A new book argues that our ignorance is so large, lucky discoveries are inevitable.
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How important are luck and good fortune in science?
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SubWoofer2
Ars Tribunus Militum
The rather good book Explanation in Geography by David Harvey is misleading titled, dealing as it does with explanation using the scientific method; and therefore relevant to all fields of knowledge. It's something of an Ur-text and one of the impacts on a much younger me was to discover the difference between inductive and deductive hypotheses in explanation in the sciences.
Deductive logic, based on a body of knowledge and proceeding from first principles and postulates, is the classic formulation of How Science Works, or at least how it ought to work. If your big discovery was made using hypothesis testing arising from deductive logic, you are certainly on the path to a Nobel Prize (my lecturer told us).
Inductive logic is a little more of the inferential reasoning towards an explanation but which is less bound by the body of established knowledge upon which a deductive hypothesis is erected. In simple terms, this is often scorned as starting with an effect and working back to a cause.
Deductive logic, based on a body of knowledge and proceeding from first principles and postulates, is the classic formulation of How Science Works, or at least how it ought to work. If your big discovery was made using hypothesis testing arising from deductive logic, you are certainly on the path to a Nobel Prize (my lecturer told us).
Inductive logic is a little more of the inferential reasoning towards an explanation but which is less bound by the body of established knowledge upon which a deductive hypothesis is erected. In simple terms, this is often scorned as starting with an effect and working back to a cause.
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But the idea that right-place-right-time isn’t quite accurate, that’s the setup certainly, but it’s more the-experiment-failed, but instead of just binning it, you closely examine the failure and recognize its application to another problem you know about. That is more a mental resilience kind of thing. I’ve certainly had that happen on a few experiments, but it was only because I had looked into the other problem that I realized a possible solution fell in my lap. my best post-it result was I had been asked to create simulated heart valve (specifically mitral valve leaflets) and on a particularly frustrating day the silicone impregnated power mesh pealed off the cardboard it lay on and rolled up like a carpet and cured, after appropriately beating the lab assistant for failing to put the clips on properly to keep it stretched, looking at this weird thing about the diameter of a pencil, it struck me a different surgeon had asked if it would be possible to make an artificial Achilles tendon to simulate surgical repair on, and realized this looked like the tendon from anatomy in med school. But if that 2nd surgeon hadn’t asked I would have trashed it (I mean who needs a gummy dowel?)
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So true, often the margins of science yield the big discoveries. Around 1% of the static on old US analog broadcast TV was due to cosmic radiation background - the left over of the big bang. Running down the margins can lead to amazing new insights.
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History Timeline: Post-it® Notes
"Dr. Spencer Silver, a 3M scientist, was busily researching adhesives in the laboratory. In the process, he discovered something peculiar: an adhesive that stuck lightly to surfaces but didn’t bond tightly to them."
I haven't seen the context for the quote to see how it was attributed to Dupont.
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It was 3M all the way. The development story is interesting as it was a long road from acrylate co-polymer microspheres to the popular product.
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Heart of Dawn
Ars Scholae Palatinae
It often strikes me that we humans know so much and yet so little about this incomprehensibly vast universe, and even our home here on Earth- what we know we know, what we know we don't, what we don't know we don't know, and what the limit is of what can ever be known.
Everytime we figure something out there are more questions than answers leading us down endless rabbitholes to discover new and stranger things, and sometimes we just stumble over things we'd never even considered before. And I love that we live in a universe where it seems like this is always going to be the case.
Everytime we figure something out there are more questions than answers leading us down endless rabbitholes to discover new and stranger things, and sometimes we just stumble over things we'd never even considered before. And I love that we live in a universe where it seems like this is always going to be the case.
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Science is all about pushing the boundaries of what we know, unexpected results may very well be the best ones.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
But this is exactly the 'fortune favors the prepared mind' (or whatever the quote was). Your training including anatomy. Which included the Achilles tendon. Your brain mixed that knowledge with your gummy mess and something useful came out it. Certainly tenacity has something to do with it. If instead of questioning your result you went out and played Pickleball your brain might have been busy trying to swat the ball back and forth.
But if you had no concept of tendon anatomy, it would likely just been a gummy mess.
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Telmo Pievani is one of my favorite thinkers.
In his books and lectures he always provides new insights into the reality in which we live.
I agree that "The unknown is practically endless", we have endless possibilities for discovery and growth.
In his books and lectures he always provides new insights into the reality in which we live.
I agree that "The unknown is practically endless", we have endless possibilities for discovery and growth.
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I have personally found that one of the primary takeaways of more education and research is a deeper comprehension of the vast scope of my own ignorance. Each new concept that I manage to really wrap my head around reveals 10 more outstanding, and it just continues exponentially from there. I think that this is why so many academics suffer from imposter syndrome: they have gazed long into the abyss.
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Serendipitously, you encountered a new term, abductive reasoning. This should be an opportunity for learning and personal growth if you looked up the term, but you already made up your mind that you know more than the article's author and that she made a mistake.
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Listen, we all know they aren't actually "aliens" but are rather human time travelers from so far into the future that we no longer quite recognize them as ourselves. Lets just take a deep breath and remember that although we may have changed physically, we are still the same underlying vibrational pattern projected onto 4th dimensional space-time.
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It wasn't rare for the same thing to be invented by different people who didn't know each other and lived far away from each other.
For example the telescope is such a simple invention once you have two magnification glasses and some form of tube that no one knows who was the original inventor. We know the general area the invention was first seen and or used but that's it.
And let's not even start with the radio.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/who-invented-radio-guglielmo-marconi-or-aleksandr-popov
Discovering something for accident does happen but several people with no contact or information trading with each other to invent the same thing?
Is that coincidence, all those people making the same accidental discovery? Bitds of a feather or what? In some cases it may be plagiarism but in others there is no way for the plagiarism to have happened.
And what when people invents similar things?
HD DVD vs Blue Ray for example. Or Betamax vs VHS.
For example the telescope is such a simple invention once you have two magnification glasses and some form of tube that no one knows who was the original inventor. We know the general area the invention was first seen and or used but that's it.
And let's not even start with the radio.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/who-invented-radio-guglielmo-marconi-or-aleksandr-popov
Discovering something for accident does happen but several people with no contact or information trading with each other to invent the same thing?
Is that coincidence, all those people making the same accidental discovery? Bitds of a feather or what? In some cases it may be plagiarism but in others there is no way for the plagiarism to have happened.
And what when people invents similar things?
HD DVD vs Blue Ray for example. Or Betamax vs VHS.
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I mean fundamentally, the unexpected has to be unexpected. If its not then its not new.
We have a prediction of the world via theory, and then when something else happens, especially if we can replicate it, we can see what that behaviour is, and then craft a theory that predicts the new interaction.
But by definition, that interaction being not what was predicted, is unexpected.
So yes?
We have a prediction of the world via theory, and then when something else happens, especially if we can replicate it, we can see what that behaviour is, and then craft a theory that predicts the new interaction.
But by definition, that interaction being not what was predicted, is unexpected.
So yes?
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Agreed.
Your mind can be prepared to the hilt, but if what you see is something that doesn't click, then it's not even a memory for most people.
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Much (maybe most) science happens this way, at least in part. People go into the lab and try out stuff, changing variables to see what happens. When they see something unexpected, they follow up on that. But when it comes time to write the papers, the story in re-told as though it was inevitable and logical. I've done this myself.
It's important that research grants are not too specific because that precludes such serendipity. In fact, the result of over-managing grants is that often the work has been done before the grant proposal is written. And then the money from the new grant is used to fund another round of serendipity. And then the next grant proposal is written based on the new findings. It's ridiculous but I've seen it happen repeatedly.
It's important that research grants are not too specific because that precludes such serendipity. In fact, the result of over-managing grants is that often the work has been done before the grant proposal is written. And then the money from the new grant is used to fund another round of serendipity. And then the next grant proposal is written based on the new findings. It's ridiculous but I've seen it happen repeatedly.
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Reasoning that comes from contemplating navels? From visits by passing aliens (of whatever origin)?
So of course seeing it mentioned twice (once in the article and once here), I had to look it up (ain't the internet wonderful?). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
Edit: of course, there's always: things you know, and things you don't know; things you know you don't know (so there's a fairly clear way to find out) and things you don't know you don't know; and so forth ad ifinitum. Assuming you want to know about them in the first place...
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This article and the comments are highly resonant with me. My colleagues and I, some still good friends, did research in human genetics for more than 50 years. This field advanced at an astonishing pace: science fiction made real again-and-again. But by 2024 the primary finding is how little we actually understand of human genetics, in particular, and human biology in general. This doesn't discredit the enormous advances in all fields of biology - not just genetics - it simply illustrates the depths of our ignorance. To me this is profoundly exciting and encouraging. I wish I were starting a new 50 years of research; I envy our students!
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That's an interesting first painting of an Iranian depiction of an Indian battle.
My favourite fact about this connection is that in Hinduism, the Devas are the good deities and the Asura's are the bad/demonic kind deities, but the Zoroastrian religion pre-Islamic spread in Iran flipped it on its head and worshipped the Asuras. You could certainly look at many of the stories and argue some of the worshipped gods were acting in a negative light.
There was also a functional Indo-Greek kingdom and a lot of spread of stories through that contact. Duryodhan, who was impervious except for his hip, for example sounds a lot like Achilles.
My favourite fact about this connection is that in Hinduism, the Devas are the good deities and the Asura's are the bad/demonic kind deities, but the Zoroastrian religion pre-Islamic spread in Iran flipped it on its head and worshipped the Asuras. You could certainly look at many of the stories and argue some of the worshipped gods were acting in a negative light.
There was also a functional Indo-Greek kingdom and a lot of spread of stories through that contact. Duryodhan, who was impervious except for his hip, for example sounds a lot like Achilles.
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Which is a pretty good rephrasing of the adage that "chance favors the prepared mind."
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Pasteur wrote, "Chance favours the prepared mind."
Note, "Favours". It's not a certainty.
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In the past they'd have called similar things angels or fairies or visions of God or some such, so forgive me when I don't believe they're aliens because that's what people think they are in a more technological era.
And it's funny now that everyone has a video camera in their pockets, no one seems to ever get video of this kind of stuff.
Edit: I recall one recent instance of a supposed UFO that was two dot of light intersecting in the night sky and then one dropping another dot that fell and quickly faded. I want to say the video was taken near Los Angeles and would have happened over the Mohave Desert.
In reality, it was a military aircraft refueling and then ejecting a flare (a common "thank you" to the tanker crew) close enough to a populated area for people to see it.
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And the more we know that we don't know everything, which is a good thing because it opens up more avenues of research. Contrast this with the arrogantly ignorant who claim to know everything.
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Several million fables do not magically sum up into a fact. All the ghost stories in the world still cannot produce even a single ghost.
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"Would Albert Einstein ever have hit upon the theory of relativity if he hadn't been clever? All these tremendous leaps forward have been taken in the dark. Would Rutherford ever have split the atom if he hadn't tried? Could Marconi have invented the radio if he hadn't by pure chance spent years working at the problem? Are these amazing breakthroughs ever achieved except by years and years of unremitting study? Of course not. What I said earlier about accidental discoveries must have been wrong."
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I feel attacked!
I'm not an academic, but man there are days where I am just in awe of, and bewildered any humbled by, the vast expanse of human knowledge - and how much we have to go
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I once read that the sentence most often uttered in conjunction with scientific discoveries is not “Eureka” but “Hmm, thats’s odd”.
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One discovery leads to another:
A truly shocking discovery that shakes the heavens.
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What does mental resilience have to do with recalling a memory and linking that memory to a current situation?
Isn’t that just a nominal functioning human brain?
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Because of my irritation as a Mathematician with people saying epidemics grow exponentially - against the laws of Maths and also the medical literature dating back to 1840. I made my own (minimal) model and in the process debunked lots of Stochastic Differential Equation models.
Epidemic the card game
Epidemic the card game
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