Don’t Forget Intuition: The art of doing science

https://theamericanscholar.org/dont-forget-intuition/

by Hooke • 3 years ago

71 32 3 years ago

theamericanscholar.org

ttonkytonk• 3 years ago

A review of In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems by Giorgio Parisi

emmender12• 3 years ago

This is my gripe with high school (and college) education..

knowledge which took hundreds of years to discover is imparted in capsules to students - the history of how knowledge was discovered is likely more important and interesting to learn than knowledge itself...

cases in point: heliocentric theory has a rich and dramatic history, and so does galois theory

Quote from article..

As someone who writes about science history, I have long grumbled about how misleading modern scientific papers are. I understand the need to present scientific findings in a clean, concise way, but the papers also omit all the false starts, blind alleys, broken equipment, and dumb mistakes that beset real scientific research every day. By omitting all the human stuff, the papers fail to explain how science really gets done.

rubidium• 3 years ago

Yeah but you know plenty of how science gets done if you go do science. The goal of a scientific paper is to concisely convey what novel thing has been discovered. It is not to convey how science gets done.

PhD thesis are sometimes good places to look if you want more of the gory details.

Edit: and if you ever take a physics lab in trying to measure the heat capacity of water or speed of light you learn a bunch about how science actually works.

burnished5• 3 years ago

What? Sharing the difficulties you encountered is helpful for other researchers and for replication studies. The goal of a paper is to share your findings in a manner that is clear and helps advance knowledge in your field, and frequently the most important thing you can share is how you performed your experiment followed by why you chose to perform that experiment and whether it conformed to your expectations or not.

Having personally gone through a couple years of lab classes; no, not really. Lord knows your professors may try but at least in my experience the profundity is lost on students. You get a lovely tour of scientific concensus, but most people see the experiments as being fore-ordained or like a recipe.

To put it more simply university lab classes demonstrate so many things that are true that people sometimes never realize that science is a method for disproving things.

j16sdiz• 3 years ago

I guess those failed attempts are reserved for workshops or conference.

Paper are for findings in more presentable state.

someguy72506• 3 years ago

I'm still hoping for a quantum gravity theory that can basically explain Einstein's spacetime using intuitive languages. (I'm probably stupid, but I'm hoping it's all just chunks like a game server, with delays between chunks)

elashri• 3 years ago

Do you consider the quantum mechanics as an intuitive theory ( In whatever definition of intuition you think of)? Because if you don't, then any Quantum Gravity wouldn't be for you.

someguy72506• 3 years ago

Quantum is not the most intuitive thing to discuss. And frankly a quantum theory without complex, solid maths behind it might as well be a fairy tale.

In the context of how atoms work without having electrons that lose charge and fall into nuclei, how different atoms absorb / emit different colors/wavelengths of light:

The simplest theory is that they just are this way. Just fix up the existing "codebase" to accommodate for this observed fact. So they just said electrons has discrete energy states and orbits to choose from.

It's literally the simplest way to accommodate the observed fact that electrons do not fall into nuclei.

It led to super complex Maths and predictions about black holes, and seemingly conflicts with general relativity. But, Can you think of anything more intuitive?

bowsamic5• 3 years ago

Einstein's general theory of relativity is already extremely intuitive compared to even non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics (which literally has no accepted intuitive description). Theories of Quantum Gravity are way more unintuitive

someguy72506• 3 years ago

Theories of Quantum Gravity are way more unintuitive

Hence my desire for an intuitive one.

jbandela1• 3 years ago

What’s interesting is that all of science rests ultimately on intuition.

The laws of logic and reasoning rest on axioms which basically rely on the intuition that they are true.

markusde• 3 years ago

This is slightly misleading. "All of science" doesn't rely on intuition-- it relies on the scientific method. Intuition guides how we develop our models but ultimately there _is_ a real forcing function in the sense that the models need to hold up to experiment.

An example of why this matters: string theory. AFAICT It's a field that is built with a clear(ish) intuition and rigorous use of logic, but because it is experimentally unverifiable the field has never really moved past conjecture.

burnished5• 3 years ago

Nitpick: If it isnt experimental it isnt science.

cscurmudgeon2• 3 years ago

it relies on the scientific method

Which come from logic/reasoning which relies on intuition.

burnished5• 3 years ago

You're thinking of math. That the math we've developed leads to intuitive useful results, or that it is useful for making predictions about the world is no coincidence. If science rests on anything it rests on the belief that the world operates through repeatable principles, that you can repeat an experiment and expect the same result.

cscurmudgeon2• 3 years ago

"science rests on anything it rests on the belief that the world operates through repeatable principles"

Where does the principle come from?

mercurialsolo• 3 years ago

Intuition and observation - are the cornerstones of the scientific process. While i do believe we don't have shortage of either, it's when the two meet do we have real breakthroughs. We posit theories and new ways of thinking by observation from other places. Often times, that's why scientists tend to have varied interests.

tuanx5• 3 years ago

Great article -- it calls to mind for me a quote I learned of through John Ousterhout: "Use your intuition to ask questions, not to answer them". Science is the follow through, but intuition is the start.

trostaft• 3 years ago

Intuition and rigor are the 'yin and yang' of conducting interesting applied math research (specializing to my field because that's all I can speak to). Initial research is almost entirely driven by intuition. Experimentation, testing, trying new ideas, all founded on the basis of rigor but in the heat of the moment (read: weeks) it's not really what I'm thinking about. Then, during testing and validation, I come back and properly build up the rigor blocks; revealing both errors and potential new directions forward. Cycle over and over, both compose a robust and creative scientific process. Ideally.

rramadass• 3 years ago

Related: Can We Rely on Our Intuition? - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-rely-on-ou...

Don’t Forget Intuition: The art of doing science

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