Logology (science of science)

Logology ("the science of science") is the study of all aspects of science and of its practitioners—aspects philosophical, biological, psychological, societal, historical, institutional, financial.

The term "logology" is used here as a synonym^[1][2] for the equivalent term "science of science"^[3] and the semi-equivalent term "sociology of science".^[4]

The term "logology" is back-formed from "-logy" (as in "geology", "anthropology", "sociology", etc.) in the sense of the "study of study" or the "science of science" — or, more plainly, the "study of science".^[1][2]

The word "logology" provides grammatical variants not available with the earlier terms "science of science" and "sociology of science"—"logologist", "to logologize", "logological", "logologically".^[5]

Origins

The early 20th century brought calls, initially from sociologists, for the creation of a new, empirically based science that would study the scientific enterprise itself.^[6] The early proposals were put forward with some hesitancy and deferentiality.^[7][8] The new meta-science would be given a variety of names,^[9] including "science of knowledge", "science of science", "sociology of science", and "logology".

The Polish sociologist Florian Znaniecki, considered the founder of Polish academic sociology and who also served as the 44th president of the American Sociological Association, opened a 1923 article:^[10]

Although theoretical reflection on knowledge — which arose as early as Heraclitus and the Eleatics — stretches in an unbroken line through the history of human thought to the present day, nevertheless the most recent times have introduced into these reflections so many new questions and viewpoints so divergent from the earlier ones that we may safely say that we are now witnessing the creation of a new science of knowledge [author's emphasis] whose relationship to the old inquiries may be compared with the relationship of modern physics and chemistry to the 'natural philosophy' that preceded them, or of contemporary sociology to the 'political philosophy' of antiquity and the Renaissance. To be sure, we are still dealing with an accumulation of miscellaneous observations rather than with a systematically and consciously developed scientific whole, but gradually an order is emerging from this chaos and there is beginning to take shape a concept of a single, general theory of knowledge as a separate branch of human culture, endowed with special empirical properties and permitting of empirical study. This theory is beginning to take its place beside such sciences as economics and linguistics as it assumes the traits of a positive, comparative, generalizing and elucidating science. Thereby, too, it is coming to be distinguished clearly from epistemology, from normative logic and from a strictly descriptive history of knowledge. The distinction ... is not the result of some arbitrary a priori designation of the boundaries between the respective fields of human thought, but has developed spontaneously through the emergence — within each of the earlier types of reflection upon knowledge — of problems that have resisted accommodation within its traditional sphere. These problems, gradually concentrating on a common ground outside the scope of purely epistemological, logical or historical thought, constitute one of the main sources of the new science of knowledge.^[11]

A dozen years later, two Polish sociologists of a slightly younger generation, Stanisław Ossowski and Maria Ossowska (the Ossowscy, husband and wife) took up the same subject in a more compact and better known 1935 article on "The Science of Science".^[12] They wrote:

The interest taken in science as [a] field of human culture is something new. It was partly derived from historical research, partly called forth by the development of modern sociology, and partly by practical needs (... the encouragement and organization of science). Research in this field is much younger than the science of religion, than the science of economic production, than the science of art.^[13]

The Ossowscy — the 1935 English-language version of whose article first introduced the term "science of science" to the world^[14] — postulated that the new discipline would subsume such earlier disciplines as epistemology, the philosophy of science, the "psychology of science", and the "sociology of science".^[15]

It would also concern itself with

[questions] of a practical and organizing character ... hitherto chiefly [addressed] by institutions [that have] promot[ed] science ... [questions such as] social and state policy in relation to science, the organization of higher institutions of learning, of research institutes and of scientific expeditions, protection of scientific workers, etc.

[Science of science would also concern itself with] historical [questions]: [t]he history of the conception of science ... of the scientist ... of the separate disciplines, and of learning in general...^[16]

The Ossowscy acknowledged the existence of an approximate German-language equivalent to the expression "science of science": "Wissenschaftslehre". But they explained that, leaving aside Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), who had called his whole philosophical speculation by that name, the term had been used in Germany chiefly to denote logic with general methodology, or logic with general methodology and questions usually included in epistemology. "Wissenschaftslehre" had also been used in almost the same sense by Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) — as logic, understood in a very wide sense, later made familiar at the turn of the 20th century.^[17]

The Ossowscy also referenced the 20th-century German philosopher Werner Schingnitz (1899–1953) who, in fragmentary 1931 remarks, had enumerated some possible types of research in the science of science and had proposed a name for it: "scientiology". The two Polish sociologists commented: "Those who wish to replace the expression 'science of science' by a one-word term [that] sound[s] international, in the belief that only after receiving such a name [will] a given group of [questions be] officially dubbed an autonomous discipline, [might] be reminded of the name mathesiology, proposed long ago for similar purposes [by the French mathematician and physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836)]."^[18]

Yet, before long, in Poland, the unwieldy three-word term "nauka o nauce" ("science of science") was replaced by the more versatile one-word term "naukoznawstwo" ("logology") and its natural variants: "naukoznawca" ("logologist"), "naukoznawczy" ("logological"), and "naukoznawczo" ("logologically"). And just after World War II, only 11 years after the Ossowscy's landmark 1935 paper, the year 1946 saw the founding of the Polish Academy of Sciences' quarterly Zagadnienia Naukoznawstwa (Logology) — long before similar journals in many other countries.^[19]

The new discipline also took root elsewhere — in English-speaking countries, without the benefit of a one-word name.

Findings

Science

According to the English-born theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson,

Science consists of facts and theories. Facts and theories are born in different ways and are judged by different standards. Facts are supposed to be true or false. They are discovered by observers or experimenters. A scientist who claims to have discovered a fact that turns out to be wrong is judged harshly. One wrong fact is enough to ruin a career.

Theories have an entirely different status. They are free creations of the human mind, intended to describe our understanding of nature. Since our understanding is incomplete, theories are provisional. Theories are tools of understanding, and a tool does not need to be precisely true in order to be useful. Theories are supposed to be more-or-less true, with plenty of room for disagreement. A scientist who invents a theory that turns out to be wrong is judged leniently. Mistakes are tolerated, so long as the culprit is willing to correct them when nature proves them wrong.^[20]

"The inventor of a brilliant idea," writes Dyson, "cannot tell whether it is right or wrong." Dyson cites a psychologist, David Kahneman, as describing how theories are born: "We can't live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true." "Great scientists," writes Dyson, "produce right theories and wrong theories, and believe in them with equal conviction." The passionate pursuit of wrong theories is a normal part of the development of science.^[21]

Dyson cites, after Mario Livio, five famous scientists who held erroneous scientific theories: Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein. Each made major contributions to the understanding of nature, and each believed firmly in a theory that proved wrong.^[21]

Darwin explained the evolution of life with his theory of natural selection of inherited variations, but he believed in a theory of blending inheritance that made the propagation of new variations impossible.^[21] He never read Gregor Mendel's studies that showed that the laws of inheritance would become simple when inheritance was considered as a random process. Though Darwin in 1866 did the same experiment that Mendel had, Darwin did not get comparable results because he failed to appreciate the statistical importance of using very large experimental samples. Eventually, Mendelian inheritance by random variation would, no thanks to Darwin, provide the raw material for Darwinian selection to work on.^[22]

Lord Kelvin discovered basic laws of energy and heat, then used these laws to calculate an estimate of the age of the earth that was too short by a factor of fifty. He based his calculation on the belief that the earth's mantle was solid and could transfer heat from the interior to the surface only by conduction. It is now known that the mantle is partly fluid and transfers most of the heat by the far more efficient process of convection, which carries heat by a massive circulation of hot rock moving upward and cooler rock moving downward. Kelvin could see the eruptions of volcanoes bringing hot liquid from deep underground to the surface; but his skill in calculation blinded him to processes such as volcanic eruptions that could not be calculated.^[21]

Linus Pauling discovered the chemical structure of protein and proposed a completely wrong structure for DNA, which carries hereditary information from parent to offspring. Pauling guessed a wrong structure for DNA because he assumed that a pattern that worked for protein would also work for DNA. He overlooked the gross chemical differences between protein and DNA. Francis Crick and James Watson paid attention to the differences and found the correct structure for DNA that Pauling had missed a year earlier.^[21]

Fred Hoyle discovered the process by which the heavier elements essential to life, including carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and iron, are created by nuclear reactions in the cores of massive stars. He then proposed a theory of the history of the universe known as steady-state cosmology, which has the universe existing forever without a Big Bang (as Hoyle derisively dubbed it) at the beginning. He held his belief in the steady state long after observations proved that the Big Bang had happened.^[21]

Albert Einstein discovered the theory of space, time and gravitation known as General Relativity, and then added an additional component later known as dark energy. Later, Einstein withdrew his proposal of dark energy, believing it unnecessary. Long after his death, observations proved that dark energy really exists, so that Einstein's addition to the theory was right and his withdrawal was wrong.^[21]

To Mario Livio's five examples of scientists who blundered, Dyson adds a sixth: himself. Dyson had concluded, on theoretical principles, that what was to become known as the W-particle, a charged weak boson, could not exist. An experiment conducted at CERN, in Geneva, later proved him wrong. "With hindsight I could see several reasons why my stability argument would not apply to W-particles. [They] are too massive and too short-lived to be a constituent of anything that resembles ordinary matter."^[23]

If scientists seek to find the truth about various aspects of reality, philosophers of science address the question of the knowability of reality. The American philosopher Thomas Nagel writes:

[In t]he pursuit of scientific knowledge through the interaction between theory and observation [...] we test theories against their observational consequences, but we also question or reinterpret our observations in light of theory. (The choice between geocentric and heliocentric theories at the time of the Copernican revolution is a vivid example.) [...]

How things seem [emphasis added] is the starting point for all knowledge, and its development through further correction, extension, and elaboration is inevitably the result of more seemings—considered judgments about the plausibility and consequences of different theoretical hypotheses. The only way to pursue the truth is to consider what seems true, after careful reflection of a kind appropriate to the subject matter, in light of all the relevant data, principles, and circumstances.^[24]

Discoveries and inventions

Half a century before Florian Znaniecki published his 1923 paper proposing the creation of an empirical field of study to study the field of science, the Polish writer and philosopher Aleksander Głowacki (better known by his pen name, Bolesław Prus) had made the same proposal. In an 1873 public lecture "On Discoveries and Inventions", Prus said:

Until now there has been no science that describes the means for making discoveries and inventions, and the generality of people, as well as many men of learning, believe that there never will be. This is an error. Someday a science of making discoveries and inventions will exist and will render services. It will arise not all at once; first only its general outline will appear, which subsequent researchers will emend and elaborate, and which still later researchers will apply to individual branches of knowledge.^[25]

Prus defines "discovery" as "the finding out of a thing that has existed and exists in nature, but which was previously unknown to people";^[26] and "invention" as "the making of a thing that has not previously existed, and which nature itself cannot make."^[27]

He illustrates the concept of "discovery":

Until 400 years ago, people thought that the Earth comprised just three parts: Europe, Asia, and Africa; it was only in 1492 that the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, sailed out from Europe into the Atlantic Ocean and, proceeding ever westward, after [10 weeks] reached a part of the world that Europeans had never known. In that new land he found copper-colored people who went about naked, and he found plants and animals different from those in Europe; in short, he had discovered a new part of the world that others would later name "America." We say that Columbus had discovered America, because America had already long existed on Earth.^[28]

Prus illustrates the concept of "invention":

[As late as] 50 years ago, locomotives were unknown, and no one knew how to build one; it was only in 1828 that the English engineer [George] Stephenson built the first locomotive and set it in motion. So we say that Stephenson invented the locomotive, because this machine had not previously existed and could not by itself have come into being in nature; it could only have been made by man.^[27]

According to Prus, "inventions and discoveries are natural phenomena and, as such, are subject to certain laws." Those are the laws of "gradualness", "dependence", and "combination".^[29]

1. The law of gradualness. No discovery or invention arises at once perfected, but it is perfected gradually; likewise, no invention or discovery is the work of a single individual but of many individuals, each adding his little contribution. [...] Potatoes were first discovered; later they were found to make good cattle feed; then it was learned that potatoes could nourish people; and, later, potatoes began to be used for making vodka.^[30]

In regard to inventions, gradualness may be illustrated by the evolution of the stool. First people found that it was better to sit on a stump or a rock than on the ground. Then, noticing that a rock or a stump was too heavy to lug around, they built a stool consisting of a board and several legs. Next, to the stool they added a backrest, thus making a chair; to the chair, they added arm rests, making an armchair. Then they began painting and padding the armchairs and chairs, and so on.^[31]

2. The law of dependence. An invention or discovery is conditional on the prior existence of certain known discoveries and inventions. [...] If potatoes grew only in America, they could not have been discovered before America had been; if the black swan lives only in Australia, the black swan could not have been seen before Australia had been. If the rings of Saturn can be seen through telescopes, then the telescope had to have been invented before the rings could have been seen. [...]^[31]

3. The law of combination. Any new discovery or invention is a combination of earlier discoveries and inventions, or rests on them. When I study a new mineral, I inspect it, I smell it, I taste it, that is, I combine the mineral with my senses. Then I weigh it and heat it, which is to say, I combine the mineral with a balance and with fire. Then I place it into water, into sulfuric acid, and so forth, in short, I combine the mineral with everything that I have at hand and in this way I learn ever more of its properties. And as for inventions, who does not know that a clock is a combination of wheels, springs, dials, bells, etc.? Who does not know that gunpowder is a combination of sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal?^[32]

Each of Prus' three "laws" entails important corollaries. The law of gradualness implies the following:^[33]

a) Since every discovery and invention requires perfecting, let us not pride ourselves only on discovering or inventing something completely new, but let us also work to improve or get to know more exactly things that are already known and already exist. […]^[33]

b) The same law of gradualness demonstrates the necessity of expert training. Who can perfect a watch, if not a watchmaker with a good comprehensive knowledge of his métier? Who can discover new characteristics of an animal, if not a naturalist?^[33]

From the law of dependence flow the following corollaries:^[33]

a) No invention or discovery, even one seemingly without value, should be dismissed, because that particular trifle may later prove very useful. There would seem to be no simpler invention than the needle, yet the clothing of millions of people, and the livelihoods of millions of seamstresses, depend on the needle’s existence. Even today’s beautiful sewing machine would not exist, had the needle not long ago been invented.^[34]

b) The law of dependence teaches us that what cannot be done today, might be done later. People give much thought to the construction of a flying machine that could carry many persons and parcels. The inventing of such a machine will depend, among other things, on inventing a material that is, say, as light as paper and as sturdy and fire-resistant as steel.^[35]

Finally, Prus' corollaries to his law of combination:^[35]

a) Anyone who wants to be a successful inventor, needs to know a great many things—in the most diverse fields. For if a new invention is a combination of earlier inventions, then the inventor’s mind is the ground on which, for the first time, various seemingly unrelated things combine. Example: The steam engine combines Rumford’s double boiler, the pump, and the spinning wheel.^[35]

[…] What is the connection among zinc, copper, sulfuric acid, a magnet, a clock mechanism, and an urgent message? All these had to come together in the mind of the inventor of the telegraph… […]^[36]

The greater the number of inventions that come into being, the more things a new inventor must know; the first, earliest and simplest inventions were made by completely uneducated people—but today’s inventions, particularly scientific ones, are products of the most highly educated minds. […]^[37]

b) A second corollary concerns societies that wish to have inventors. I said that a new invention is created by combining the most diverse objects; let us see where this takes us.^[37]

Suppose I want to make an invention, and someone tells me: Take 100 different objects and bring them into contact with one another, first two at a time, then three at a time, finally four at a time, and you will arrive at a new invention. Imagine that I take a burning candle, charcoal, water, paper, zinc, sugar, sulfuric acid, and so on, 100 objects in all, and combine them with one another, that is, bring into contact first two at a time: charcoal with flame, water with flame, sugar with flame, zinc with flame, sugar with water, etc. Each time, I shall see a phenomenon: thus, in fire, sugar will melt, charcoal will burn, zinc will heat up, and so on. Now I will bring into contact three objects at a time, for example, sugar, zinc and flame; charcoal, sugar and flame; sulfuric acid, zinc and water; etc., and again I shall experience phenomena. Finally I bring into contact four objects at a time, for example, sugar, zinc, charcoal, and sulfuric acid. Ostensibly this is a very simple method, because in this fashion I could make not merely one but a dozen inventions. But will such an effort not exceed my capability? It certainly will. A hundred objects, combined in twos, threes and fours, will make over 4 million combinations; so if I made 100 combinations a day, it would take me over 110 years to exhaust them all!^[38]

But if by myself I am not up to the task, a sizable group of people will be. If 1,000 of us came together to produce the combinations that I have described, then any one person would only have to carry out slightly more than 4,000 combinations. If each of us performed just 10 combinations a day, together we would finish them all in less than a year and a half: 1,000 people would make an invention which a single man would have to spend more than 110 years to make…^[39][40]

The conclusion is quite clear: a society that wants to win renown with its discoveries and inventions has to have a great many persons working in every branch of knowledge. One or a few men of learning and genius mean nothing today, or nearly nothing, because everything is now done by large numbers. I would like to offer the following simile: Inventions and discoveries are like a lottery; not every player wins, but from among the many players a few must win. The point is not that John or Paul, because they want to make an invention and because they work for it, shall make an invention; but where thousands want an invention and work for it, the invention must appear, as surely as an unsupported rock must fall to the ground.^[39]

But, asks Prus, "What force drives [the] toilsome, often frustrated efforts [of the investigators]? What thread will clew these people through hitherto unexplored fields of study?"^[41][42]

[T]he answer is very simple: man is driven to efforts, including those of making discoveries and inventions, by needs; and the thread that guides him is observation: observation of the works of nature and of man.^[41]

I have said that the mainspring of all discoveries and inventions is needs. In fact, is there any work of man that does not satisfy some need? We build railroads because we need rapid transportation; we build clocks because we need to measure time; we build sewing machines because the speed of [unaided] human hands is insufficient. We abandon home and family and depart for distant lands because we are drawn by curiosity to see what lies elsewhere. We forsake the society of people and we spend long hours in exhausting contemplation because we are driven by a hunger for knowledge, by a desire to solve the challenges that are constantly thrown up by the world and by life!^[41]

Needs never cease; on the contrary, they are always growing. While the pauper thinks about a piece of bread for lunch, the rich man thinks about wine after lunch. The foot traveler dreams of a rudimentary wagon; the railroad passenger demands a heater. The infant is cramped in its cradle; the mature man is cramped in the world. In short, everyone has his needs, and everyone desires to satisfy them, and that desire is an inexhaustible source of new discoveries, new inventions, in short, of all progress.^[43]

But needs are general, such as the needs for food, sleep and clothing; and special, such as needs for a new steam engine, a new telescope, a new hammer, a new wrench. To understand the former needs, it suffices to be a human being; to understand the latter needs, one must be a specialist—an expert worker. Who knows better than a tailor what it is that tailors need, and who better than a tailor knows how to find the right way to satisfy the need?^[44]

Now let us consider how observation can lead man to new ideas; and to that end, as an example, let us imagine how, more or less, clay products came to be invented.^[44]

Suppose that somewhere there lived on clayey soil a primitive people who already knew fire. When rain fell on the ground, the clay turned doughy; and if, shortly after the rain, a fire was set on top of the clay, the clay under the fire became fired and hardened. If such an event occurred several times, the people might observe and thereafter remember that fired clay becomes hard like stone and does not soften in water. One of the primitives might also, when walking on wet clay, have impressed deep tracks into it; after the sun had dried the ground and rain had fallen again, the primitives might have observed that water remains in those hollows longer than on the surface. Inspecting the wet clay, the people might have observed that this material can be easily kneaded in one’s fingers and accepts various forms.^[45]

Some ingenious persons might have started shaping clay into various animal forms […] etc., including something shaped like a tortoise shell, which was in use at the time. Others, remembering that clay hardens in fire, might have fired the hollowed-out mass, thereby creating the first [clay] bowl.^[46]

After that, it was a relatively easy matter to perfect the new invention; someone else could discover clay more suitable for such manufactures; someone else could invent a glaze, and so on, with nature and observation at every step pointing out to man the way to invention. […]^[46]

[This example] illustrates how people arrive at various ideas: by closely observing all things and wondering about all things.^[46]

Take another example. [S]ometimes, in a pane of glass, we find disks and bubbles, looking through which we see objects more distinctly than with the naked eye. Suppose that an alert person, spotting such a bubble in a pane, took out a piece of glass and showed it to others as a toy. Possibly among them there was a man with weak vision who found that, through the bubble in the pane, he saw better than with the naked eye. Closer investigation showed that bilaterally convex glass strengthens weak vision, and in this way eyeglasses were invented. People may first have cut glass for eyeglasses from glass panes, but in time others began grinding smooth pieces of glass into convex lenses and producing proper eyeglasses.^[47]

The art of grinding eyeglasses was known almost 600 years ago. A couple of hundred years later, the children of a certain eyeglass grinder, while playing with lenses, placed one in front of another and found that they could see better through two lenses than through one. They informed their father about this curious occurrence, and he began producing tubes with two magnifying lenses and selling them as a toy. Galileo, the great Italian scientist, on learning of this toy, used it for a different purpose and built the first telescope.^[48]

This example, too, shows us that observation leads man by the hand to inventions. This example again demonstrates the truth of gradualness in the development of inventions, but above all also the fact that education amplifies man’s inventiveness. A simple lens-grinder formed two magnifying glasses into a toy—while Galileo, one of the most learned men of his time, made a telescope. As Galileo’s mind was superior to the craftsman’s mind, so the invention of the telescope was superior to the invention of a toy.^[48] [...]

The three laws [that have been discussed here] are immensely important and do not apply only to discoveries and inventions, but they pervade all of nature. An oak does not immediately become an oak but begins as an acorn, then becomes a seedling, later a little tree, and finally a mighty oak: we see here the law of gradualness. A seed that has been sown will not germinate until it finds sufficient heat, water, soil and air: here we see the law of dependence. Finally, no animal or plant, or even stone, is something homogeneous and single but is composed of various organs: here we see the law of combination.^[49]

Prus holds that, over time, the multiplication of discoveries and inventions has improved the quality of people's lives and has expanded their knowledge. "This gradual advance of civilized societies, this constant growth in knowledge of the objects that exist in nature, this constant increase in the number of tools and useful materials, is termed progress, or the growth of civilization."^[50] Conversely, Prus warns, "societies and people that do not make inventions or know how to use them, lead miserable lives and ultimately perish."^[51]

Multiple discovery

Historians and sociologists have remarked on the occurrence, in science, of "multiple independent discovery". The American sociologist Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other.^[52] "Sometimes the discoveries are simultaneous or almost so; sometimes a scientist will make a new discovery which, unknown to him, somebody else has made years before."^[53]

Commonly cited examples of multiple independent discovery are the 17th-century independent formulation of calculus by Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and others, described by A. Rupert Hall;^[54] the 18th-century discovery of oxygen by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier and others; and the theory of evolution of species, independently advanced in the 19th century by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Many more examples of multiple discovery have been identified.

Merton contrasted a "multiple" with a "singleton" — a discovery that has been made uniquely by a single scientist or group of scientists working together.^[55] He believed that it is multiple discoveries, rather than unique ones, that represent the common pattern in science.^[56]

Multiple discoveries in the history of science provide evidence for evolutionary models of science and technology, such as memetics (the study of self-replicating units of culture), evolutionary epistemology (which applies the concepts of biological evolution to study of the growth of human knowledge), and cultural selection theory (which studies sociological and cultural evolution in a Darwinian manner).

A recombinant-DNA-inspired "paradigm of paradigms" has been posited, that describes a mechanism of "recombinant conceptualization." This paradigm predicates that a new concept arises through the crossing of pre-existing concepts and facts. This is what is meant when one says that a scientist or artist has been "influenced by" another — etymologically, that a concept of the latter's has "flowed into" the mind of the former. Of course, as Freeman Dyson points out, not every new concept will be viable:^[21] adapting social Darwinist Herbert Spencer's phrase, only the fittest concepts survive.^[57]

The phenomenon of multiple independent discoveries and inventions can be viewed as a corollary to Bolesław Prus' three laws, of gradualness, dependence, and combination (see "Discoveries and inventions", above).^[58] Prus' laws of gradualness and dependence may, in their turn, be seen as corollaries to his law of combination, as the former two laws (of gradualness and dependence) imply the impossibility of certain scientific or technological advances pending the availability of certain theories, facts or technologies that will need to be combined in order to produce the scientific or technological advances in question.

Multiple independent discovery and invention, like discovery and invention generally, have been fostered by the evolution of means of communication: roads, vehicles, sailing vessels, writing, printing, institutions of education, telegraphy, and mass media, including the internet. Gutenberg's invention of printing (which itself involved a number of discrete inventions) substantially facilitated the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. All these developments have catalyzed and accelerated the process of recombinant conceptualization, and thus also of multiple independent discovery and invention.

Artificial intelligence

Until recently, it had generally been assumed that science is fundamentally a pursuit for human beings, not for machines, though machines can facilitate scientists’ work. However, since 1950, when the English mathematician Alan Turing proposed what has come to be called the “Turing test,” there has been much speculation as to whether machines such as computers can possess intelligence; and, if so, whether intelligent machines could become a threat to human intellectual and scientific ascendancy—or even an existential threat to humanity itself.^[59] In the light of such speculation, one might wonder: When will a computer be awarded a Nobel prize—or be indicted for crimes against humanity?

John Searle, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, writes that

there remain enormous philosophical confusions about the correct interpretation of [modern advances in computation and information technology]. For example, one routinely reads that in exactly the same sense in which Garry Kasparov […] beat Anatoly Karpov in chess, the computer called Deep Blue played and beat Kasparov.^[60]

[T]his claim is [obviously] suspect. In order for Kasparov to play and win, he has to be conscious that he is playing chess, and conscious of a thousand other things such as that he opened with pawn to K4 and that his queen is threatened by the knight. Deep Blue is conscious of none of these things because it is not conscious of anything at all. Why is consciousness so important? You cannot literally play chess or do much of anything else cognitive if you are totally disassociated from consciousness.^[60]

There has, writes Searle, long been a systematic ambiguity in the distinction drawn between objectivity and subjectivity.^[60]

There is an ambiguous distinction between an epistemic sense (“epistemic” means having to do with knowledge) and an ontological sense (“ontological” means having to do with existence). In the epistemic sense, the distinction is between types of claims (beliefs, assertions, assumptions, etc.). If I say that Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam, that statement is epistemically objective. You can ascertain its truth as a matter of objective fact. If I say that Rembrandt was the greatest Dutch painter that ever lived, that is evidently a matter of subjective opinion: it is epistemically subjective.^[60]

Underlying this epistemological distinction between types of claims is an ontological distinction between modes of existence. Some entities have an existence that does not depend on being experienced (mountains, molecules, and tectonic plates are […] examples). Some entities exist only insofar as they are experienced (pains, tickles, and itches are examples). This distinction is between the ontologically objective and the ontologically subjective. No matter how many machines may register an itch, it is not really an itch until somebody consciously feels it: it is ontologically subjective.^[60]

Searle draws a “related distinction […] between those features of reality that exist regardless of what we think and those whose very existence depends on our attitudes."^[60]

The first class I call observer-independent or original, intrinsic, or absolute. This class includes mountains, molecules, and tectonic plates. They have an existence that is wholly independent of anybody’s attitude, whereas money, property, government, and marriage exist only insofar as people have certain attitudes toward them. Their existence I call observer-dependent or observer-relative.^[60]

These distinctions, writes Searle, are important for several reasons.

Most elements of human civilization—money, property, government, universities, and The New York Review [of Books], [for example]—are observer-relative in their ontology because they are created by consciousness. But the consciousness that creates them is not observer-relative. It is intrinsic, and many statements about these elements of civilization can be epistemically objective. For example, it is an objective fact that the [New York Review of Books] exists.^[60]

[T]hese distinctions are crucial because just about all of the central notions—computation, information, cognition, thinking, memory, rationality, learning, intelligence, decision-making, motivation, etc.—have two different senses. They have a sense in which they refer to actual, psychologically real, observer-independent phenomena […]. [...] But they also have a sense in which they refer to observer-relative phenomena, phenomena that only exist relative to certain attitudes […].^[60]

Searle states that,

in the literal, real, observer-independent sense in which humans compute, mechanical computers do not compute. They go through a set of transitions in electronic states that we can interpret computationally. The transitions in those electronic states are absolute or observer-independent, but the computation is observer-relative. The transitions in physical states are just electrical sequences unless some conscious agent can give them a computational interpretation. […] There is no psychological reality at all to what is happening in the [computer].^[61]

Important consequences flow from this.

[A] digital computer is a syntactical machine. It manipulates symbols and does nothing else. For this reason, the project of creating human intelligence by designing a computer program that will pass the Turing Test […] is doomed from the start. The appropriately programmed computer has a syntax [rules for constructing or transforming the symbols and words of a language] but no semantics [comprehension of meaning].^[62]

Minds, on the other hand, have mental or semantic content.^[62] […]

Except for […] cases of computations carried out by conscious human beings, computation, as defined by Alan Turing and as implemented in actual pieces of machinery, is observer-relative. The brute physical state transitions in a piece of electronic machinery are only computations relative to some actual or possible consciousness that can interpret the processes computationally.^[62]

Some have hypothesized that there will eventually come into being “intelligent supercomputers”, vastly more intelligent than humans; and that they might decide, on the basis of their arbitrarily formed motivations, to destroy all life on earth. However, Searle sees no chance of this.^[62]

If we ask, “How much real, observer-independent intelligence do computers have, whether ‘intelligent’ or ‘superintelligent’?” the answer is zero, absolutely nothing. The intelligence is entirely observer-relative. And what goes for intelligence goes for thinking, remembering, deciding, desiring, reasoning, motivation, learning, and information processing […]. In the observer-independent sense, the amount that the computer possesses of each of these is zero. […] [T]here is [no] psychological reality to them.^[62]

[I]f we are worried about a maliciously motivated superintelligence destroying us, then it is important that the malicious motivation should be real. Without consciousness, there is no possibility of its being real.^[62] […]

[Computers] have, literally […], no intelligence, no motivation, no autonomy, and no agency. We design them to behave as if they had certain sorts of psychology, but there is no psychological reality to the corresponding processes or behavior. […] [T]he machinery has no beliefs, desires, [or] motivations.^[62]

Searle notes that

we do not know how human brains create consciousness and human cognitive processes. […] Until we do know such facts, we are unlikely to be able to build an artificial brain. To carry out such a project, it is essential to remember that what matters are the inner mental processes, not the external behavior. If you get the processes right, the behavior will be an expression of those processes, and if you don’t get the processes right, the behavior that results is irrelevant.^[63]

Such, writes Searle, is the current situation with Artificial Intelligence. “Computer engineering is useful for flying airplanes, diagnosing diseases, [etc.]. But the results are for the most part irrelevant to understanding human thinking, reasoning, [information] processing [...], deciding, perceiving, etc., because the results are all observer-relative and not the real thing.”^[63]

Why are these mistakes so persistent? […] First there is a residual behaviorism in the cognitive disciplines. Its practitioners tend to think that if you can build a machine that behaves intelligently, then it really is intelligent. The Turing Test is an explicit statement of this mistake.^[63]

Secondly there is a residual dualism. Many investigators are reluctant to treat consciousness, thinking, and psychologically real information processing as ordinary biological phenomena like photosynthesis or digestion. The weird marriage of behaviorism […] and dualism […] has led to the confusions that badly need to be exposed.^[63]

If computers do ultimately prove incapable of original thought—of discovery and invention—as Searle infers, then it will likely be for lack of what Prus discerned as the motive force behind such creativity: needs.^[41] It may be natural organisms' responses to their needs that will provide a clew to the mystery of the epiphenomenon that is consciousness, whose absence from electronic computers, in Searle's view, disqualifies contemporary artificial intelligence as an autonomous creative power.^[64]

See also

• List of multiple discoveries
• Multiple discovery
• Science and technology studies
• Science of science policy
• Science studies
• Science, technology and society
• Sociology of science

Notes

Bibliography

• Freeman Dyson, "The Case for Blunders" (review of Mario Livio, Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein—Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists that Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe, Simon and Schuster), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXI, no. 4 (March 6, 2014), pp. 4–8.
• Robert K. Merton, On Social Structure and Science, edited and with an introduction by Piotr Sztompka, University of Chicago Press, 1996.
• Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,1973.
• Thomas Nagel, "Listening to Reason" (a review of T.M. Scanlon, Being Realistic about Reasons, Oxford University Press, 132 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXI, no. 15 (October 9, 2014), pp. 47–49.
• Maria Ossowska and Stanisław Ossowski, "The Science of Science", reprinted in Bohdan Walentynowicz, ed., Polish Contributions to the Science of Science, pp. 82–95.
• Bolesław Prus, On Discoveries and Inventions: A Public Lecture Delivered on 23 March 1873 by Aleksander Głowacki [Bolesław Prus], Passed by the [Russian] Censor (Warsaw, 21 April 1873), Warsaw, Printed by F. Krokoszyńska, 1873.
• John R. Searle, “What Your Computer Can’t Know” (review of Luciano Floridi, The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere Is Reshaping Human Reality, Oxford University Press, 2014; and Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press, 2014), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXI, no. 15 (October 9, 2014), pp. 52–55.
• Klemens Szaniawski, "Preface", Polish Contributions to the Science of Science, pp. VII–X.
• Bohdan Walentynowicz, ed., Polish Contributions to the Science of Science, Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1982, ISBN 83-01-03607-9.
• Bohdan Walentynowicz, "Editor's Note", Polish Contributions to the Science of Science, pp. XI–XII.
• Florian Znaniecki, "The Subject Matter and Tasks of the Science of Knowledge" (English translation), in Bohdan Walentynowicz, ed., Polish Contributions to the Science of Science, pp. 1–81.