Vinod Kumar Wadhawan
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Revisiting the Scientific Method: The Need to Make Science More Inclusive in Scope: Wadhawan, Vinod:
9798307226155: Amazon.com: Books
This book is a follow-up to the previous book by the author (‘The 8-Fold Way of the Scientific Method’). The previous book introduced the reader to the way science is done: Strict adherence to objectivity, rationality, and transparency in handling information about a natural phenomenon we want to understand. The present book goes a step further and takes a critical look at the Scientific Method to see what can be done to make science more inclusive in scope; for example by giving due importance to subjective or experiential information also, and not only empirical information. Together the two books provide a fairly comprehensive account of the nature of scientific research, and can serve as course material for the training of an aspiring scientist. The theme of consciousness runs throughout the present book, because it is the most important example of a nonphysical phenomenon or entity that current science, by and large, tends to stay away from. Ways are suggested for dealing with this problem by relaxing in a carefully guarded manner some of the eight tenets of the present Scientific Method. Big Data is a rather recent development in the history of science. Its availability is going to have far-reaching consequences for the way science is going to be done now. The book discusses its promises and pitfalls. Present-day science, which is mostly reductionistic in approach, is not adequate enough for dealing with complex systems. Here again, Big Data may be of big help because pattern formation is an important characteristic of many complex systems, and Big Data is very good (rather too good!) at discerning patterns or correlations. Discussion of Karl Popper’s falsifiability criterion occupies substantial space in this short book. This is because this criterion is the main reason why the present Scientific Method labels many questions about Nature as unscientific or nonscientific, thus limiting the scope of scientific enquiry. In a more inclusive approach one would also give due importance to the philosophical rival of falsificationism, namely verificationism. Another way of making science more inclusive is to use a diluted version of falsificationism, formulated by Imre Lakatos. There is also a discussion of the work of some other philosophers of science, notably Nicholas Maxwell and Thomas Kuhn. Popper’s philosophy for doing science has proved to be very successful, but it is desirable that the student of science be also aware of other models of how science can progress.
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
1. The Scientific Method 1
1.1 Asking the right question 2
1.2 Objective observation of the world 4
1.3 Coming up with hypotheses for understanding the data 6
1.4 Reproducible verification of predictions of hypotheses 12
1.5 A theory for explaining the hypotheses 15
1.6 Use of unambiguous language and logic 18
1.7 Choice of the smallest necessary set of axioms 21
1.8 The falsification requirement 25
2. Complex Systems, Complexity Transitions 27
2.1 Complex systems 27
2.2 Towards a formal definition of a complex system 30
2.3 Complexity transitions 34
2.4 Emergence 36
2.5 Reductionistic science is inadequate for dealing with
complex systems 38
3. Big Data and the Future of the Scientific Method 41
4. Life, Intelligence, Consciousness 53
4.1 Life 53
4.2 Intelligence 60
4.3 Consciousness 62
4.4 One consciousness or many? 73
5. Artificial Life, Intelligence, Consciousness 77
5.1 Artificial life 77
5.2 Artificial intelligence 80
5.3 ChatGPT 81
5.4 Artificial consciousness, or machine consciousness 87
5.5 Can a robot acquire consciousness? 90
5.6 Have some of our machines already become sentient? 91
5.7 Apocalyptic AI and transhumanism 94
6. Towards a More Inclusive Scientific Method 99
6.1 Asking the right question 99
6.2 Observation of the world 100
6.3 Coming up with hypotheses for understanding the data 102
6.4 Testing of predictions of hypotheses 104
6.5 A theory for explaining the hypotheses 105
6.6 The language and logic of science 106
6.7 Choice of axioms 107
6.8 How justified is the falsifiability requirement? 108
7. Concluding Remarks 115
Bibliography 123
Index 135
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Preface
Nature is all there is. All phenomena are natural phenomena, and the Scientific Method is the method of choice for investigating them. The study of all natural phenomena should come within the purview of science. But the strictness of the Scientific Method presently used makes it inapplicable for investigating certain nonphysical phenomena in their entirety, a good example being that of consciousness. In a general sense, consciousness is a state of awareness of one's thoughts, feelings, sensations, and surroundings. It is the subjective experience of perception, cognition, and emotions that is sometimes described as the ‘sense of self’. Consciousness is a fundamental aspect of human experience and an essential characteristic of the human mindbody, and of many other life forms. An important requirement of the Scientific Method is that in any scientific discourse, every word used must convey the same meaning to all concerned. Words like ‘consciousness’ create problems on that score. Although the neural correlates of consciousness help us in taking an empirical view of the situation, the problem remains that we do not know how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences. How to remedy the situation so that we can have meaningful scientific dialogue on such natural phenomena also?
In my previous book (The 8-Fold Way of the Scientific Method) I gave a fairly comprehensive discussion of what the Scientific Method is all about, and how science is done by applying it. The achievements of the method have been spectacular, and we humans can be truly proud that we invented it. But, as pointed out near the end of that book, there is a need to relax its dictums (in a carefully guarded way) so that the scope of scientific investigations can become more inclusive. I suggested some ways there, and discuss the matter more comprehensively in the present book.
There is a related issue, namely that of understanding complex systems. The human mindbody is perhaps the most complex system of them all. The present Scientific Method is suitable mainly for doing reductionistic science. A characteristic feature of a complex system is that it must be investigated as a whole, and not by reducing it into parts and assuming that if we understand the parts, we understand the whole. For complex systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, in a mutually interactive manner. An extended Scientific Method that is effective for studying complex systems will automatically become more inclusive in scope.
Big Data is an inalienable feature of life in modern times. It is already influencing science and many other activities like finance, business, advertising, entertainment, government, warfare, etc. There is a viewpoint that Big Data can make it possible to do science without having to postulate hypotheses/models/theories beforehand. This may well be too optimistic, but there is no denying the fact that the availability of Big Data offers new opportunities for making science progress rapidly, particularly for investigating complex systems. Big Data Analytics can throw up unexpected correlations in the data, which may provide new leads for understanding a complex system. There is already a report that an artificial-intelligence system has been developed that is capable of formulating physical theories by recognizing patterns in complex data sets.
So, we need an extended Scientific Method that makes science more inclusive in scope, that enables science to investigate complex systems by going beyond reductionism, and that incorporates the use of Big Data as an additional tool for doing science (data-driven science). In this book I explore the possibilities and make some suggestions. If insistence on empirical evidence limits the scope of science, then go for non-empirical and experiential evidence also. If the falsifiability requirement of the Scientific Method is too restrictive, then see what can be done to relax it in a carefully guarded and tentative manner. Big Data is offering wonderful new and highly unconventional ways of doing science. The training of scientists must now include awareness of this option, as also an exposure to the basics of how such research should be done.
Vinod Wadhawan
New Delhi (January 2025)
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