What is Philosophy of Scientific Breakthroughs? | Episode 2105 | Closer To Truth

To explore scientific Breakthroughs is to find theories or discoveries that challenge conventional wisdom, change patterns of thought, provide novel frameworks for research. What is the deep essence or general nature of scientific breakthroughs?

Featuring interviews with Paul Davies, David Wallace, Jim Holt, David Chalmers, and John Horgan.

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[CloserToTruthTV]

Closer To Truth is broadcast on PBS stations. You can also watch Closer To Truth online at CloserToTruth.com or on our YouTube channel.

This is Episode 5 of Season 21, first aired on PBS stations in 2022.

[dokkenrox]

I love the locations they chose for the interviews in this episode. Very nice.

[richardedward]

Whoever chose those locations, well done! University buildings, empty warehouse, those windowed stair cases. Nice!

[robertogarcia]

The words of John Horgan in the 10 seconds between times 22:10 and 22:20 of the video automatically elicited on me the words pronounced in 1897 by the physicist William Thomson (aka Lord Kelvin) who looked at all the tremendous advancements in electricity, astronomy and biology that marked his age and concluded: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

[matheuspadilha]

This channel is wonderful, it brings deep human questions always accompanying aki from Brazil

[gracerodgers]

With all that getting, get understanding.👍❤️

[quantumkath]

Welcome to the "heavy-weights" of science thanks to Closer To Truth!

[SRAVALM]

Full episodes the best, thx.



I don't have input concerning the question rather a recollection.
Why do 'we' seek breakthroughs in science while we clearly have little connection with nature; our state of mind and condition with her is not a healthy relationship by any standards, we use nature as if she's disposable, as if we are 'first' and she must adapt to our means and measure's, rather than man acknowledging nature's simple and Divine form, so integrating into her becoming one, thus reconciling our Divine sacred Unity. The way we treat and think of resources: animals, land, sky even human beings, like mere puppets to be programmed and conditioned, and propaganda'd, used and abused as 'human resources', and for what?
Merge man with computer is what I've learned is next, so man can become Gawd, although man hasn't yet been able to controll himself.
There's nothing but lies today, all lies. You all lie to yourselves. We live a lie, seek a lie, comforted by lies.
Maybe the truest breakthrough is realizing how incredible and even miraculous all this is; life, experience, meaning, emotion, mind, thought, intellect, wisdom.
These modern science guys, something is very off concerning them. I can't shake it.

[Robinson]

I wasn't expecting it but I like Chalmers argument that consciousness is per definition collapsed and not in a superposition

Also, what a beautiful environment!

[TheTroofSayer]

Throughout these interviews with Davies, Wallace, Holt, Chalmers, and Horgan, the conversation revolved around specific breakthroughs; for example Davies' attributing "the arrow of time" to the origin of the universe, or Chalmers' attributing the collapse of the wave function to consciousness when some kind of measurement takes place. But there is another domain of breakthrough that was not mentioned, and that relates to Isaac Newton, with his *axiomatic framework* for classical physics.

Newton did not pull his axioms (laws of force and motion) out of thin air. He made logical inferences on the assumption that everything *must* come together in a synthesis that makes sense. We now, with respect to the life/cognitive sciences, find ourselves having to confront a similar situation. We require our own axiomatic framework for our core principles. Everything *must* come together and make sense, within the context of fundamental assumptions. To get the ball rolling, here's my suggestion for the sort of axiomatic framework that we might consider, to help us towards a new paradigmatic breakthrough:

1) Entropy *must* be taken seriously. Bottom-up causation (physicalism), on its own, fails to address entropy;
2) Factor in top-down causation as integral to addressing entropy. Top-down interfaces *with* bottom-up, such that bottom-up causation constrains what the top-down can command;
3) Axioms/principles must be simple and general, to account for life as inevitable, not accidental. The semiotic theory of CS Peirce fits that bill nicely, to provide an account of association, motivation and habituation that applies to human and non-human agents, alike, as a general principle. Semiotic theory provides the basis for top-down causation;
4) The persistence of complexity (life) across time, factored in with the implications of entropy, provides its own evidence of the pervasiveness of life throughout the universe. As it is over here, so too, it is over there on Andromeda, or any other galaxy;
5) Bodies wire neuroplastic, DNA-entangled brains;
6) An agent's body determines its horizon of options, its possibilities - human mind-bodies are designed to engage with culture, & so ours is a vastly extended horizon of options in comparison to a frog in a pond;
7) The hard problem of consciousness. What's it like to be a bat? Or a fish? What's it like to be our opposite sex? Look not at the brain, but at the body that wires it;
8) Cube root scaling to subatomic levels might extend top-down causation to the level of matter. Are the properties expressed by atoms and molecules contingent on the contexts in which they find themselves, such as the contexts that exist at inter/intra-cellular levels? Has implications for how we interpret QM;
9) Binding problem - solved;
10) Mind-body problem - solved;
11) Entropy problem - taken seriously, we can declare the Shannon-entropy problem solved.

Might this be the kind of thing that we should be looking for, for the next breakthrough? An axiomatic framework that establishes common patterns and assumptions.

[rxbracho]

Robert, in the end you summarize Chalmers position as "inner awareness and consciousness emerging from physical particles and forces", when David explicitly talked about consciousness "deciding" when to collapse the wave function. The distinction is important because I'm Chalmers view (and mine) consciousness does not emerge but is fundamental.

[Appleblade]

Can anyone explain why all the talk of quantum entanglement referenced just two particles? Is that just a convenient number to help a listener imagine the problematic situation, or is there evidence that entangled particles are or can only be pairs?

[jamesruscheinski]

can there be way(s) to test theories or models other than experimentation?

[jamesruscheinski]

experience might be a way to test what is beyond experimentation to verify models and theories? maybe can use probability and statistics for experience?

[Paul]

Another interpretation of quantum mechanics is Presentist Fragmentalism, Foundations of Physics Volume 52, issue 4, August 2022

[jamesruscheinski]

changes in framework can be physical as well as mental?

[JonSebastianF]

21:59 That there are no more big breakthroughs in science, is exactly what Bertrand Russell said in 1925, lol :P (“What I Believe”, ch. 1)

[Appleblade]

What's the role of new tools in Scientific Breakthroughs? Freeman Dyson liked to point out that most of them just followed on the invention or discovery of a new device that improved perception. Reasoning insights are great, but you need new raw materials provided by tools.

[chophop]

Much like a California earthquake, two universes (tectonic plates) are slowly running into each other, and the friction caused by their rubbing together is causing this wonderful reality I am experiencing.

[B.S...]

The most important scientific breakthrough in the next 20 years is A.I... Self evolving A.I.