Astronomy

FORYOURCONSIDERATION
BY JEFF HESTER
Not the end of
science
The emerging science
of process
I
picked up a copy of John
Horgan’s The End of
Science the other day.
Horgan is a good writer
with impressive rhetorical
skill, but the book itself is a
travesty. Horgan is a true
believer that we have reached
the end of what science can tell
us, leaving him keenly attuned
to things that might support
his faith, but deaf to things
that do not.
What I saw in Horgan’s
prose more than anything was
a mixture of hubris and failed
imagination. The future of
science will, without question,
be different from its past. But
Horgan seems convinced that
because he, personally, cannot
envision what that future will
be, it must be a dead end.
From where I sit, things
look different. Last month, I
wrote about tiers of scientific
thought. From observation, to
catalogs and categorization,
to predictive description, to
explanation and a search for
mechanism and physical law,
science has come a long way.
But while science continues to
delve aggressively into the fundamental
nature of reality, the
last century and a half has also
seen something different.
Rather than looking for
new physical laws or testing
ever more esoteric theoretical
predictions of those laws, scientists
are increasingly asking
a different sort of question:
“Once you know the rules and
the way pieces move, how does
the game unfold?”
For want of something better,
I’ll call this kind of science
the “science of process.”
I need to be clear that I
am not talking about process
in the way an engineer does.
Engineers begin with a goal,
and then design processes to
accomplish that end. To an
engineer, process is inherently
teleological, meaning it embodies
the last of Aristotle’s four
causes: purpose.
But the science of process has
nothing to do with Aristotle’s
philosophy. Purpose is superfluous.
Instead, the science
of process asks what happens
when you throw all of our
observations, descriptions, and
physical laws into a pot and put
it on to boil.
Looking forward in time, the
science of process asks, “Given
the way things work, what will
happen next?” Looking back
into the past it asks, “Given the
way things work, how did we
get here?”
Once recognized, the emergence
of the science of process
is not difficult to see. A century
ago, cutting-edge astronomy
meant classifying stars and galaxies
and discovering the sizes
of things. In sharp contrast,
astronomy today looks at the
process of star formation and
evolution, the process of galaxy
and structure formation, and
even the processes that gave rise
to physical law itself.
Astronomy is hardly alone.
Modern geology and planetary
science are built on processes
such as tectonism, volcanism,
impacts, and gradation. Medical
research talks less of organs and
their function, and more about
processes and their interactions.
The exploding field of brain science
looks at learning, memory,
Astronomers have come a long way from the days of simply categorizing different
kinds of galaxies. Now, they use observations combined with detailed models to
understand how galaxies like our own Milky Way evolved over billions of years from
indistinct blobs to complex spirals.
behavior, and even consciousness,
not as things or patterns
or events, but as processes. And
then there is biology. Absent the
process of evolution, biology
vanishes as a modern science.
The science of process relies
on Newton, Einstein, and Bohr,
but it takes a very different
approach. For one thing, nature
doesn’t respect boundaries
between academic disciplines,
so neither can the science of
process. The science of process
isn’t looking for that one equation
that explains everything.
Instead it looks at the emergence
of complexity from underlying
simplicity, and at the emergence
of pattern and order from
underlying complexity.
That’s a very different ballgame
than measuring this
number to test that prediction.
Destructive testing of ideas
remains paramount. But we
have to carefully rethink what
kinds of questions can and
cannot be answered, and what
those answers might look like.
The science of process draws
on a host of new experimental,
observational, methodological,
and theoretical tools. There
are technologies like the fMRI,
which allows us to watch the
brain as it formulates thoughts.
Blindingly fast computers allow
us to handle huge amounts
of data and watch processes
play themselves out in virtual
universes of ones and zeros.
Nonlinear dynamics and the
mathematics of complexity
weren’t yet part of the curriculum
when I got my Ph.D.
The term fractal wasn’t even
invented until my senior year
in high school.
Things get messy when science
reinvents itself. It’s the
Wild West. Nobody owns a
crystal ball. Maybe one of the
reasons it is so difficult for a
science journalist to recognize
and appreciate the change taking
place is that the scientists
who are remaking their fields
don’t really understand the
impact yet either.
The science of process is
tackling problems that hold
the promise of revolutionizing
our understanding of the
cosmos, of our world, and of
ourselves. In retrospect, each
new tier of scientific thought
has brought with it changes
even more profound than the
one before. I doubt that this
one will disappoint.
Jeff Hester is a keynote speaker,
coach, and astrophysicist.
Follow his thoughts at
jeff-hester.com.
NASA/ESA/C. PAPOVICH (TAMU)/H. FERGUSON (STSCI)/S. FABER (UCSC)/I. LABBÉ (LEIDEN UNIV.)
BROWSE THE “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION” ARCHIVE AT www.Astronomy.com/Hester.
12 ASTRONOMY • JUNE 2016