brain looks at itself?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So experiences you have not had before – surprises, in other words – may be dangerous. (The ultimate surprise is death.)</p>
<p>We can dress this idea in mathematical clothes by defining surprise in terms of probabilities. The less probable an experience, the more surprising.</p>
<p>And that’s where “free energy” enters the picture. It’s not energy as we would usually think of it – in this situation, free energy measures how improbable your experience would be <em>if</em> a certain unobserved situation were true. </p>
<h2>No surprises?</h2>
<p>Minimising free energy means choosing to believe in the unobserved situation that makes your observations least surprising.</p>
<p>Here’s an example: imagine you are picnicking in the park, watching two friends kick a football to and fro. Your view is occluded by a tree, so you don’t see the full trajectory of the kicked ball.</p>
<p>Now, it is possible that there is a third person behind the tree, who catches the ball each time it passes them and then throws on a spare ball they have handy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478670/original/file-20220811-19-zke771.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478670/original/file-20220811-19-zke771.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478670/original/file-20220811-19-zke771.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478670/original/file-20220811-19-zke771.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478670/original/file-20220811-19-zke771.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478670/original/file-20220811-19-zke771.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478670/original/file-20220811-19-zke771.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There might be a person behind this tree. But on the whole, it’s less surprising to believe there isn’t one.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/S297j2CsdlM">Simon Wilkes / Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>However, there is no evidence for the existence of this third person, so their existence would be very surprising. So you can minimise your surprise by believing there is no secret third person behind the tree. </p>
<p>Minimizing free energy can help guide our actions, too. According to the free energy principle, you should do things that will change the world in such a way that your experiences are less likely to be surprising!</p>
<p>Seen from this perspective, we eat to avoid the surprise of extreme hunger, and we seek shelter to avoid the surprise of being cold.</p>
<h2>How much does a ‘theory of everything’ actually explain?</h2>
<p>So the free energy principle is a “theory of everything” spanning neuroscience, psychology and biology! But <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-021-09818-x">not everyone is convinced</a> it’s a useful idea.</p>
<p>Some of the skepticism concerns whether or not the theory is true. An even bigger concern is that, even if it is true, it may not be very useful. </p>
<p>But why would people think this?</p>
<p>The American population biologist Richard Levins <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27836590">famously outlined a dilemma</a> facing scientists who study biological systems. </p>
<p>These systems contain a huge amount of potentially important detail, and when we model them we cannot hope to capture all of it. So how much detail should we attempt to capture, and how much should we leave out? </p>
<p>Levins concluded there is a trade-off between the level of detail in a model and the number of systems it applies to. A model that captures a lot of detail about a specific system will be less informative about other, similar systems. </p>
<p>For instance, we can model the technique of an Olympic swimmer in order to improve their performance. But that model will not faithfully represent a different swimmer. </p>
<p>On the other hand, a model that covers more systems will be less informative about any particular system. By modelling how humans swim in general, we can design swimming lessons for children, but individual differences between children will be ignored.</p>
<p>The moral is that our models should fit our aims. If you want to explain the workings of a particular system, produce a highly specific model. If you want to say things about a lot of different systems, produce a general model.</p>
<h2>Too general to be useful?</h2>
<p>The free energy principle is a highly general model. It might even be the most general model in the life sciences today. </p>
<p>But how useful are such models in the day-to-day practice of biology or psychology? <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/unification-at-the-cost-of-realism-and-precision/93ABC2BBFD1C26EF1146DE41796DE4F1">Critics</a> argue Friston’s theory is so general that it is hard to see how it might be put to practical use. </p>
<p>Proponents claim <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022249620300857">successes</a> for the free energy principle, but will it turn out to be an enormous breakthrough? Or do theories that try to explain everything end up explaining nothing?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael David Kirchhoff receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ross Pain and Stephen Francis Mann do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some scientists believe the ‘free energy principle’ can explain the behaviour of all living things – but others say it paints the world with too broad a brush to be useful.Ross Pain, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Philosophy, Australian National UniversityMichael David Kirchhoff, Senior Lecturer, Philosophy, University of WollongongStephen Francis Mann, Guest Researcher, Philosophy, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1812682022-04-14T05:55:33Z2022-04-14T05:55:33ZTime might not exist, according to physicists and philosophers – but that’s okay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458074/original/file-20220414-12-s9hvgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C2%2C1979%2C1119&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/composition-space-time-flight-spiral-roman-1221181900">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock.</p>
<p>But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously.</p>
<p>How can that be, and what would it mean? It’ll take a little while to explain, but don’t worry: even if time doesn’t exist, our lives will go on as usual.</p>
<h2>A crisis in physics</h2>
<p>Physics is in crisis. For the past century or so, we have explained the universe with two wildly successful physical theories: general relativity and quantum mechanics.</p>
<p>Quantum mechanics describes how things work in the incredibly tiny world of particles and particle interactions. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-einsteins-general-theory-of-relativity-killed-off-common-sense-physics-50042">General relativity</a> describes the big picture of gravity and how objects move.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-einsteins-general-theory-of-relativity-killed-off-common-sense-physics-50042">How Einstein's general theory of relativity killed off common-sense physics</a>
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<p>Both theories work extremely well in their own right, but the two are thought to conflict with one another. Though the exact nature of the conflict is controversial, scientists generally agree both theories need to be replaced with a new, more general theory. </p>
<p>Physicists want to produce a theory of “quantum gravity” that <em>replaces</em> general relativity and quantum mechanics, while capturing the extraordinary success of both. Such a theory would explain how gravity’s big picture works at the miniature scale of particles.</p>
<h2>Time in quantum gravity</h2>
<p>It turns out that producing a theory of quantum gravity is extraordinarily difficult. </p>
<p>One attempt to overcome the conflict between the two theories is <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-string-theory-2983">string theory</a>. String theory replaces particles with strings vibrating in as many as 11 dimensions. </p>
<p>However, string theory faces a further difficulty. String theories provide a range of models that describe a universe broadly like our own, and they don’t really make any clear predictions that can be tested by experiments to figure out which model is the right one. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-string-theory-2983">Explainer: String theory</a>
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</p>
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<p>In the 1980s and 1990s, many physicists became dissatisfied with string theory and came up with a range of new mathematical approaches to quantum gravity. </p>
<p>One of the most prominent of these is <a href="https://www.space.com/loop-quantum-gravity-space-time-quantized">loop quantum gravity</a>, which proposes that the fabric of space and time is made of a network of extremely small discrete chunks, or “loops”.</p>
<p>One of the remarkable aspects of loop quantum gravity is that it appears to eliminate time entirely. </p>
<p>Loop quantum gravity is not alone in abolishing time: a number of other approaches also seem to remove time as a fundamental aspect of reality. </p>
<h2>Emergent time</h2>
<p>So we know we need a new physical theory to explain the universe, and that this theory might not feature time.</p>
<p>Suppose such a theory turns out to be correct. Would it follow that time <em>does not exist</em>? </p>
<p>It’s complicated, and it depends what we mean by <em>exist</em>.</p>
<p>Theories of physics don’t include any tables, chairs, or people, and yet we still accept that tables, chairs and people exist.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person walking beneath a large clock swinging from a rope." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458075/original/file-20220414-24-y990i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458075/original/file-20220414-24-y990i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458075/original/file-20220414-24-y990i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458075/original/file-20220414-24-y990i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458075/original/file-20220414-24-y990i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458075/original/file-20220414-24-y990i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458075/original/file-20220414-24-y990i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If time isn’t a fundamental property of the universe, it may still ‘emerge’ from something more basic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/surreal-view-man-walking-on-pavement-1097947538">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Why? Because we assume that such things exist at a higher level than the level described by physics. </p>
<p>We say that tables, for example, “emerge” from an underlying physics of particles whizzing around the universe. </p>
<p>But while we have a pretty good sense of how a table might be made out of fundamental particles, we have no idea how time might be “made out of” something more fundamental.</p>
<p>So unless we can come up with a good account of how <a href="https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is-time-real/">time emerges</a>, it is not clear we can simply assume time exists. </p>
<p>Time might not exist at any level.</p>
<h2>Time and agency</h2>
<p>Saying that time does not exist at any level is like saying that there are no tables at all.</p>
<p>Trying to get by in a world without tables might be tough, but managing in a world without time seems positively disastrous.</p>
<p>Our entire lives are built around time. We plan for the future, in light of what we know about the past. We hold people morally accountable for their past actions, with an eye to reprimanding them later on.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/time-is-but-a-dream-or-is-it-928">Time is but a dream ... or is it?</a>
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<p>We believe ourselves to be <em>agents</em> (entities that can <em>take action</em>) in part because we can plan to act in a way that will bring about changes in the future. </p>
<p>But what’s the point of acting to bring about a change in the future when, in a very real sense, there is no future to act for?</p>
<p>What’s the point of punishing someone for a past action, when there is no past and so, apparently, no such action?</p>
<p>The discovery that time does not exist would seem to bring the entire world to a grinding halt. We would have no reason to get out of bed. </p>
<h2>Business as usual</h2>
<p>There is a way out of the mess. </p>
<p>While physics might eliminate time, it seems to leave <em>causation</em> intact: the sense in which one thing can bring about another. </p>
<p>Perhaps what physics is telling us, then, is that causation and not time is the basic feature of our universe. </p>
<p>If that’s right, then agency can still survive. For it is possible to reconstruct a sense of agency entirely in causal terms. </p>
<p>At least, that’s what Kristie Miller, Jonathan Tallant and I argue in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/out-of-time-9780192864888?facet_narrowbypubdate_facet=Next%203%20months&lang=en&cc=kw">our new book</a>.</p>
<p>We suggest the discovery that time does not exist may have no direct impact on our lives, even while it propels physics into a new era.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Cutting-edge theories of physics suggest time may not be real – but even if they’re right, life can still go on as usual.Sam Baron, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1772262022-02-23T02:56:17Z2022-02-23T02:56:17ZCurious Kids: what is the most important thing a scientist needs?<blockquote>
<p><strong>What is the most important thing a scientist needs? – Casey, age 6, Perth</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/id/topics/curious-kids-83797"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386375/original/file-20210225-21-1xfs1le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=90&fit=crop&dpr=2" width="100%"></a></p>
<p>Hi Lennox! Thanks for this great question. Unfortunately, there’s not really one simple answer. So I’m going to talk about three important things. </p>
<p>Scientists need to be good at asking questions. They need to be good at investigating the world to find answers to their questions. And they need to keep in mind that no matter how much they know, there’s always more to learn.</p>
<h2>Asking questions</h2>
<p>Most scientists are inspired by wanting to understand how things in the world work. That means they start by asking questions. </p>
<p>The questions might be driven by curiosity about something amazing in nature, like “Why do stars look like they’re twinkling?” or “Why do these birds have such fancy feathers?” Or they might be driven by wanting to help communities (or even the whole world) with a problem, like “How can we keep this river healthy?” or “What can we do about climate change?” </p>
<p>But all good scientific questions have something in common: they will point scientists towards some sort of <em>investigation</em> they can do to try and find out an answer.</p>
<p>Scientists investigate in many different ways. Some examples are observing how animals behave in the wild, measuring how plants grow over time, doing an experiment in a lab, or using a computer to create a virtual version (called a simulation) of a black hole.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-can-black-holes-become-white-holes-176034">Curious Kids: can black holes become white holes?</a>
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</p>
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<h2>Finding answers</h2>
<p>Different scientific questions call for different sorts of answers. Here are some examples (asked by other curious kids!).</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-onions-make-you-cry-129519">Why do onions make you cry?</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-are-ants-and-other-creatures-able-to-walk-on-the-ceiling-173712">How do ants walk on the ceiling?</a> These questions call for <em>explanations</em>: telling us why or how something works the way it does. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-could-octopuses-evolve-until-they-take-over-the-world-and-travel-to-space-156493">Could octopuses evolve until they take over the world and travel to space?</a> This question calls for some explanation about octopuses and also a <em>prediction</em> about what might (or might not) happen in the future. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-stars-are-there-in-space-165370">How many stars are there in space?</a> This question calls for a <em>number</em> (but it helps if the answer explains a bit, too). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Artist's impression of black hole surrounded by stars" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447978/original/file-20220223-19-1iaz555.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447978/original/file-20220223-19-1iaz555.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447978/original/file-20220223-19-1iaz555.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447978/original/file-20220223-19-1iaz555.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447978/original/file-20220223-19-1iaz555.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447978/original/file-20220223-19-1iaz555.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447978/original/file-20220223-19-1iaz555.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Science doesn’t have to involve experiments. It could also mean making a computer simulation of a black hole.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How do scientists investigate the world to find answers? It often takes a lot of training and some creativity. There is a thing called the <em>scientific method</em> which you can think of as a sort of recipe for doing science. It goes like this:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Ask a <em>question</em></p></li>
<li><p>come up with a guess (called a <em>hypothesis</em>) about an answer to your question</p></li>
<li><p>do an <em>experiment</em> to test your hypothesis</p></li>
<li><p><em>report</em> what you learned, so others can learn from it too.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This is a good way to do science, and many scientists always follow these steps. But many others don’t. Some scientists do experiments. Some do observations instead, or create models and simulations of the things they want to learn about. </p>
<p>Also, not all scientific projects start with a hypothesis and then test it. Some start with big open-ended questions and investigate them by exploring. There is really no such thing as <em>the</em> scientific method. There is a whole family of scientific methods. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-stars-are-there-in-space-165370">How many stars are there in space?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>There is always more to learn</h2>
<p>Becoming a scientist takes a lot of learning. But it is important for scientists to keep in mind they don’t know everything. A fancy name for this is <em>intellectual humility</em>. “Intellectual” has to do with how clever we are, and “humility” has to do with recognising our own limits. </p>
<p>So, “intellectual humility” means being aware that you’ll sometimes get things wrong. It also means listening to other peoples’ ideas rather than just thinking you’re right all the time.</p>
<p>The relationship between science and truth is complicated. Scientists work hard to learn true things about the world. But the things we think are true change over time. A few hundred years ago, people thought that when we get sick it’s because of some sort of poison in the air. Then we learned about bacteria and viruses, and figured out they can make us sick. But we still haven’t figured out everything about how that works.</p>
<p>It’s great to be curious – there’s always more to learn!</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-could-octopuses-evolve-until-they-take-over-the-world-and-travel-to-space-156493">Curious Kids: could octopuses evolve until they take over the world and travel to space?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177226/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Parke receives Marsden funding from The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi.</span></em></p>Scientists need to be good at asking questions, investigating the world to find answers, and keeping in mind that no matter how much they know, there’s always more to learn.Emily Parke, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1720342021-11-22T04:47:06Z2021-11-22T04:47:06ZPythagoras’ revenge: humans didn’t invent mathematics, it’s what the world is made of<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432313/original/file-20211117-21-fhtw2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1920%2C1267&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/illustrations/binary-code-privacy-policy-brain-5137349/">Geralt / Pixabay</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people think that mathematics is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mathematics-real-a-viral-tiktok-video-raises-a-legitimate-question-with-exciting-answers-145244">human invention</a>. To this way of thinking, mathematics is like a language: it may describe real things in the world, but it doesn’t “exist” outside the minds of the people who use it.</p>
<p>But the Pythagorean school of thought in ancient Greece held a different view. Its proponents believed reality is fundamentally mathematical. </p>
<p>More than 2,000 years later, philosophers and physicists are starting to take this idea seriously. </p>
<p>As I argue in <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/716181">a new paper</a>, mathematics is an essential component of nature that gives structure to the physical world. </p>
<h2>Honeybees and hexagons</h2>
<p>Bees in hives produce hexagonal honeycomb. Why? </p>
<p>According to the “honeycomb conjecture” in mathematics, hexagons are the most efficient shape for tiling the plane. If you want to fully cover a surface using tiles of a uniform shape and size, while keeping the total length of the perimeter to a minimum, hexagons are the shape to use. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432303/original/file-20211117-27-l0kz86.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hexagonal pattern of honeycomb is the most efficient way to cover a space in identical tiles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Baron</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/18/3805894.htm">Charles Darwin reasoned</a> that bees have evolved to use this shape because it produces the largest cells to store honey for the smallest input of energy to produce wax. </p>
<p>The honeycomb conjecture was first proposed in ancient times, but was only <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9906042.pdf">proved in 1999</a> by mathematician Thomas Hales. </p>
<h2>Cicadas and prime numbers</h2>
<p>Here’s another example. There are two subspecies of North American periodical cicadas that live most of their lives in the ground. Then, every 13 or 17 years (depending on the subspecies), the cicadas emerge in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gptidJeSW0">great swarms</a> for a period of around two weeks. </p>
<p>Why is it 13 and 17 years? Why not 12 and 14? Or 16 and 18? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3489104">One explanation</a> appeals to the fact that 13 and 17 are prime numbers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432306/original/file-20211117-17-2bu9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432306/original/file-20211117-17-2bu9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432306/original/file-20211117-17-2bu9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432306/original/file-20211117-17-2bu9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432306/original/file-20211117-17-2bu9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432306/original/file-20211117-17-2bu9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432306/original/file-20211117-17-2bu9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some cicadas have evolved to emerge from the ground at intervals of a prime number of years, possibly to avoid predators with life cycles of different lengths.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Kropiewnicki / Pixels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Imagine the cicadas have a range of predators that also spend most of their lives in the ground. The cicadas need to come out of the ground when their predators are lying dormant.</p>
<p>Suppose there are predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 years. What is the best way to avoid them all? </p>
<p>Well, compare a 13-year life cycle and a 12-year life cycle. When a cicada with a 12-year life cycle comes out of the ground, the 2-year, 3-year and 4-year predators will also be out of the ground, because 2, 3 and 4 all divide evenly into 12. </p>
<p>When a cicada with a 13-year life cycle comes out of the ground, none of its predators will be out of the ground, because none of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 divides evenly into 13. The same is true for 17. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432304/original/file-20211117-19-17chizy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432304/original/file-20211117-19-17chizy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432304/original/file-20211117-19-17chizy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432304/original/file-20211117-19-17chizy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432304/original/file-20211117-19-17chizy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432304/original/file-20211117-19-17chizy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432304/original/file-20211117-19-17chizy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">P1–P9 represent cycling predators. The number-line represents years. The highlighted gaps show how 13 and 17-year cicadas manage to avoid their predators.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Baron</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seems <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brood-x-cicadas-are-emerging-at-last1/">these cicadas have evolved</a> to exploit basic facts about numbers.</p>
<h2>Creation or discovery?</h2>
<p>Once we start looking, it is easy to find other examples. From the shape of <a href="https://explified.com/plateaus-law-of-soap-films-explained/">soap films</a>, to <a href="https://reprap.org/wiki/Gear_design">gear design</a> in engines, to the location and size of the gaps in the <a href="https://caps.gsfc.nasa.gov/simpson/kingswood/rings/">rings of Saturn</a>, mathematics is everywhere.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mathematics-real-a-viral-tiktok-video-raises-a-legitimate-question-with-exciting-answers-145244">Is mathematics real? A viral TikTok video raises a legitimate question with exciting answers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>If mathematics explains so many things we see around us, then it is unlikely that mathematics is something we’ve created. The alternative is that mathematical facts are <em>discovered</em>: not just by humans, but by insects, soap bubbles, combustion engines and planets.</p>
<h2>What did Plato think?</h2>
<p>But if we are discovering something, what is it?</p>
<p>The ancient Greek philosopher Plato had an answer. He thought mathematics describes objects that really exist. </p>
<p>For Plato, these objects included numbers and geometric shapes. Today, we might add more complicated mathematical objects such as groups, categories, functions, fields and rings to the list.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432314/original/file-20211117-25-10y4ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432314/original/file-20211117-25-10y4ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432314/original/file-20211117-25-10y4ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432314/original/file-20211117-25-10y4ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432314/original/file-20211117-25-10y4ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432314/original/file-20211117-25-10y4ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432314/original/file-20211117-25-10y4ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For Plato, numbers existed in a realm separate from the physical world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Geralt / Pixabay</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Plato also maintained that mathematical objects exist outside of space and time. But such a view only deepens the mystery of how mathematics explains anything. </p>
<p>Explanation involves showing how one thing in the world depends on another. If mathematical objects exist in a realm apart from the world we live in, they don’t seem capable of relating to anything physical. </p>
<h2>Enter Pythagoreanism</h2>
<p>The ancient Pythagoreans agreed with Plato that mathematics describes a world of objects. But, unlike Plato, they didn’t think mathematical objects exist beyond space and time. </p>
<p>Instead, they believed physical reality is made of mathematical objects in the same way matter is made of atoms.</p>
<p>If reality is made of mathematical objects, it’s easy to see how mathematics might play a role in explaining the world around us.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432316/original/file-20211117-25-1l30suc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432316/original/file-20211117-25-1l30suc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432316/original/file-20211117-25-1l30suc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432316/original/file-20211117-25-1l30suc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432316/original/file-20211117-25-1l30suc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432316/original/file-20211117-25-1l30suc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432316/original/file-20211117-25-1l30suc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pythagorean pie: the world is made of mathematics plus matter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Baron</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the past decade, two physicists have mounted significant defences of the Pythagorean position: Swedish-US cosmologist <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-universe-made-of-math-excerpt/">Max Tegmark</a> and Australian physicist-philosopher <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-40976-4">Jane McDonnell</a>. </p>
<p>Tegmark argues reality just is one big mathematical object. If that seems weird, think about the idea that reality is a simulation. A simulation is a computer program, which is a kind of mathematical object. </p>
<p>McDonnell’s view is more radical. She thinks reality is made of mathematical objects and minds. Mathematics is how the Universe, which is conscious, comes to know itself. </p>
<p>I defend a <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/BARMEA-9">different view</a>: the world has two parts, mathematics and matter. Mathematics gives matter its form, and matter gives mathematics its substance. </p>
<p>Mathematical objects provide a structural framework for the physical world.</p>
<h2>The future of mathematics</h2>
<p>It makes sense that Pythagoreanism is being rediscovered in physics. </p>
<p>In the past century physics has become more and more mathematical, turning to seemingly abstract fields of inquiry such as group theory and differential geometry in an effort to explain the physical world. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-was-maths-discovered-who-made-up-the-numbers-and-rules-121509">Curious Kids: how was maths discovered? Who made up the numbers and rules?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As the boundary between physics and mathematics blurs, it becomes harder to say which parts of the world are physical and which are mathematical.</p>
<p>But it is strange that Pythagoreanism has been neglected by philosophers for so long. </p>
<p>I believe that is about to change. The time has arrived for a Pythagorean revolution, one that promises to radically alter our understanding of reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Did humans invent mathematics or does it exist independently?Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1629362021-06-27T19:49:17Z2021-06-27T19:49:17ZIs reality a game of quantum mirrors? A new theory suggests it might be<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408323/original/file-20210625-25-ycjrke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2400%2C1397&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jurik Peter / Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine you sit down and pick up your favourite book. You look at the image on the front cover, run your fingers across the smooth book sleeve, and smell that familiar book smell as you flick through the pages. To you, the book is made up of a range of sensory appearances.</p>
<p>But you also expect the book has its own independent existence behind those appearances. So when you put the book down on the coffee table and walk into the kitchen, or leave your house to go to work, you expect the book still looks, feels, and smells just as it did when you were holding it.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1218&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1218&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408321/original/file-20210625-17-1ywf0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1218&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Helgoland, physicist Carlo Rovelli lays out a new way to think about quantum mechanics - and reality itself.</span>
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<p>Expecting objects to have their own independent existence – independent of us, and any other objects – is actually a deep-seated assumption we make about the world. This assumption has its origin in the scientific revolution of the 17th century, and is part of what we call the <em>mechanistic worldview</em>. According to this view, the world is like a giant clockwork machine whose parts are governed by set laws of motion.</p>
<p>This view of the world is responsible for much of our scientific advancement since the 17th century. But as Italian physicist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Rovelli">Carlo Rovelli</a> argues in his new book <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/helgoland-9780241454695">Helgoland</a>, quantum theory – the physical theory that describes the universe at the smallest scales – almost certainly shows this worldview to be false. Instead, Rovelli argues we should adopt a “relational” worldview.</p>
<h2>What does it mean to be relational?</h2>
<p>During the scientific revolution, the English physics pioneer Isaac Newton and his German counterpart Gottfried Leibniz disagreed on the nature of space and time.</p>
<p>Newton claimed space and time acted like a “container” for the contents of the universe. That is, if we could remove the contents of the universe – all the planets, stars, and galaxies – we would be left with empty space and time. This is the “absolute” view of space and time.</p>
<p>Leibniz, on the other hand, claimed that space and time were nothing more than the sum total of distances and durations between all the objects and events of the world. If we removed the contents of the universe, we would remove space and time also. This is the “relational” view of space and time: they are only the spatial and temporal <em>relations</em> between objects and events. The relational view of space and time was a key inspiration for Einstein when he developed general relativity. </p>
<p>Rovelli makes use of this idea to understand quantum mechanics. He claims the objects of quantum theory, such as a photon, electron, or other fundamental particle, are nothing more than the properties they exhibit when interacting with – <em>in relation to</em> – other objects. </p>
<p>These properties of a quantum object are determined through experiment, and include things like the object’s position, momentum, and energy. Together they make up an object’s state.</p>
<p>According to Rovelli’s relational interpretation, these properties are all there is to the object: there is no underlying individual substance that “has” the properties.</p>
<h2>So how does this help us understand quantum theory?</h2>
<p>Consider the well-known quantum puzzle of Schrödinger’s cat. We put a cat in a box with some lethal agent (like a vial of poison gas) triggered by a quantum process (like the decay of a radioactive atom), and we close the lid.</p>
<p>The quantum process is a chance event. There is no way to predict it, but we can describe it in a way that tells us the different chances of the atom decaying or not in some period of time. Because the decay will trigger the opening of the vial of poison gas and hence the death of the cat, the cat’s life or death is also a purely chance event.</p>
<p>According to orthodox quantum theory, the cat is neither dead nor alive until we open the box and observe the system. A puzzle remains concerning what it would be like for the cat, exactly, to be neither dead nor alive.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quantum-philosophy-4-ways-physics-will-challenge-your-reality-150175">Quantum philosophy: 4 ways physics will challenge your reality</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But according to the relational interpretation, the state of any system is always in relation to some other system. So the quantum process in the box might have an indefinite outcome in relation <em>to us</em>, but have a definite outcome <em>for the cat</em>.</p>
<p>So it is perfectly reasonable for the cat to be neither dead nor alive for us, and at the same time to be definitely dead or alive itself. One fact of the matter is real for us, and one fact of the matter is real for the cat. When we open the box, the state of the cat becomes definite for us, but the cat was never in an indefinite state for itself. </p>
<p>In the relational interpretation there is <a href="https://theconversation.com/quantum-philosophy-4-ways-physics-will-challenge-your-reality-150175">no global, “God’s eye” view of reality</a>. </p>
<h2>What does this tell us about reality?</h2>
<p>Rovelli argues that, since our world is ultimately quantum, we should heed these lessons. In particular, objects such as your favourite book may only have their properties in relation to other objects, including you.</p>
<p>Thankfully, that also includes all other objects, such as your coffee table. So when you do go to work, your favourite book continues to appear is it does when you were holding it. Even so, this is a dramatic rethinking of the nature of reality.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-quantum-paradox-throws-the-foundations-of-observed-reality-into-question-144426">A new quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question</a>
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</em>
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<p>On this view, the world is an intricate web of interrelations, such that objects no longer have their own individual existence independent from other objects – like an endless game of quantum mirrors. Moreover, there may well be no independent “metaphysical” substance constituting our reality that underlies this web.</p>
<p>As Rovelli puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which … there is nothing.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162936/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi).</span></em></p>‘Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil’: a new interpretation of quantum physics says objects have no independent existence.Peter Evans, ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1604352021-05-26T12:14:20Z2021-05-26T12:14:20ZPoliticized science drove lunar exploration and Stalinist pseudoscience – but polarized scientific views are worse than ever<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402712/original/file-20210525-21-16tsxfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=188%2C60%2C4833%2C2928&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Trump frequently and loudly disagreed with scientists. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenScienceIntegrity/8279681623b04fcca21919bff0b1a583/photo?Query=trump%20AND%20science&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=301&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last year one of my students in a history of science class commented that “no one knows which doctors to trust because they are politicizing the pandemic, just like politicians are.” The interactions between science and politics are now so complex, so numerous and often so opaque that, as my student noted, it’s not clear anymore whom to trust.</p>
<p>People often assume that the objectivity of science requires it to be <a href="https://www.americanscientist.org/blog/macroscope/news-flash-science-has-always-been-political">isolated</a> from governmental politics. However, scientists have <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/scientific-journals-are-denouncing-trump-thats-normal/">always gotten involved in politics</a> as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/theres-no-such-thing-just-following-the-science-coronavirus-advice-political">advisers</a> and through shaping public opinion. And science itself – how scientists are <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2015/12/politics-science-funding/">funded</a> and how they choose their research priorities – <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03067-w">is a political affair</a>. </p>
<p>The coronavirus pandemic showed both the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/how-mrna-technology-could-change-world/618431/">benefits</a> and <a href="https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/cdc-pressured-white-house-change-covid-19-testing-guidelines">risks</a> of this relationship – from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug">controversies</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/virus-journals.html">surrounding</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31324-6">hydroxychloroquine</a> to the efforts of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2027405">Operation Warp Speed</a> allowing researchers to develop vaccines <a href="https://theconversation.com/less-than-a-year-to-develop-a-covid-vaccine-heres-why-you-shouldnt-be-alarmed-150414">in less than a year</a>. </p>
<p>In this context, it is understandable that many people began to doubt whether they should trust science at all. As a <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/liv-grjebine">historian of science</a>, I know that the question is not whether science and politics ought to be involved – they are already. Rather, it is important for people to understand how this relationship can produce either good or bad outcomes for scientific progress and society. </p>
<h2>The historical relationship of science and politics</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A replica of Sputnik 1 that looks like a silver ball with four long metal lines trailing behind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402714/original/file-20210525-23-10p48sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sputnik, the first human-made object in space and a model of which is seen here, was launched by the Soviet Union and marked the beginning of the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sputnik_asm.jpg#/media/File:Sputnik_asm.jpg">NSSDC/NASA/WikimediaCommons</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Historically, political needs have acted as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/466922a">key scientific accelerators</a> but have also at times <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/139185b0">stifled scientific progress</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://audrajwolfe.com/freedoms-laboratory/">Geopolitical objectives</a> drive a large part of scientific research. For example, the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/index.html">Apollo space program from 1961 to 1972</a> was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Moonglow-Political-History-Project/dp/1541699874">driven</a> more by the competition between superpowers in the Cold War than by science. In this case, government’s funding contributed to scientific progress.</p>
<p>In contrast, in the early days of the Soviet Union, the government’s involvement in biology had a stifling effect on science. <a href="https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ms/2005-v21-n2-ms870/010555ar/">Trofim Lysenko</a> was a biologist under Stalin who denounced modern genetics. As he became head of top <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VASKhNIL">scientific institutions</a>, his opponents were arrested or executed. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tragic-story-of-soviet-genetics-shows-the-folly-of-political-meddling-in-science-72580">Lysenkoism</a> – despite being dead wrong – became the accepted orthodoxy in the academies and universities of communist Europe until the mid-1960s.</p>
<p>As the Lysenko story demonstrates, when political powers decide the questions that scientists should work on – and, more importantly, what kind of answers science should find – it can harm both scientific progress and society.</p>
<h2>Two political parties, two scientific realities</h2>
<p>The relationship between science and politics has always been dynamic, but the rise of social media has changed it in an important way. Because it’s more difficult to discern between <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620939054">true and false content</a> online, it’s now easier than ever before to spread politically motivated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/28/scientists-fought-coronavirus-now-they-face-the-battle-against-disinformation">fake news</a>. </p>
<p>In the U.S., social media has massively accelerated a long–growing political divide in scientific trust. Starting with <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-09/op-ed-trumps-coronavirus-failures-thank-ronald-reagan">Ronald Reagan</a>, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/chris-mooney/the-republican-war-on-science/9780465003860/">Republican leaders</a> have turned science into a partisan field. The ideology of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_government#:%7E:text=In%20political%20philosophy%2C%20limited%20government,in%20the%20history%20of%20liberalism">limited government</a> is one of the main reasons for this attitude. Republican lawmakers often <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/republican-convention-ignored-climate-threat-but-americans-attitudes-are-shifting/">ignore environmental issues</a> despite scientific consensus on the causes and dangerous effects these issues lead to.</p>
<p>President Trump brought the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/trump-biden-climate-change-fires.html">suspicion of science</a> to another level by treating science as essentially just another political opinion. He argued that scientists and institutions who contradicted his views were motivated by their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/caputo-virus.html">political agendas</a> – and, by extension, that the science itself <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02800-9">was false</a>. By contrast, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00184-y">President Biden</a> has put <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/biden-science-tracker">science</a> at the top of his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/science/biden-science-cabinet.html">priorities</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A blue donkey and a red elephant standing on either side of model of the coronavirus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402715/original/file-20210525-13-1jp23gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The pandemic highlighted just how differently Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. view science.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/covid-19-politics-royalty-free-image/1217361206?adppopup=true">OsakaWayne Studios/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>As a result, the divide between scientific and anti-scientific positions – at least in the U.S. – is now often <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/10/what-caused-the-u-s-anti-science-trend/">partisan</a>. People of different political views, even when they are educated, are sometimes not able to agree on facts. For instance, among U.S. citizens with a high level of scientific knowledge, 89% of Democrats say that human activity contributes a great deal to climate change, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/21/how-americans-see-climate-change-and-the-environment-in-7-charts/">as compared with only 17% of Republicans</a>. Democrats are not immune to this either, as seen by the <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/watch/democrats-push-gmo-label-mandate-398279235636">strong Democratic support</a> for labeling genetically modified foods. This is despite <a href="https://www.fda.gov/media/135280/download">scientific consensus on the safety of these foods</a>. But overall, Republicans tend to be much more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231211010101">anti-science</a> than Democrats.</p>
<p>The pandemic has shown the risks of this political divide. People who identify as Republican are much more likely to be resistant to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/coronavirus-masks.html">mask-wearing</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/27/partisan-divide-coronavirus-vaccinations-is-widening/">vaccination</a>.</p>
<p>Disagreements in science are necessary for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/484164a">scientific progress</a>. But if each party has its own definition of science, scientific truths become a matter of opinion rather than objective facts of how the world works.</p>
<h2>Where is the relationship going?</h2>
<p>Because trust in science was so <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02800-9">degraded</a> during Trump’s presidency, several <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02852-x">leading peer-reviewed journals</a> endorsed Biden as a presidential candidate. This was perhaps the first time in history that such a <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/science-nejm-nature-editorials-trump-covid19-response.html">large number</a> of scientific journals and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden1/">magazines</a> took clear stances for a U.S. presidential election. </p>
<p>The fact that the acceptance or rejection of science is increasingly determined by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe1715">political affiliations</a> threatens the autonomy of scientists. Once a theory is <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/lots-scientists-marched-yesterday-five-explain-why-they-didnt">labeled</a> “conservative” or “liberal” it becomes difficult for scientists to challenge it. Thus, some scientists are less prone to question hypotheses for fear of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/542165b">political</a> and <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/26/public-health-officials-bullying-by-antivaxxers-endangers-us/">social</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00937-w">pressures</a>. </p>
<p>In my opinion, science cannot thrive under an administration that <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/attacks-on-science">ignores scientific expertise</a> as a whole; but neither can it thrive if scientists are told which political and moral values they must embrace. This could slow down or even prevent the emergence of new scientific hypotheses. Indeed, when scientists align themselves with or against political power, science can easily lose its most important asset: the ability to encourage disagreement and to raise new hypotheses that may go against <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-cant-trust-common-sense-but-we-can-trust-science-53042">common sense</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>For her postdoctoral research at Harvard, Liv Grjebine received an Arthur Sachs Fellowship.
</span></em></p>Politics always influences what questions scientists ask. Their intertwined relationship becomes a problem when politics dictates what answers science is allowed to find.Liv Grjebine, Postdoctoral Fellow in History of Science, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1501752020-12-24T21:26:11Z2020-12-24T21:26:11ZQuantum philosophy: 4 ways physics will challenge your reality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373212/original/file-20201207-15-1q9gwxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C2775%2C1429&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine opening the weekend paper and looking through the puzzle pages for the Sudoku. You spend your morning working through this logic puzzle, only to realise by the last few squares there’s no consistent way to finish it.</p>
<p>“I must have made a mistake,” you think. So you try again, this time starting from the corner you couldn’t finish and working back the other way. But the same thing happens again. You’re down to the last few squares and find there is no consistent solution.</p>
<p>Working out the basic nature of reality according to quantum mechanics is a little bit like an impossible Sudoku. No matter where we start with quantum theory, we always end up at a conundrum that forces us to rethink the way the world fundamentally works. (This is what makes quantum mechanics so much fun.)</p>
<p>Let me take you on a brief tour, through the eyes of a philosopher, of the world according to quantum mechanics.</p>
<h2>1. Spooky action-at-a-distance</h2>
<p>As far as we know, the speed of light (around 300 million metres per second) is the universe’s ultimate speed limit. Albert Einstein famously scoffed at the prospect of physical systems influencing each other faster than a light signal could travel between them. </p>
<p>Back in the 1940s Einstein called this “<a href="https://theconversation.com/einstein-vs-quantum-mechanics-and-why-hed-be-a-convert-today-27641">spooky action-at-a-distance</a>”. When quantum mechanics had earlier appeared to predict such spooky goings-on, he argued the theory must not yet be finished, and some better theory would tell the true story.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/einstein-vs-quantum-mechanics-and-why-hed-be-a-convert-today-27641">Einstein vs quantum mechanics ... and why he'd be a convert today</a>
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<p>We know today it is very unlikely there is any such better theory. And if we think the world is made up of well-defined, independent pieces of “stuff”, then our world has to be one where spooky action-at-a-distance between these pieces of stuff is allowed.</p>
<h2>2. Loosening our grip on reality</h2>
<p>“What if the world isn’t made of well-defined, independent pieces of ‘stuff’?” I hear you say. “Then can we avoid this spooky action?”</p>
<p>Yes, we can. And many in the quantum physics community think this way, too. But this would be no consolation to Einstein.</p>
<p>Einstein had a long-running debate with his friend Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, about this very question. Bohr argued we should indeed give up the idea of the stuff of the world being well defined, so we can avoid spooky action-at-a-distance. In Bohr’s view, the world doesn’t have definite properties unless we’re looking at it. When we’re not looking, Bohr thought, the world as we know it isn’t really there.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein sitting next to each other looking pensive." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373214/original/file-20201207-17-10adpru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Physicists Niels Bohr (left) and Albert Einstein famously disagreed about what quantum mechanics meant for the nature of reality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates#/media/File:Niels_Bohr_Albert_Einstein_by_Ehrenfest.jpg">Paul Ehrenfest</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Einstein insisted the world has to be made of <em>something</em> whether we look at it or not, otherwise we couldn’t talk to each other about the world, and so do science. But Einstein couldn’t have both a well-defined, independent world and no spooky action-at-a-distance … or could he?</p>
<h2>3. Back to the future</h2>
<p>The Bohr-Einstein debate is reasonably familiar fare in the history of quantum mechanics. Less familiar is the foggy corner of this quantum logic puzzle where we can rescue both a well-defined, independent world and no spooky action. But we will need to get weird in other ways.</p>
<p>If doing an experiment to measure a quantum system in the lab could somehow affect what the system was like <em>before</em> the measurement, then Einstein could have his cake and eat it too. This hypothesis is called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality">retrocausality</a>”, because the effects of doing the experiment would have to travel <em>backwards in time</em>.</p>
<p>If you think this is strange, you’re not alone. This is not a very common view in the quantum physics community, but it has its supporters. If you are faced with having to accept spooky action-at-a-distance, or no world-as-we-know-it when we don’t look, retrocausality doesn’t seem like such a weird option after all.</p>
<h2>4. No view from Olympus</h2>
<p>Imagine Zeus perched atop Mount Olympus, surveying the world. Imagine he were able to see everything that has happened, and will happen, everywhere and for all time. Call this the “God’s eye view” of the world. It is natural to think there must be some way the world is, even if it can only be known by an all-seeing God.</p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-quantum-paradox-throws-the-foundations-of-observed-reality-into-question-144426">A new quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-quantum-paradox-throws-the-foundations-of-observed-reality-into-question-144426">Recent research</a> in quantum mechanics suggests a God’s eye view of the world is impossible, even in principle. In certain strange quantum scenarios, different scientists can look carefully at the systems in their labs and make thorough recordings of what they see – but they will disagree about what happened when they come to compare notes. And there might well be no absolute fact of the matter about who’s correct – not even Zeus could know!</p>
<p>So next time you encounter an impossible Sudoku, rest assured you’re in good company. The entire quantum physics community, and perhaps even Zeus himself, knows exactly how you feel.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi).</span></em></p>Quantum mechanics is strange. A philosopher explains just how strange, and what it means for reality.Peter Evans, ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1452442020-08-31T05:41:07Z2020-08-31T05:41:07ZIs mathematics real? A viral TikTok video raises a legitimate question with exciting answers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355476/original/file-20200831-14-174eny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C10%2C3449%2C2456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While filming herself getting ready for work recently, TikTok user <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@gracie.ham/video/6864198263063448837">@gracie.ham</a> reached deep into the ancient foundations of mathematics and found an absolute gem of a question: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>How could someone come up with a concept like algebra? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>She also asked what the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras might have used mathematics for, and other questions that revolve around the age-old conundrum of whether mathematics is “real” or something humans just made up.</p>
<p>Many responded negatively to the post, but others — including mathematicians like me — found the questions quite insightful.</p>
<h2>Is mathematics real?</h2>
<p>Philosophers and mathematicians have been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#Mathematical_realism">arguing over this</a> for centuries. Some believe mathematics is universal; others consider it only as real as anything else humans have invented. </p>
<p>Thanks to @gracie.ham, Twitter users have now vigorously joined the debate. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1298372968838508546"}"></div></p>
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<p>For me, part of the answer lies in history.</p>
<p>From one perspective, mathematics is a universal language used to describe the world around us. For instance, two apples plus three apples is always five apples, regardless of your point of view. </p>
<p>But mathematics is also a language used by humans, so it is not independent of culture. History shows us that different cultures had their own understanding of mathematics.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, most of this ancient understanding is now lost. In just about every ancient culture, a few scattered texts are all that remain of their scientific knowledge.</p>
<p>However, there is one ancient culture that left behind an absolute abundance of texts.</p>
<h2>Babylonian algebra</h2>
<p>Buried in the deserts of modern Iraq, clay tablets from ancient Babylon have survived intact for about 4,000 years. </p>
<p>These tablets are slowly being translated and what we have learned so far is that the Babylonians were practical people who were highly numerate and knew how to solve sophisticated problems with numbers. </p>
<p>Their arithmetic was different from ours, though. They didn’t use zero or negative numbers. They even mapped out the motion of the planets without using calculus as we do. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/written-in-stone-the-worlds-first-trigonometry-revealed-in-an-ancient-babylonian-tablet-81472">Written in stone: the world's first trigonometry revealed in an ancient Babylonian tablet</a>
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<p>Of particular importance for @gracie.ham’s question about the origins of algebra is that they knew that the numbers 3, 4 and 5 correspond to the lengths of the sides and diagonal of a rectangle. They also knew these numbers satisfied the fundamental relation 3² + 4² = 5² that ensures the sides are perpendicular.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355413/original/file-20200830-14-fbzxlx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No theorems were harmed (or used) in the construction of this rectangle.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Babylonians did all this without modern algebraic concepts. We would express a more general version of the same idea using Pythagoras’ theorem: any right-angled triangle with sides of length <em>a</em> and <em>b</em> and hypotenuse <em>c</em> satisfies <em>a</em>² + <em>b</em>² = <em>c</em>². </p>
<p>The Babylonian perspective omits algebraic variables, theorems, axioms and proofs not because they were ignorant but because these ideas had not yet developed. In short, these social constructs began more than 1,000 years later, in ancient Greece. The Babylonians happily and productively did mathematics and solved problems without any of these relatively modern notions.</p>
<h2>What was it all for?</h2>
<p>@gracie.ham also asks how Pythagoras came up with his theorem. The short answer is: he didn’t.</p>
<p>Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570-495 BC) probably heard about the idea we now associate with his name while he was in Egypt. He may have been the person to introduce it to Greece, but we don’t really know.</p>
<p>Pythagoras didn’t use his theorem for anything practical. He was primarily interested in numerology and the mysticism of numbers, rather than the applications of mathematics.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-was-maths-discovered-who-made-up-the-numbers-and-rules-121509">Curious Kids: how was maths discovered? Who made up the numbers and rules?</a>
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<p>The Babylonians, on the other hand, may well have used their knowledge of right triangles for more concrete purposes, although we don’t really know. We do have evidence from ancient India and Rome showing the dimensions 3-4-5 were used as a simple but effective way to create right angles in the construction of religious altars and surveying.</p>
<p>Without modern tools, how do you make right angles <em>just right</em>? Ancient Hindu religious texts give instructions for making a rectangular fire altar using the 3-4-5 configuration with sides of length 3 and 4, and diagonal length 5. These measurements ensure that the altar has right angles in each corner.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man sits at a fire altar" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355415/original/file-20200830-20-1fbfao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355415/original/file-20200830-20-1fbfao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355415/original/file-20200830-20-1fbfao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355415/original/file-20200830-20-1fbfao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355415/original/file-20200830-20-1fbfao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355415/original/file-20200830-20-1fbfao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355415/original/file-20200830-20-1fbfao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A rectangular fire altar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedi_(altar)#/media/File:Homa_during_Sri_Thimmaraya_swamy_Pratishthapana..jpg">Madhu K / Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Big questions</h2>
<p>In the 19th century, the German mathematician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker">Leopold Kronecker</a> said “God made the integers, all else is the work of man”. I agree with that sentiment, at least for the positive integers — the whole numbers we count with — because the Babylonians didn’t believe in zero or negative numbers.</p>
<p>Mathematics has been happening for a very, very long time. Long before ancient Greece and Pythagoras. </p>
<p>Is it real? Most cultures agree about some basics, like the positive integers and the 3-4-5 right triangle. Just about everything else in mathematics is determined by the society in which you live.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145244/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Mansfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What did Pythagoras do with all those triangles, anyway?Daniel Mansfield, Lecturer in Mathematics, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1444262020-08-23T20:05:29Z2020-08-23T20:05:29ZA new quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353749/original/file-20200820-16-1ahbqrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C9%2C3254%2C2433&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Dunnigan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say.</p>
<p>And if someone <em>is</em> there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously <em>did</em> make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x">We have found a new paradox</a> in quantum mechanics – one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein’s theory of relativity – that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality.</p>
<h2>Quantum mechanics vs common sense</h2>
<p>Take a look at these three statements:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>When someone observes an event happening, it <em>really</em> happened. </p></li>
<li><p>It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices.</p></li>
<li><p>A choice made in one place can’t instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this “locality”.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x">published in Nature Physics</a>, shows they cannot all be true – or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level.</p>
<p>This is the strongest result yet in a long series of discoveries in quantum mechanics that have upended our ideas about reality. To understand why it’s so important, let’s look at this history.</p>
<h2>The battle for reality</h2>
<p>Quantum mechanics works extremely well to describe the behaviour of tiny objects, such as atoms or particles of light (photons). But that behaviour is … very odd.</p>
<p>In many cases, quantum theory doesn’t give definite answers to questions such as “where is this particle right now?” Instead, it only provides probabilities for where the particle might be found when it is observed.</p>
<p>For Niels Bohr, one of the founders of the theory a century ago, that’s not because we lack information, but because physical properties like “position” don’t actually exist until they are measured. </p>
<p>And what’s more, because some properties of a particle can’t be perfectly observed simultaneously – such as position and velocity – they can’t be <em>real</em> simultaneously. </p>
<p>No less a figure than Albert Einstein found this idea untenable. In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777">1935 article</a> with fellow theorists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he argued there must be more to reality than what quantum mechanics could describe.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/einstein-vs-quantum-mechanics-and-why-hed-be-a-convert-today-27641">Einstein vs quantum mechanics ... and why he'd be a convert today</a>
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<p>The article considered a pair of distant particles in a special state now known as an “entangled” state. When the same property (say, position or velocity) is measured on both entangled particles, the result will be random – but there will be a correlation between the results from each particle. </p>
<p>For example, an observer measuring the position of the first particle could perfectly predict the result of measuring the position of the distant one, without even touching it. Or the observer could choose to predict the velocity instead. This had a natural explanation, they argued, if both properties existed before being measured, contrary to Bohr’s interpretation.</p>
<p>However, in 1964 Northern Irish physicist <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/physics-bell-s-theorem-still-reverberates-1.15435">John Bell found</a> Einstein’s argument broke down if you carried out a more complicated combination of <em>different</em> measurements on the two particles. </p>
<p>Bell showed that if the two observers randomly and independently choose between measuring one or another property of their particles, like position or velocity, the average results cannot be explained in any theory where both position and velocity were pre-existing local properties.</p>
<p>That sounds incredible, but experiments have now <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3039">conclusively demonstrated</a> Bell’s correlations do occur. For many physicists, this is evidence that Bohr was right: physical properties don’t exist until they are measured. </p>
<p>But that raises the crucial question: what is so special about a “measurement”?</p>
<h2>The observer, observed</h2>
<p>In 1961, the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/wigner/biographical/">Eugene Wigner</a> devised a thought experiment to show what’s so tricky about the idea of measurement.</p>
<p>He considered a situation in which his friend goes into a tightly sealed lab and performs a measurement on a quantum particle – its position, say.</p>
<p>However, Wigner noticed that if he applied the equations of quantum mechanics to describe this situation from the outside, the result was quite different. Instead of the friend’s measurement making the particle’s position real, from Wigner’s perspective the friend becomes entangled with the particle and infected with the uncertainty that surrounds it.</p>
<p>This is similar to <a href="https://theconversation.com/schrodingers-cat-gets-a-reality-check-37278">Schrödinger’s famous cat</a>, a thought experiment in which the fate of a cat in a box becomes entangled with a random quantum event.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/schrodingers-cat-gets-a-reality-check-37278">Schrödinger's cat gets a reality check</a>
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<p>For Wigner, this was an absurd conclusion. Instead, he believed that once the consciousness of an observer becomes involved, the entanglement would “collapse” to make the friend’s observation definite.</p>
<p>But what if Wigner was wrong?</p>
<h2>Our experiment</h2>
<p>In our research, we built on an extended version of the Wigner’s friend paradox, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/e20050350">first proposed</a> by Časlav Brukner of the University of Vienna. In this scenario, there are <em>two</em> physicists – call them Alice and Bob – each with their own friends (Charlie and Debbie) in two distant labs.</p>
<p>There’s another twist: Charlie and Debbie are now measuring a pair of entangled particles, like in the Bell experiments.</p>
<p>As in Wigner’s argument, the equations of quantum mechanics tell us Charlie and Debbie should become entangled with their observed particles. But because those particles were already entangled with each other, Charlie and Debbie themselves should become entangled – in theory.</p>
<p>But what does that imply experimentally?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quantum-physics-our-study-suggests-objective-reality-doesnt-exist-126805">Quantum physics: our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist</a>
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<p>Our experiment goes like this: the friends enter their labs and measure their particles. Some time later, Alice and Bob each flip a coin. If it’s heads, they open the door and ask their friend what they saw. If it’s tails, they perform a different measurement. </p>
<p>This different measurement always gives a positive outcome for Alice if Charlie is entangled with his observed particle in the way calculated by Wigner. Likewise for Bob and Debbie.</p>
<p>In any realisation of this measurement, however, any record of their friend’s observation inside the lab is blocked from reaching the external world. Charlie or Debbie will not remember having seen anything inside the lab, as if waking up from total anaesthesia. </p>
<p>But did it really happen, even if they don’t remember it?</p>
<p>If the three intuitive ideas at the beginning of this article are correct, each friend saw a real and unique outcome for their measurement inside the lab, independent of whether or not Alice or Bob later decided to open their door. Also, what Alice and Charlie see should not depend on how Bob’s distant coin lands, and vice versa. </p>
<p>We showed that if this were the case, there would be limits to the correlations Alice and Bob could expect to see between their results. We also showed that quantum mechanics predicts Alice and Bob will see correlations that go beyond those limits.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353034/original/file-20200816-18-701nel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353034/original/file-20200816-18-701nel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353034/original/file-20200816-18-701nel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353034/original/file-20200816-18-701nel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353034/original/file-20200816-18-701nel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353034/original/file-20200816-18-701nel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353034/original/file-20200816-18-701nel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Experimental apparatus for our test of the paradox with particles of light.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph by Kok-Wei Bong</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Next, we did an experiment to confirm the quantum mechanical predictions using pairs of entangled photons. The role of each friend’s measurement was played by one of two paths each photon may take in the setup, depending on a property of the photon called “polarisation”. That is, the path “measures” the polarisation.</p>
<p>Our experiment is only really a proof of principle, since the “friends” are very small and simple. But it opens the question whether the same results would hold with more complex observers.</p>
<p>We may never be able to do this experiment with real humans. But we argue that it may one day be possible to create a conclusive demonstration if the “friend” is a human-level artificial intelligence running in a massive <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-quantum-computation-and-communication-technology-7892">quantum computer</a>.</p>
<h2>What does it all mean?</h2>
<p>Although a conclusive test may be decades away, if the quantum mechanical predictions continue to hold, this has strong implications for our understanding of reality – even more so than the Bell correlations. For one, the correlations we discovered cannot be explained just by saying that physical properties don’t exist until they are measured.</p>
<p>Now the absolute reality of measurement outcomes themselves is called into question.</p>
<p>Our results force physicists to deal with the measurement problem head on: either our experiment doesn’t scale up, and quantum mechanics gives way to a so-called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-collapse_theory">objective collapse theory</a>”, or one of our three common-sense assumptions must be rejected. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-universe-really-is-weird-a-landmark-quantum-experiment-has-finally-proved-it-so-49490">The universe really is weird: a landmark quantum experiment has finally proved it so</a>
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<p>There are theories, like <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/">de Broglie-Bohm</a>, that postulate “action at a distance”, in which actions can have instantaneous effects elsewhere in the universe. However, this is in direct conflict with Einstein’s theory of relativity.</p>
<p>Some search for a theory that rejects freedom of choice, but they either require <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/can-retrocausality-solve-the-puzzle-of-action-at-a-distance">backwards causality</a>, or a seemingly conspiratorial form of fatalism called <a href="http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html">“superdeterminism”</a>.</p>
<p>Another way to resolve the conflict could be to make Einstein’s theory even more relative. For Einstein, different observers could disagree about <em>when</em> or <em>where</em> something happens – but <em>what</em> happens was an absolute fact.</p>
<p>However, in some interpretations, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_quantum_mechanics">relational quantum mechanics</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bayesianism">QBism</a>, or the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation">many-worlds interpretation</a>, events themselves may occur only relative to one or more observers. A fallen tree observed by one may not be a fact for everyone else.</p>
<p>All of this does not imply that you can choose your own reality. Firstly, you can choose what questions you ask, but the answers are given by the world. And even in a relational world, when two observers communicate, their realities are entangled. In this way a shared reality can emerge.</p>
<p>Which means that if we both witness the same tree falling and you say you can’t hear it, you might just need a hearing aid.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144426/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Cavalcanti receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Foundational Questions Institute. </span></em></p>A new twist on an old experiment reveals several common-sense ideas about reality can’t all be true.Eric Cavalcanti, Associate Professor (ARC Future Fellow), Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1409802020-06-18T10:42:25Z2020-06-18T10:42:25ZCoronavirus: why it’s dangerous to blindly ‘follow the science’ when there’s no consensus yet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342457/original/file-20200617-94101-n59kfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=48%2C0%2C5348%2C3562&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rules about coronavirus research have been relaxed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/microbiologist-tube-biological-sample-contaminated-by-1644424099">angellodeco/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine are among the most influential scientific journals in the world. Both have recently had to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/12/covid-19-studies-based-on-flawed-surgisphere-data-force-medical-journals-to-review-processes?fbclid=IwAR3eIgHL4SnbkVx7DkVTEM757eyD6cjF0aPkIFDHk8uIQaNyJwkI7isAPsg">retract studies</a> on the effectiveness of COVID-19 treatments after doubts were raised about the underlying data. The scandal reveals the dangers of <a href="https://www.thebsps.org/auxhyp/fast-science-stegenga/">“fast science”</a>. </p>
<p>In the face of the virus emergency, research standards <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shortcuts-in-covid-19-drug-research-could-do-long-term-harm-bioethicists-worry/">have been relaxed</a> to encourage faster publication and mistakes become inevitable. This is risky. Ultimately, if expert advice on the pandemic turns out to be wrong, it will have dire consequences for how reliable scientific evidence is treated in other policy areas, such as climate change.</p>
<p>The pandemic <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnsons-coronavirus-fudge/">has become politicised</a>, pitting smug liberals versus reckless conservatives. There’s also a move towards thinking about options in terms of science versus common sense. If we accept this framing, we risk causing people to believe that experts are no better than the rest of us at making predictions and providing explanations that can guide policy.</p>
<p>For example, some “<a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/This-lockdown-may-kill-me">lockdown sceptics</a>” have responded to falling death rates by arguing that the lockdown wasn’t necessary in the first place. Setting aside arguments over to what extent lockdowns saved lives, it is <a href="https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/15/1586943153000/Why-are-we-really-in-lockdown--/">right to worry</a> about the way this has cast aspersion on expertise more generally.</p>
<p>But we shouldn’t see the epidemiologists advising governments as having the same standing – in regard to the pandemic – as other experts have with regard to other hot-button issues that engage scientific consensus. It is misguided to think that, because epidemiology is a well-established science, the guidance it provides us with right now is necessarily perfectly reliable. </p>
<p>There is no reliable science – yet – of the novel coronavirus. Because it is novel, the models that the epidemiologists use must make assumptions based on incomplete data. </p>
<p>We have seen <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/06/americas-most-influential-coronavirus-model-just-revised-its-estimates-downward-not-every-model-agrees/">dramatic revisions</a> in these models as some of the assumptions came to be seen to be completely off-base. Even now, there is good reason to worry that some of the models governments rely on may exaggerate the infection fatality rate. Testing has concentrated on the most sick — but if others infected with mild or no symptoms were factored into the calculations, <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-bmj-study-suggests-78-dont-show-symptoms-heres-what-that-could-mean-135732">the fatality rate would be smaller</a>, by a currently unknown amount. </p>
<p>Part of the underlying problem is built into the way epidemiology is organised to deal with new, unfolding disease in a fast-moving environment. Leading epidemiologists <a href="https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/marc-lipsitch-good-science-good-science">see themselves as synthesisers</a> of “many branches of science using many methods, approaches, and forms of evidence”. But it takes time to collect and combine such evidence. </p>
<h2>Lives versus the economy</h2>
<p>Epidemiology is not the only discipline relevant to the response to the pandemic. Lockdowns themselves have costs, of an unknown magnitude. Too often, these costs are presented as economic costs, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-is-first-a-health-problem-second-an-economic-one">as if we faced a choice</a> between a healthy economy and healthy people. But people <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/economic-suicides-in-the-great-recession-in-europe-and-north-america/DF85FA16DFB256F4DC7937FAEA156F8B">die from recessions</a>. </p>
<p>We should frame the issue as one pitting <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/india-s-lockdownhttps:/voxeu.org/article/india-s-lockdown">lives against lives</a>, not lives against the economy. Estimating the effects of lockdowns on future deaths and illness, physical and mental, is not a matter for epidemiologists alone but for a variety of disciplines – psychiatrists, sociologists, economists, educators, public health experts and many others.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342459/original/file-20200617-94049-9csllb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342459/original/file-20200617-94049-9csllb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342459/original/file-20200617-94049-9csllb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342459/original/file-20200617-94049-9csllb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342459/original/file-20200617-94049-9csllb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342459/original/file-20200617-94049-9csllb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342459/original/file-20200617-94049-9csllb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Lockdown threatens lives and livelihoods.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/business-center-closed-due-covid19-sign-1698114358">Viacheslav Lopatin/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Coming to a reliable consensus takes time and the input of many disciplines, especially because the consequences of any policy affect so many areas of life. There simply has <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/">not yet been enough time</a> for such a consensus to emerge.</p>
<h2>Implications for climate science</h2>
<p>Climate science looms over the pandemic debates and offers an example of the value of tested science in public policy debates. From the beginning of the crisis, many have worried that conceding anything to those with reservations about following the authority of science will play into the hands of climate sceptics.</p>
<p>There is every reason to believe that the strong consensus that exists with regard to climate science is fully justified. A central part of the reason that the consensus is trustworthy is that it has been stress-tested so many times from so many angles. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342461/original/file-20200617-94078-1qgjibn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342461/original/file-20200617-94078-1qgjibn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342461/original/file-20200617-94078-1qgjibn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342461/original/file-20200617-94078-1qgjibn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342461/original/file-20200617-94078-1qgjibn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342461/original/file-20200617-94078-1qgjibn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342461/original/file-20200617-94078-1qgjibn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Climate science is tried and tested.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mother-polar-bear-cub-jumping-across-155225642">FloridaStock/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Scientific claims like “carbon emissions cause global heating” are not the province of any one discipline. Rather, the expertise of many disciplines is needed: physicists, paleoclimatologists, mathematicians, astronomers <a href="https://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/31/so-just-who-does-climate-science/">and many more</a> have contributed to making climate science robust. All these experts are required to identify mechanisms, rule out alternative explanations and make predictions. </p>
<p>Like epidemiology, climate science provides a reliable guide to policy. But it is reliable mainly because its predictions and assumptions are further tested and assessed by many disciplines beyond climate science proper.</p>
<p>We strongly advocate giving scientific input into policy significant weight. Though in this case that advice can reflect only some of the science and offers a partial picture. Taking that advice is taking a bet, and we should not be very surprised if we lose that bet in ways we only dimly understand in advance. The stakes of this bet are especially high when taking the advice requires suspending some civil rights.</p>
<p>If we do lose the bet, having framed the debate as one of experts versus sceptics will lead to a victory for that latter. That would set back our response to issues that rely on scientific certainty, especially climate change, by decades.</p>
<p>Science is our best guide to the world. But reliable science takes time and contributions by many different kinds of people, including the values of the public. We should celebrate the achievements of science, but recognise that not all science is equally warranted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Schliesser receives funding from Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Winsberg and Neil Levy do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If expert advice on the pandemic turns out to be wrong, it will have dire consequences for how reliable scientific evidence is treated in other policy areas, such as climate change.Neil Levy, Senior Research Fellow, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of OxfordEric Schliesser, Professor of Political Science., University of AmsterdamEric Winsberg, Professor of Philosophy of Science, University of South FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1359382020-04-09T03:36:06Z2020-04-09T03:36:06ZScientific modelling is steering our response to coronavirus. But what is scientific modelling?<p>As they <a href="https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-indicates-eliminating-covid-19-would-come-at-too-high-a-cost-135857">released</a> the modelling of the COVID-19 pandemic behind Australia’s social isolation policies this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy were guarded. </p>
<p>They emphasised the limits of scientific models, and how they could easily be misinterpreted. </p>
<p>This is not surprising. Many people don’t have a clear understanding of what scientific models are, and what we can and can’t expect from them. </p>
<p>Scientific models can be powerful tools for understanding complex phenomena such as pandemics, but they can’t tell us everything.</p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-were-flattening-the-coronavirus-curve-but-modelling-needs-to-inform-how-we-start-easing-restrictions-135832">Yes, we're flattening the coronavirus curve but modelling needs to inform how we start easing restrictions</a>
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<h2>What is a scientific model?</h2>
<p>Scientific models are representations of parts of the real world. They range from small-scale physical models of real systems, such as the famous San Francisco Bay Model – a miniature version of the bay used to investigate water flow – to the type of mathematical models used to understand the spread of COVID-19. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326507/original/file-20200408-97704-9om9nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The San Francisco Bay Model was built in the 1950s to study the effects of a proposal to build dams in the bay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30086231">Something Original / Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Models can be used to indirectly explore the nature of the real world. They can help us understand which features of real-world systems are important, how those features interact, how they are likely to change in the future, and how we can alter those systems to achieve some goal.</p>
<h2>Why are models so valuable?</h2>
<p>Scientific models let us explore features of the real world that we can’t investigate directly. In the case of COVID-19, we can’t do direct experiments on what proportion of Australia’s population needs to engage in social distancing to “flatten the curve”. Even if we could devise good experiments, it takes days or weeks for people to become sick and transmit COVID-19, so any experimental results would arrive too late to be useful. </p>
<p>Models are invaluable in situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, where time is of the essence and we are interested in effects on a large scale.</p>
<h2>What are the limits of scientific models?</h2>
<p>A model’s usefulness depends on how accurately it represents the real world. To make an accurate model, you need good data. </p>
<p>That’s one reason why models of the spread of COVID-19 that use data from densely populated parts of Europe are unlikely to offer valuable insights into the situation in suburban Sydney. Data from one situation may not apply to the other.</p>
<p>This is a major challenge for the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in Australia. The lack of extensive local data has left our policymakers relying on models based on a combination of overseas data, general theory and pre-existing modelling of influenza pandemics. </p>
<p>Because of this, the models are not designed to be used for making predictions about what will happen. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/modelling-suggests-going-early-and-going-hard-will-save-lives-and-help-the-economy-135025">Modelling suggests going early and going hard will save lives and help the economy</a>
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<p>For example, Imperial College London is producing relatively detailed modelling that can be used to make accurate predictions about specific cases in the United States and the United Kingdom. But such models require detailed data. </p>
<p>The Australian modelling generated by the Doherty Institute to look at the impacts of interventions on the spread of COVID-19 is simpler and more general. These models offer valuable large-scale insights, but far less local precision. </p>
<p>Such general models have been particularly useful early in the pandemic, when localised information is scarce. As we build a more detailed picture of Australian circumstances, modelling will become more specific and more accurate, and these general models will be less important.</p>
<p>One challenge for modelling in a real-world context like COVID-19 is that our models may not get it right every time. This is partly because we lack enough fine-grained information about the real-world situation. </p>
<p>It is also because individual actions and sheer bad luck in the short term can make big differences in the longer term. A single individual who fails to isolate or quarantine themselves can produce a very large ripple of downstream effects. We have seen this in the case of South Korea’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/coronavirus-south-korea-church/">Patient 31</a>, who triggered an enormous cluster of infections in her church.</p>
<h2>What does this all mean?</h2>
<p>Despite the uncertainty inherent in the COVID-19 pandemic, we should be optimistic about the science. The general principles behind the models we are basing our public policy on are the product of decades of testing and research, and we are learning more and more specific information about COVID-19 every day. </p>
<p>Thanks in large part to the power of model-based science, we are in a far better place than any generation before us to deal successfully and efficiently with a pandemic of this scale.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael L. Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scientific models can help us understand the important features of complex systems, but they need good data.Rachael L. Brown, Director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences and Lecturer at the School of Philosophy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1301452020-01-27T14:54:27Z2020-01-27T14:54:27ZFrom quarks to quails – can the different sciences be unified?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311801/original/file-20200124-81341-1peagcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flock of quail.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lux Blue/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The world around us is populated by a vast variety of things – ranging from genes and animals to atoms, particles and fields. While these can all be described by the natural sciences, it seems some can only be understood in terms of biology while others can only be explored using chemistry or physics. And when it comes to human behaviour, disciplines like sociology or psychology are the most useful.</p>
<p>This richness has intrigued philosophers, leading them to think about how the sciences are connected (or disconnected), but also about how things in the world relate to one another. Our new project, called the <a href="http://www.metascience.xyz">Metaphysical Unity of Science</a> and funded by the European Research Council, is trying to answer these questions. </p>
<p>In general, philosophy distinguishes between two main questions in this area. First, there is the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/">epistemological</a> question of how specific sciences or theories are connected to one another. For example, how is biology related to physics or psychology to biology? This focuses on the state of our knowledge about the world. It involves looking at the concepts, explanations and methodologies of the various sciences or theories, and examining how they are related. </p>
<p>But there is also a metaphysical question of how things in the world are related to each other. Are they over and above the stuff that is postulated by fundamental physics? That is, are molecules, chairs, genes and dolphins just complex aggregates of subatomic particles and their fundamental physical interactions? If so, is living matter in any way different from inanimate matter?</p>
<p>This is a very difficult question to answer, not least because of the existential weight it carries. If humans, among other things, are just sums of physical parts, then we might wonder how we can make meaningful sense of consciousness, emotions and free will.</p>
<h2>Extreme views</h2>
<p>We could broadly map the existing philosophical positions within two extremes. On the one side, there is the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/">reductionist stance</a> which in one form claims that everything is made of and determined by physical building blocks – there are no chairs, dolphins, economic inflation or genes, only particles and fields. This implies that sciences like chemistry and biology are just helpful tools to understand and manipulate the world around us. </p>
<p>In principle, the “correct” physics would explain everything that happens and exists in the world. It could therefore be, or help build, the basis for a unified theory. On this view, even something as complex as consciousness, which science <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-as-we-know-it-cant-explain-consciousness-but-a-revolution-is-coming-126143">may not (yet) properly explain</a>, is ultimately down to the physical behaviour of the particles that make up the neurons in the brain. </p>
<p>On the other side, there is the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/#Disu">pluralist stance</a> which argues that everything in the world has an autonomous existence that we can’t eliminate. While there might be a sense in which chemical, biological or economic entities are governed by physical laws, these entities are not mere aggregations of physical stuff. Rather, they exist in some sense over and above the physical.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311985/original/file-20200127-81395-1g0hnzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311985/original/file-20200127-81395-1g0hnzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311985/original/file-20200127-81395-1g0hnzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311985/original/file-20200127-81395-1g0hnzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311985/original/file-20200127-81395-1g0hnzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311985/original/file-20200127-81395-1g0hnzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311985/original/file-20200127-81395-1g0hnzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is a carbon atom in a rock really identical to an atom in the human body?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/atom-molecule-concept-science-1154108206">Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This implies that the special sciences are not just tools that serve specific goals, but are accurate and true descriptions that identify real features of the world. Many pluralists are therefore <a href="https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/mind-and-its-place-in-the-world-non-reductionist-approaches-to-the-ontology-of-consciousness/">sceptical about</a> whether consciousness can ever be explained by physics – suspecting that it may in fact be more than the sum of its physical parts. </p>
<p>There is evidence to support both reductionism and pluralism, but there are also objections against both. While many philosophers currently work on addressing these objections, others focus on finding new ways to answer these questions.</p>
<p>This is where the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/">“unity of science”</a> comes in. The notion originates from the reductionist side, arguing the sciences are unified. But some forms of unity reject reductionism and the strict hierarchies it invokes between the sciences, but nevertheless adhere to the broad thesis that the sciences are somehow <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/187762?seq=1">interconnected or dependent on each other</a>. </p>
<p>Our team, consisting of philosophers with an expertise in different areas of philosophy and science, is trying to find new ways to think about the unity of science. We want to identify the appropriate criteria that would suffice to convincingly claim that some form of unity holds between the natural sciences. We are also looking at case studies in order to investigate “neighbouring” sciences and how they depend on each other. </p>
<p>The outcomes of our project could have important implications that go beyond academic curiosity, ultimately helping science to progress. If there was indeed a way to describe how life is related to elementary particles, that would change the game completely.</p>
<p>So far, the project has conducted a number of case studies at the boundaries between biology and chemistry, and chemistry and physics. We are now starting to apply the results from these cases to the metaphysical framework for the unity of science. For example, one of our studies showed that many biological properties of proteins <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bjps/advance-article/doi/10.1093/bjps/axy044/5064051">can be explained</a> in terms of their chemical micro structure, rather than their environment. This doesn’t prove that reductionism is true, but it does lend support to the view.</p>
<p>Another study investigated similar issues from the perspective of chemistry and quantum mechanics. Both theories assume that an isolated molecule <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10698-019-09342-7?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_source=ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AA_en_06082018&ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst_20190925">has structure and is stable</a>, but the study argued that you cannot prove this is definitely the case – we describe this as an idealisation. It showed that both chemistry and quantum mechanics rely on making such idealisations and argued that identifying them can improve our metaphysical understanding of molecules.</p>
<p>Ultimately, understanding the interconnections of the natural sciences is a valuable source for understanding not only the world around us, but also ourselves. We are hoping that our investigation of these links can illuminate in new ways how things in the world relate to each other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa Seifert works for the Metaphysical Unity of Science project at the University of Bristol. This project receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No 771509.</span></em></p>Are molecules, chairs, genes and humans really just the sum of their physical parts? A team of philosophers are trying to find out.Vanessa Seifert, Postdoctoral research associate in the MetaScience Project, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1240422020-01-02T09:31:39Z2020-01-02T09:31:39ZAlien life is out there, but our theories are probably steering us away from it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305674/original/file-20191206-90592-1oorltu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/distant-planet-system-space-exoplanets-during-1358905763?src=1bc84139-0788-444a-8700-7140d717a1f3-1-0">sdecoret/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If we discovered evidence of alien life, would we even realise it? Life on other planets could be so different from what we’re used to that we might <a href="https://theconversation.com/search-for-alien-life-could-remain-fruitless-study-finds-26072">not recognise</a> any biological signatures that it produces.</p>
<p>Recent years have seen changes to our theories about what counts as <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-debate-signatures-of-alien-life-20160202">a biosignature</a> and <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-finds-planets-of-red-dwarf-stars-may-face-oxygen-loss-in-habitable-zones">which planets might be habitable</a>, and further turnarounds are inevitable. But the best we can really do is interpret the data we have with our current best theory, not with some future idea we haven’t had yet.</p>
<p>This is <a href="https://phys.org/news/2018-06-nasa-life.html">a big issue</a> for those involved in the search for extraterrestrial life. As <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-committee/members/dr-scott-gaudi">Scott Gaudi</a> of Nasa’s Advisory Council <a href="https://livestream.com/NASEM/events/8339907/videos/179863839">has said</a>: “One thing I am quite sure of, now having spent more than 20 years in this field of exoplanets … expect the unexpected.”</p>
<p>But is it really possible to “expect the unexpected”? Plenty of breakthroughs happen by accident, from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/penicillin-was-discovered-90-years-ago-and-despite-resistance-the-future-looks-good-for-antibiotics-100684">discovery of penicillin</a> to the discovery of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cmb-how-an-accidental-discovery-became-the-key-to-understanding-the-universe-45126">cosmic microwave background</a> radiation left over from the Big Bang. These often reflect a degree of luck on behalf of the researchers involved. When it comes to alien life, is it enough for scientists to assume “we’ll know it when we see it”?</p>
<p>Many results seem to tell us that expecting the unexpected is extraordinarily difficult. “<a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0713/Invisible-Gorilla-test-returns-showing-that-we-re-still-not-paying-attention">We often miss what we don’t expect to see</a>,” according to cognitive psychologist Daniel Simons, famous for his work on <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-inattentional-blindness-2795020">inattentional blindness</a>. His experiments have shown how people can miss <a href="https://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows-notice.html">a gorilla banging its chest</a> in front of their eyes. Similar experiments also show how blind we are to <a href="https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Bruner/Cards/">non-standard playing cards</a> such as a black four of hearts. In the former case, we miss the gorilla if our attention is sufficiently occupied. In the latter, we miss the anomaly because we have strong prior expectations.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vJG698U2Mvo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Watching this video shows how you can miss something as unusual as a gorilla if your attention is diverted.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are also plenty of relevant examples in the history of science. Philosophers describe this sort of phenomenon as “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/science-theory-observation/">theory-ladenness of observation</a>”. What we notice depends, quite heavily sometimes, on our theories, concepts, background beliefs and prior expectations. Even more commonly, what we take to be significant can be biased in this way.</p>
<p>For example, when scientists first found evidence of low amounts of ozone in the atmosphere above Antarctica, they initially <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727771-400-zeros-to-heroes-how-we-almost-missed-the-ozone-hole/">dismissed it as bad data</a>. With no prior theoretical reason to expect a hole, the scientists ruled it out in advance. Thankfully, they were minded to double check, and the discovery was made.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305673/original/file-20191206-90562-iw07aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305673/original/file-20191206-90562-iw07aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305673/original/file-20191206-90562-iw07aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305673/original/file-20191206-90562-iw07aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305673/original/file-20191206-90562-iw07aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305673/original/file-20191206-90562-iw07aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305673/original/file-20191206-90562-iw07aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More than 200,000 stars captured in one small section of the sky by Nasa’s TESS mission.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-new-planet-hunter-snaps-initial-test-image-swings-by-moon-toward-final-orbit/">Nasa</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Could a similar thing happen in the search for extraterrestrial life? Scientists studying planets in other solar systems (exoplanets) are overwhelmed by the <a href="https://www.space.com/17738-exoplanets.html">abundance of possible observation targets</a> competing for their attention. In the last 10 years scientists have identified more than 3,650 planets - more than one a day. And with <a href="https://www.space.com/nasa-tess-exoplanet-hunter-first-year.html">missions such as NASA’s TESS exoplanet hunter</a> this trend will continue.</p>
<p>Each and every new exoplanet is rich in physical and chemical complexity. It is all too easy to imagine a case where scientists do not double check a target that is flagged as “lacking significance”, but whose great significance would be recognised on closer analysis or with a non-standard theoretical approach.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305672/original/file-20191206-90580-qu75rs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305672/original/file-20191206-90580-qu75rs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305672/original/file-20191206-90580-qu75rs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305672/original/file-20191206-90580-qu75rs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305672/original/file-20191206-90580-qu75rs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305672/original/file-20191206-90580-qu75rs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305672/original/file-20191206-90580-qu75rs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Müller-Lyer optical illusion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCller-Lyer_illusion#/media/File:M%C3%BCller-Lyer_illusion.svg">Fibonacci/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, we shouldn’t exaggerate the theory-ladenness of observation. In the Müller-Lyer illusion, a line ending in arrowheads pointing outwards appears shorter than an equally long line with arrowheads pointing inwards. Yet even when we know for sure that the two lines are the same length, our perception is unaffected and <a href="https://theconversation.com/tricking-the-brain-how-magic-works-56451">the illusion remains</a>. Similarly, a sharp-eyed scientist might notice something in her data that her theory tells her she should not be seeing. And if just one scientist sees something important, pretty soon every scientist in the field will know about it.</p>
<p>History also shows that scientists are able to notice surprising phenomena, even biased scientists who have a pet theory that doesn’t fit the phenomena. The 19th-century physicist <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/representing-and-intervening/F6506B708BB5A8B6A5D884BDCF28E7B7">David Brewster</a> incorrectly believed that light is made up of particles travelling in a straight line. But this didn’t affect his observations of numerous phenomena related to light, such as what’s known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-the-vikings-use-crystal-sunstones-to-discover-america-53836">birefringence</a> in bodies under stress. Sometimes observation is definitely not theory-laden, at least not in a way that seriously affects scientific discovery.</p>
<h2>We need to be open-minded</h2>
<p>Certainly, scientists can’t proceed by just observing. Scientific observation needs to be directed somehow. But at the same time, if we are to “expect the unexpected”, we can’t allow theory to heavily influence what we observe, and what counts as significant. We need to remain open-minded, encouraging exploration of the phenomena in the style of Brewster and similar scholars of the past.</p>
<p>Studying the universe largely unshackled from theory is not only a legitimate scientific endeavour – it’s a crucial one. The tendency to describe exploratory science disparagingly as <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-laureate-luck-needed-to-fund-curiosity-driven-research-15827">“fishing expeditions”</a> is likely to harm scientific progress. Under-explored areas need exploring, and we can’t know in advance what we will find.</p>
<p>In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists must be thoroughly open-minded. And this means a certain amount of encouragement for non-mainstream ideas and techniques. Examples from past science (<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/dinosaur-extinction-debate/565769/">including very recent</a> ones) show that non-mainstream ideas can sometimes be strongly held back. Space agencies such as NASA must learn from such cases if they truly believe that, in the search for alien life, we should “expect the unexpected”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Vickers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scientists can’t expect the unexpected if they’re not open-minded about how their theories might be wrong.Peter Vickers, Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/988322018-09-17T00:05:48Z2018-09-17T00:05:48ZCurious Kids: How do you know that we aren’t in virtual reality right now?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235941/original/file-20180912-181273-1hops0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nanpalmero/16237219524/in/photolist-qJPZEL-294wZgt-TSt1JJ-wPuEY-YeVAKK-bpzJBz-YeVB4k-4HYWqe-T8XMaq-ojQTEp-28xgiJ5-CQRVvo-3dMtGL-28Lj1Ch-GotjkX-Vs7mds-27FCRWa-pkB2gd-27FE9se-RrsGwG-294wqzB-27YbXTE-23PDyXm-eWvkzc-HfCdqw-NPuSgg-27FFyeR-XHskYG-29ez5cQ-21rVwTL-221R1am-KjjVxB-HjCp8a-jnysmg-5rZRT-SudQU3-L9bAEx-4yKMGE-DyaSQ7-Ffmmhe-23PDzcj-QdGN3P-pLQ7mv-SHWkex-28ZgM8s-Dwq86p-NXbsa-SudRyQ-pGWSHH-CT4oU3">Nan Palmero/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an article from <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782">Curious Kids</a>, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky! You might also like the podcast <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/kidslisten/imagine-this/">Imagine This</a>, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.</em> </p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>How do you know that we aren’t in virtual reality right now? It could be so realistic that it feels like normal life. – Erin, 13, Strathfield.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1985&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1985&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1985&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=2495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=2495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234766/original/file-20180904-45181-acgpo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=2495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Shibata Zeshin, Wikimedia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Have you ever had a dream where you thought everything around you was real, and then you wake up and realise it was all a dream? If so, how do you know you’re not dreaming right now?</p>
<p>The Chinese philosopher Zhaungzi had this very thought more than 2,000 years ago. He woke up from dreaming that he was a butterfly, but then couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t a butterfly dreaming he was a man.</p>
<p>It is easy to believe the world around us is real. But it’s possible that it’s a dream or a very complex computer simulation. Maybe we’re all plugged into a very powerful computer that is providing us with a virtual reality experience that makes us think we’re somewhere else.</p>
<p>If the simulation is really good and looks like the real world, we might not know we’re in a simulation.</p>
<p>So the short answer is we cannot ever be absolutely 100% certain we’re not in a computer simulation, or that we’re dreaming instead of being awake.</p>
<p>But while this might seem like a strange or disturbing thought, it actually makes no difference to the way we live.</p>
<p>If you have friends and family, and things you enjoy doing, it doesn’t really matter if they’re a part of a dream or a simulation, because you will still behave in the same way. </p>
<p>You’ll still be nice to your friends, you’ll still love your family (even if they might annoy you), you’ll still enjoy the taste of your favourite foods, and you’ll still hate getting up early in the morning.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-our-brains-freak-us-out-with-scary-dreams-81329">Curious Kids: Why do our brains freak us out with scary dreams?</a>
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<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au</em></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p><em>Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Dean does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are you dreaming that you’re awake or are you living in a computer simulation? There might be no way to be sure.Tim Dean, Honorary Associate in Philosophy, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/901682018-01-28T18:09:09Z2018-01-28T18:09:09ZHow ‘slow science’ can improve the way we do and interpret research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203346/original/file-20180125-107974-f0uua2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slow science is a reminder of what is wonderful and creative in scientific work, but it's under threat.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/asseny</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scientists don’t usually get involved in politics. But they took to the streets in last April’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-are-taking-to-the-streets-to-defend-science-but-it-could-come-at-a-cost-76342">March for Science</a>, spurred by what they saw as the Trump Administration’s aggressive eroding of their institutions.</p>
<p>Such demonstrations – <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-were-marching-for-science-in-australia-73907">including here in Australia</a> – had never been seen before because it takes a lot to get modern scientists to risk their aura of neutrality. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/listen-up-how-to-get-your-message-across-in-just-60-seconds-74982">Listen up! How to get your message across in just 60 seconds</a>
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<p>But in her latest book, the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers defends the right of scientists to be political, by which she simply means the requirement to be relevant. And as part of this, she argues a need for “slow science”.</p>
<h2>Found in translation</h2>
<p>I was recently tasked with translating her book, <a href="http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-Une_autre_science_est_possible__-9782359250664.html">Une autre science est possible!</a>, originally published in French in 2013. It’s now available in English as <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Another+Science+is+Possible%3A+A+Manifesto+for+Slow+Science+-p-9781509521807">Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Book cover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Another+Science+is+Possible%3A+A+Manifesto+for+Slow+Science+-p-9781509521807">Wiley</a></span>
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<p>In her book, Stengers says that in order for the work of scientists to be relevant, they have to negotiate with a broader public and respect their questions. Things like: Why are you doing this work? What will it be used for?</p>
<p>The public might have to be prepared to wait for an answer, because the scientists are “still working on it”. But we have the right to be included in the conversation, she argues, as an “intelligent public”.</p>
<p>But there is a narrower kind of relevance that worries Stengers: the triumphant growth of what she calls the “knowledge economy”, one that has no time for hesitation.</p>
<p>Over the years we have seen the growth of commercial labs, the reduction of public funding from universities, and the weakening of regulatory agencies such as the US <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/epas-budget-has-been-devastated-for-decades-heres_us_5a3c0d62e4b06cd2bd03d91a">Environmental Protection Agency</a>.</p>
<p>Stengers says this privatisation of science means that industry can buy the results it wants. And it wants them quickly, before their competitors get the product to market. </p>
<p>This puts the sacred peer review process – which safeguards objectivity and disinterestedness – under pressure, and peers might even forget to ask those basic public-interest questions (Why are you doing this? What will it be used for?).</p>
<h2>The need for slow science</h2>
<p>Slow science has something in common with the other “slow” movements, like slow food, but it does not hearken back to an imagined golden age. There is still plenty of slow, careful science among the contemporary sciences, but Stengers’ manifesto claims it is under threat. </p>
<p>To the extent that fast science wants results within a budgetary time frame, then thoughtful hesitation can be accused of lacking decisiveness, at the executive level, or even impeding progress. Here the exploratory “what if?” questions give way to the more mobilised “and therefore” push.</p>
<p>The other effect of fast science is that its model tends to dominate. The slow sciences value plurality. To the extent they have not given in to the competitive demand for “excellence” and to industrial relevance alone, then there is more of a chance for new ideas, new fields, to develop.</p>
<p>Stengers characterises this as “the goose that lays the golden egg”, and the reason many scientists like to be left alone to develop their own projects.</p>
<p>Homogenisation is also destructive of the productive relationships among scientists and non-scientists, between knowledge and know-how.</p>
<p>For example, the slow scientist will stop to listen to an Indigenous person whose expertise is honed through intergenerational practice, before imposing a more abstract, more universal, “modern” solution to a problem. (Stengers’s last chapter is called Civilising Modern Practices.)</p>
<p>It is in this area that Stengers investigates the gendered nature of science that still keeps young women out, like herself. She turned from theoretical chemistry to philosophy of science as a graduate student because she says it was made clear to her that there was no future for her in research.</p>
<p>Science is more virile when it demands efficiency rather than care, as it aggressively and repeatedly spends time defending real science, as opposed to sciences that might accept they are inevitably entangled with other important values.</p>
<p>Stengers speaks of how the first women primatologists, excluded from the men’s career path, had the time to invent a “slow primatology”. She says the women:</p>
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<p>[…] allowed themselves to be affected by the beings with whom they were dealing, looking for suitable relationships with them, putting the adventure of shared relevance above the authority of judgement.</p>
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<h2>Facts and values</h2>
<p>Stengers investigated the fact/value distinction in her teaching in Brussels, where the science students were initially happily thinking that science involved purifying a situation of spurious irrelevant values and opinions. Science was about getting down to the hard facts. </p>
<p>But when she asked them to investigate controversies, like developing genetically modified food – now <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28283-more-than-half-of-european-union-votes-to-ban-growing-gm-crops/">mostly banned in Europe</a> – they started to see things differently.</p>
<p>Values were no longer the irrational concerns of an ill-informed public, because they were always tied up with what scientists were doing as well. For instance, those cheerleading for GM food producers insisting they were doing exactly what European peasants had done for centuries, just more efficiently. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/looking-up-a-century-ago-a-vision-of-the-future-of-space-exploration-89859">Looking up a century ago, a vision of the future of space exploration</a>
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<p>Stengers says the students discovered that there were:</p>
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<p>[…] many conflicting types of “facts”, and that each of them was linked, for those presenting them, to what appeared to be important in the situation.</p>
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<p>She ended up being:</p>
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<p>[…] impressed by the fact that, far from being plunged into chaos, confusion and doubt, at least some of [the students] seemed to experience a feeling of liberation. It was as if they had discovered with relief that they didn’t have to choose between facts and values, between their scientific loyalty and (the remains of) their social conscience, because it was the situation itself that required them to identify the relevance of a knowledge and to understand its selective character – what it makes important, what it neglects. It was as if this curiosity so often associated with science was being called upon and nourished for the first time.</p>
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<p>Slow science is a reminder of what is wonderful and creative in scientific work, and that it may be worthwhile for scientists to foster public relationships, especially when they feel under pressure to deliver.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Muecke was paid a fee to translate the book.</span></em></p>Science should be about answering the “what if?” questions, but is that under threat by the privatisation of science and the drive for results ahead of any competition?Stephen Muecke, Chair professor, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/849462017-11-07T03:26:21Z2017-11-07T03:26:21ZRather than being free of values, good science is transparent about them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193459/original/file-20171106-1055-1tmbboh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's good for scientists to work in glass laboratories.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.broadinstitute.org/photos-broad-institute/photos-broad-institute">Len Rubenstein</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scientists these days face a conundrum. As Americans are buffeted by accounts of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-media/trump-suggests-challenging-tv-network-licenses-over-fake-news-idUSKBN1CG1WB">fake news</a>, <a href="https://www.seeker.com/alternative-facts-have-plagued-science-for-decades-2272707511.html">alternative facts</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-politics-social-media-facebook">deceptive social media campaigns</a>, how can researchers and their scientific expertise contribute meaningfully to the conversation?</p>
<p>There is a common perception that science is a matter of hard facts and that it <a href="https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-069X-12-69">can and should remain insulated</a> from the social and political interests that permeate the rest of society. Nevertheless, many historians, philosophers and sociologists who study the practice of science have come to the conclusion that trying to kick values out of science risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater. </p>
<p>Ethical and social values – like the desire to promote economic development, public health or environmental protection – often play integral roles in scientific research. By acknowledging this, scientists might seem to give away their authority as a defense against the flood of misleading, inaccurate information that surrounds us. But I argue in my book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-tapestry-of-values-9780190260811?lang=en&cc=us">A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science</a>” that if scientists take appropriate steps to manage and communicate about their values, they can promote a more realistic view of science as both value-laden and reliable.</p>
<h2>Values can be good or bad</h2>
<p>There is no question, of course, that values can cause problems in science. Powerful organizations like the <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/ebook.php?isbn=9780520950436">tobacco</a> and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520275829">lead</a> industries have manipulated science to boost their profit margins and prevent regulation of their products. The fossil fuel industry has engaged in similar tactics to <a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/">spread misinformation about climate change</a>.</p>
<p>And it’s not just big business that spreads misleading science – <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health-news/fake-news-plaguing-world-of-science#1">many different groups</a> peddle questionable claims about everything from vaccines and alternative medicines to genetically modified foods and diet strategies. In these cases, economic values or ideological commitments have inclined people to ignore or suppress evidence that runs counter to their preferences.</p>
<p>But I’d argue that it would be a grave mistake to try to eliminate all value considerations from scientific research. At the very least, most people want scientists to respect human rights and animal welfare when they design potentially harmful experiments.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193462/original/file-20171106-1027-1qxpql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">What research gets funded, from a limited pool of money, is a value-laden decision.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/ha96QM1eH74">Andrew Robles on Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>We as citizens also want scientists to keep social priorities in mind when deciding what research projects to undertake. In part, this involves choosing among an array of possible topics – for example, deciding how to divide up medical research investments among cancer, AIDS, diabetes and mental health.</p>
<p>It also involves deciding how scientists study these topics. Should they focus more attention on <a href="https://www.cancer.org/research/we-conduct-cancer-research/epidemiology/cancer-prevention-studies-save-lives.html">preventing environmentally induced cancers</a>? Or treating cancers that are already present? How much money should go toward developing new drugs for treating depression as opposed to studying how to <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/depression-and-exercise/art-20046495">mitigate some cases</a> by modifying diet, exercise or the social environment? Social values are obviously relevant to making these judgments.</p>
<h2>Between hard facts and unfounded advocacy</h2>
<p>A great deal of science is now performed in an effort to inform policymakers who need to make practical decisions about real-world problems such as regulating industrial chemicals or managing wildlife populations or preventing disease outbreaks. This sort of research can be plagued by uncertainties; there’s almost never one clear-cut “right” answer. </p>
<p>In these research contexts, scientists must decide how to extrapolate beyond the available data and weigh complex bodies of evidence in order to <a href="https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=35967">help policymakers draw conclusions</a>. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exploring-inductive-risk-9780190467722?lang=en&cc=us">Values have a role to play</a> in making these decisions. If one errs in one direction, one often risks overregulation and economic losses. Err the other way, and public health and environmental resources are often at stake. It makes sense to think about these consequences when deciding which way to lean.</p>
<p>Even the language employed by scientists is often laden with values. For example, environmental scientists have <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300205817/metaphors-environmental-sustainability">debated the merits</a> of talking about “invasive,” “nonnative,” “exotic” or “alien” species, given that these are metaphorical terms that have great significance in contemporary social and political debates. In biomedical research, scientists have <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6273/564">struggled to decide</a> whether the benefits of employing racial categories outweigh the dangers of promoting misleading notions about race as a biological phenomenon. And the World Health Organization suggested in 2015 that scientists should <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/discovered-disease-who-has-new-rules-avoiding-offensive-names">stop using disease names</a> like swine flu, athlete’s foot or Marburg disease, because they could stigmatize animals, people or places. In cases like these, there may be no strictly value-neutral ways of categorizing and describing phenomena.</p>
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<span class="caption">Broadening the researcher pool beyond just the types who attended an international scientific meeting in 1879 means people are bringing different sets of values to the lab bench.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:II_International_Meteorological_congress_Rome_1879.jpg">Музей-архив Д. И. Менделеева</a></span>
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<h2>Recognizing values helps science’s integrity</h2>
<p>Even if we cannot turn science into a value-free endeavor, researchers can still take important steps to preserve its legitimacy. One way to do that is for the scientific community to <a href="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1408107/">promote as much transparency in science as possible</a> so that the influences of values can be recognized. Depending on the context, this can involve many different activities: consistently publishing results, using open-access journals, making data publicly available, providing data analysis plans before studies begin, making materials and methods available to other researchers and disclosing conflicts of interest.</p>
<p>Both citizens and scientists also need to scrutinize and discuss the influences of values as effectively as possible, using many different venues: Journals can promote <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6348/256?ijkey=aoQ8T2TirYWfM&keytype=ref&siteid=sci">thoughtful peer-review processes</a>, government agencies can maintain effective science advisory boards, scientific societies can create reports on debated topics, <a href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/translational/community/index.cfm">citizens can get involved in research projects</a> and the scientific community can encourage new perspectives by <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/12/moving-toward-inclusion">promoting greater diversity</a> in its membership. By taking these steps, scientists and stakeholders can decide how best to handle important judgments, and they can distinguish scientific conclusions that are well supported from those that are more tenuous.</p>
<p>By virtue of the fact that science is done by and for human beings, values are entangled in the enterprise whether we acknowledge it or not. Rather than <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186049">dismissing scientists who discuss their values</a>, we ought to encourage scientists and other stakeholders to engage in open, thoughtful reflection about how values influence research. Far from threatening the integrity of science, this is the path to promoting science that is trustworthy and socially responsible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84946/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Elliott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Science isn’t cold, hard facts uncovered by emotionless robots. Acknowledging how and where values play a role promotes a more realistic view and can advance science’s reputation for reliability.Kevin Elliott, Associate Professor in Lyman Briggs College, Fisheries & Wildlife, and Philosophy, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778782017-05-17T19:25:31Z2017-05-17T19:25:31ZAfrican universities must take a critical view of knowledge and how it’s made<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169755/original/file-20170517-24307-1s7ujtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For the decolonisation of knowledge to be successful, it must be driven by critical thinking.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most universities boast “centres” or “institutes” designed to announce their strengths in a certain field. But there’s more to it than that: when a university establishes a new centre, it is making a statement of intent. It’s saying that it perceives a need for more work in that area, and that it intends to drive that work. </p>
<p>The University of Johannesburg’s <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/aceps/">African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science</a>, which has just opened, is an example of this. Why is such a centre necessary? Why now? And why in South Africa?</p>
<p>To answer these questions, we need to think about the relationship between three big and complicated things: knowledge, science and Africa. Critical thinking about the nature of knowledge, and the way Africa participates in science, is an essential part of the project of decolonisation – if that project is to be a success.</p>
<h2>A fraught history</h2>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/">Epistemology</a> is the philosophical study of knowledge: what it is, how we get it, and how sure we can be of it. Science is a major source of new knowledge at the moment – it helps people to find out about things. It’s also a major source of power and influence over the world we discover, and over each other.</p>
<p>The history of science and the history of European empire are connected. The language used to talk about science shows this in phrases like “frontiers of knowledge”.</p>
<p>The relationship of the West to science is by no means straightforward, of course. One need only think of the politics around <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43126-creationism-vs-evolution-6-big-battles.html">teaching of evolution in American schools</a> to see that. But Africa – the whole continent, in all its enormity and variety – has had a particularly difficult relationship with science and has not always benefited from the power it provides. </p>
<p>Much of the African continent has also had a difficult relationship with knowledge more generally – the power it yields or accompanies, its sharing or deliberate withholding, and the rhetoric concerning who has it and who does not.</p>
<p>One strategy to improve this relationship is to afford greater recognition to knowledge generated locally and to set about generating more of it. This is one of the themes of the recent calls for the decolonisation of knowledge. The trouble, of course, is that generating knowledge is not like manufacturing cars or tin cans. It’s not even like writing a novel. </p>
<p>Phrases like “knowledge production” conceal the fact that knowledge answers to something beyond itself and beyond us. To produce knowledge is to find out about something. This means to risk being wrong about it. You can’t just make more knowledge, because knowledge isn’t something we make. It’s not something we produce at will. It is something we acquire; and sometimes we fail to acquire it even though we want it.</p>
<p>So while we might say we want to produce knowledge locally, we may find ourselves unable to do so, especially if resources are scarce (as they are in many parts of Africa).</p>
<h2>Examining knowledge claims</h2>
<p>A related difficulty accompanies the recognition of local knowledge. You can’t simply decide to treat what somebody says as knowledge on the basis of where they live or what their name is. Well, you can – but in doing so the pursuit of knowledge is abandoned. </p>
<p>When accepting a knowledge claim, a person ought to perform some sort of assessment of how likely it is that what the person says is true.</p>
<p>In the case of a scientific knowledge claim, this assessment is more likely to turn on the source’s credibility than on any assessment of the subject matter. <a href="http://www.hawking.org.uk/about-stephen.html">Stephen Hawking’s</a> pronouncements are believed by most of us not because we have checked his sums, but because he is a famous professor at a famous university. A junior lecturer at an obscure university, perhaps somewhere in Africa, could say the same things as Hawking and would probably not receive the same recognition.</p>
<p>This is one of the points motivating <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/what-is-decolonised-education-20160925">calls to decolonise knowledge</a>. These calls can only be answered effectively if people have a better understanding of what knowledge – and especially scientific knowledge – is.</p>
<p>When then South African President Thabo Mbeki <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/27/south-africa-aids-mbeki">denied</a> that AIDS had a viral cause, he was partly motivated by decolonising ideals. He was aware of <a href="http://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/healthsciences/paediatrics-and-child-health/Documents/9781920689315%20Research%20Ethics.pdf">the damage</a> that pharmaceutical companies have done in sub-Saharan Africa, and of their tendency to monetise illness and its cures. Mbeki also recognised that the biological cause of AIDS cannot be addressed in isolation of social causes. </p>
<p>Yet his denial was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/107/427/157/30448/AIDS-and-the-Scientific-Governance-of-Medicine-in">wrong and costly</a>, in both monetary and human terms.</p>
<p>In fact, the impossibility of addressing AIDS without understanding social causes is a good scientific point. The epidemiologist <a href="http://www.caprisa.org/Leadership#gallery-details-3">Quarraisha Abdool Karim</a> also <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.85.11.1521">emphasises</a> it, but without denying that HIV causes AIDS. Her point is that social factors explain why certain attempts to block transmission of the virus fail.</p>
<p>What is it that makes Karim’s work groundbreaking and Mbeki’s pronouncements damaging? </p>
<h2>Context and critical thinking</h2>
<p>The difference is that Karim considers the local context without dropping her critical guard. She does not tout a solution to the problem of HIV infection of school-age girls simply because it’s African. Her team <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/329/5996/1168">trialled various failed interventions</a>. Each of these was a response to local context; each was “African”. They were rejected because they didn’t work.</p>
<p>Eventually the team <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/329/5996/1168">found an intervention that was effective</a> at reducing infection rates. This is local knowledge. It was “produced” in Africa and it “works” in Africa, or, to be more precise, in rural Kwazulu-Natal. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.conrad.org/tenofovir.html">Tenofovir Gel</a> that proved effective in Kwazulu-Natal might turn out not be the best strategy in San Francisco, just as some of the strategies for preventing infection in San Francisco didn’t work in rural Kwazulu-Natal. But the point is this: the claim that Tenofovir works in this African locality was subject to a high level of critical scrutiny. Mbeki didn’t subject his own claims about AIDS causation and prevention to the same level of scrutiny.</p>
<p>If the decolonisation of knowledge is to be successful, it needs to be driven by critical thinking about the nature of knowledge and related concepts like justification, evidence, method and explanation. It cannot simply be a parochial endorsement of the local, like supporting your local team. </p>
<p>Both strands of thinking – critical and uncritical – are present in the decolonisation rhetoric. The role of an African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, in this time and place, is to champion critical decolonisation, both against reactionary opposition to decolonisation, and against the temptations of dropping our critical guard.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Broadbent works for the University of Johannesburg, where he is Co-Director of the African Centre for Epistemology of Philosophy of Science, and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. He currently receives research funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>Phrases like “knowledge production” conceal the fact that knowledge answers to something beyond itself and beyond us. To produce knowledge is to find out about something.Alex Broadbent, Co-Director, African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, and Executive Dean, Faculty of Humanities, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/745502017-03-23T19:13:11Z2017-03-23T19:13:11ZHow we edit science part 5: so what is science?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162148/original/image-20170323-13506-1ysdg65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=110%2C64%2C2052%2C1515&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The best scientists, such as Marie and Pierre Curie, are committed to the experimental method.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>We take science seriously at The Conversation and we work hard at reporting it accurately. This series of five posts is adapted from an internal presentation on how to understand and edit science by Australian Science & Technology Editor, Tim Dean. We thought you would also find it useful.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The first four posts in this series covered the scientific method and practical tips on how to report it effectively. This post is more of a reflection on science and its origins. It’s not essential reading, but could be useful for those who want to situate their science reading or writing within a broader historical and conceptual context.</p>
<p>Fair warning: it’s going to get philosophical. That means you might find it frustratingly vague or complicated. If you find yourself getting infuriated at the inability to settle on clear definitions or provide clear answers to important questions, that’s a perfectly natural (and probably quite healthy) response. </p>
<p>These issues have been intensively debated for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, without resolution. We’d likely have given up on them by now, except that these concepts have an unfortunate tendency to influence the way we actually do things, and thus retain some importance.</p>
<h2>The foundations of science</h2>
<p>Explaining what science is, and entertaining all the debates about <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/">how it does or should work</a>, would take up an entire book (such as <a href="http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1229/What%20Is%20This%20Thing%20Called%20Science?%20-new%20and%20revised%204th%20edition-">this one</a>, which I highly recommend). Rather than tackling such issues head-on, this section will give a broad overview of what science is.</p>
<p>While it doesn’t get mentioned often outside of scientific circles, the fact is there is no one simple definition of science, and no single definitive method for conducting it.</p>
<p>However, virtually all conceptions of science lean on a couple of underlying philosophical ideas.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162146/original/image-20170323-13513-240zfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Francis Bacon (not the artist) was one of the leading voices to reform ‘natural philosophy’ into an observation-led endeavour, which ultimately evolved into science.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">richardhe51067/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first is a commitment to learning about the world through observation, or <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/#1.2">empiricism</a>. This is in contrast to alternative approaches to knowledge, such as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/#1.1">rationalism</a> - the notion that we can derive knowledge about the world just by thinking about it hard enough - or revelation - that we can learn from intuition, insight, drug-induced hallucinations, or religious inspiration.</p>
<p>Another philosophical basis of science is a commitment to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/">methodological naturalism</a>, which is simply the idea that the best way to understand the natural world is to appeal to natural mechanisms, laws, causes or systems, rather than to supernatural forces, spirits, immaterial substances, invisible unicorns or other deities.</p>
<p>This is why scientists reject the claim that ideas like creationism or intelligent design fall within the purview of science. Because these ideas posit or imply supernatural forces, no matter how scientific they try to sound, they break methodological naturalism, so they aren’t science.</p>
<p>(As a side point, science doesn’t assume or imply the stronger claim of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/">philosophical or ontological naturalism</a>. This is the idea that only natural things exist - which usually means things that exist in spacetime - and that there are no supernatural entities at all.</p>
<p>This is a strictly philosophical rather than scientific claim, and one that is generally agreed to be beyond the ken of science to prove one way or the other. So, if cornered, most scientists would agree it’s <em>possible</em> that intangible unicorns might exist, but if they don’t exist in spacetime or causally interact with things that do, then they’re irrelevant to the practice of science and can be safely ignored. See Pierre Laplace’s apocryphal – but no less cheeky – <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace">response to Napoleon</a>, who remarked that Laplace had produced a “huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe”, to which Laplace reputedly replied: “Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.”)</p>
<p>This is where we come to the role of truth in science: there isn’t any. At least in the absolute sense.</p>
<p>Instead, science produces facts about the world that are only held to be true with a certainty <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/the-humanist-tradition/enlightenment/david-hume/">proportional to the amount of evidence</a> in support of them. And that evidence can never give 100% certainty.</p>
<p>There are logical reasons for this to be the case, namely that empiricism is necessarily based on <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-inductive/">inductive</a> rather than deductive logic. </p>
<p>Another way to put it is that no matter how certain we are of a particular theory, and no matter how much evidence we’ve accrued to support it, we must leave open the possibility that tomorrow we will make an observation that contradicts it. And if the observation proves to be reliable (a high bar, perhaps, but never <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_extraordinary_evidence">infinitely high</a>), then it trumps the theory, no matter how dearly it’s held.</p>
<p>The Scottish philosopher David Hume couched the sceptical chink in empiricism’s armour of certainty like this: all we know about the world comes from observation, and all observation is of things that have happened in the past. But no observation of things in the past can guarantee that things in the future will operate in the same way. </p>
<p>This is the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/">problem of induction</a>”, and to this day there is no decisive counter to its scepticism. It doesn’t entirely undermine science, though. But it does give us reason to stop short of saying we know things about the world with absolute certainty.</p>
<h2>Scientific progress</h2>
<p>The steady accumulation of evidence is one reason why many people believe that science is constantly and steadily progressing. However, in messy reality, science rarely progresses smoothly or steadily.</p>
<p>Rather, it often moves in <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#3">fits and spurts</a>. Sometimes a new discovery will not only change our best theories, it will change the way we ask questions about the world and formulate hypotheses to explain them. </p>
<p>Sometimes it means we can’t even integrate the old theories into the new ones. That’s what is often called a “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-revolutions/#RevIncParCha">paradigm shift</a>” (another term to avoid when reporting science).</p>
<p>For instance, sometimes a new observation will come along that will cause us to throw out a lot of what we once thought we knew, like when the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10213830">synthesis of urea</a>, of all things, forced a rewrite of the contemporary understanding of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism">what it means to be a living thing</a>.</p>
<p>That’s progress of a sort, but it often involves throwing out a lot of old accepted facts, so it can also look regressive. In reality, it’s doing both. That’s just how science works.</p>
<p>Science also has its limits. For one, it can’t say much about inherently unobservable things, like some of the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/">inner workings of our minds</a> or <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn">invisible unicorns</a>.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean it can only talk about things we can directly observe at the macroscopic scale. Science can talk with authority about the microscopic, like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/higgs-boson-176">Higgs boson</a>, and the distant, like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/gravitational-waves-9473">collision of two black holes</a>, because it can scaffold those observations on other observations at our scale.</p>
<p>But science also has limits when it comes to discussing other kinds of things for which there is no fact of the matter, such as like questions of subjective preference. It’s not a <em>scientific fact</em> that Led Zeppelin is the greatest band ever, although I still think it’s a fact.</p>
<p>There are similar limits when it comes to moral values. Science can describe the world in detail, but it cannot by itself determine what is good or bad (someone please tell <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/02/07/3131377.htm">Sam Harris</a> – oh, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/01/28/3123581.htm">they</a> <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/02/10/3135411.htm">have</a>). To do that, it needs an injection of values, and they come from elsewhere. Some say they come from us, or from something we worship (which many people would argue means they still come from us) or from some other <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/">mysterious non-natural source</a>. Arguments over which source is the right one are philosophical, not scientific (although they can be informed by science).</p>
<p>Science is also arguably not our only tool for producing knowledge. There are other approaches, as exemplified by the various non-scientific academic disciplines, like history, sociology and economics (the “dismal science”), as well as other domains like art, literature and religion. </p>
<p>That said, to the extent that anyone makes an empirical claim – whether that be about the movement of heavenly bodies, the age of Earth, or how species change over time – science has proven to be our best tool to scrutinise that claim.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The final post in this series on how to understand and report science steps back to look at what science is, and what it isn’t.Tim Dean, EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.