Science and its Future
echnology is, in its essence, new ways of thinking. The most powerful type of technology, sometimes called enabling technology, is a thought incarnate which enables new knowledge to find and develop news ways to know. This kind of recursive bootstrapping is how science evolves. As in every type of knowledge, it accrues layers of self-reference to its former state.
New informational organizations are layered upon the old without displacement, just as in biological evolution. Our brains are good examples. We retain reptilian reflexes deep in our minds (fight or flight) while the more complex structuring of knowledge (how to do statistics) is layered over those primitive networks. In the same way, older methods of knowing (older scientific methods) are not jettisoned; they are simply subsumed by new levels of order and complexity. But the new tools of observation and measurement, and the new technologies of knowing, will alter the character of science, even while it retains the old methods.
I'm willing to bet the scientific method 400 years from now will differ from today's understanding of science more than today's science method differs from the proto-science used 400 years ago. A sensible forecast of technological innovations in the next 400 years is beyond our imaginations (or at least mine), but we can fruitfully envision technological changes that might occur in the next 50 years.
Based on the suggestions of the observers above, and my own active imagination, I offer the following as possible near-term advances in the evolution of the scientific method.
Compiled Negative Results — Negative results are saved, shared, compiled and analyzed, instead of being dumped. Positive results may increase their credibility when linked to negative results. We already have hints of this in the recent decision of biochemical journals to require investigators to register early phase 1 clinical trials. Usually phase 1 trials of a drug end in failure and their negative
New informational organizations are layered upon the old without displacement, just as in biological evolution. Our brains are good examples. We retain reptilian reflexes deep in our minds (fight or flight) while the more complex structuring of knowledge (how to do statistics) is layered over those primitive networks. In the same way, older methods of knowing (older scientific methods) are not jettisoned; they are simply subsumed by new levels of order and complexity. But the new tools of observation and measurement, and the new technologies of knowing, will alter the character of science, even while it retains the old methods.
I'm willing to bet the scientific method 400 years from now will differ from today's understanding of science more than today's science method differs from the proto-science used 400 years ago. A sensible forecast of technological innovations in the next 400 years is beyond our imaginations (or at least mine), but we can fruitfully envision technological changes that might occur in the next 50 years.
Based on the suggestions of the observers above, and my own active imagination, I offer the following as possible near-term advances in the evolution of the scientific method.
Compiled Negative Results — Negative results are saved, shared, compiled and analyzed, instead of being dumped. Positive results may increase their credibility when linked to negative results. We already have hints of this in the recent decision of biochemical journals to require investigators to register early phase 1 clinical trials. Usually phase 1 trials of a drug end in failure and their negative