The limits of human reasoning - A reflection on science

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“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

― Werner Heisenberg

How do we, as humanity, aspire to understand the universe in its completeness? Do we presume to comprehend everything? No, most people would say that us, as a species, do not know everything there is to know. What if, however, we know everything, or nearly everything, that we CAN know. Could it be the case that there is a large part of the universe that is beyond our reach, not only that of our comprehension, but entirely outside of the things our minds can hold? Things that we cannot understand and cannot even begin to imagine understanding. A bleak starting point.

My project, “Investigating vanadium dioxide-based thermos-optic tunable meta surfaces”, is far from the abstract ideas of human comprehension and the limits of scientific theories and is instead mostly computational research on the interesting properties that appear when combining vanadium dioxide (VO2) with other materials in thin superposing layers. Initially the goal was to find, through developing but mostly running previously developed mathematical models, the combination of VO2 and other materials that had the largest gap between a zero and a non-zero epsilon; epsilon near zero materials have a series of interesting properties[1] and being able to switch between it and another state is useful. As the project advanced, however, it seemed like the holy grail got further and further away, until during one meeting with my supervisor. While we both scratched our heads over a plethora of graphs, he suggested I instead calculated a different quantity to the one we had been observing and saw if that yielded any interesting results. It turned out that a few multilayered systems we had been looking at can potentially be used a phase shifter, which is something we had not predicted and were not looking for.

Now, mostly in an attempt of self-reflection and how I managed to see innovation and the scientific method from a different perspective, let us explore that initial idea about limits of human comprehension. How is it that we can expect to learn about new things when the things we already know and the things we expect have such a heavy impact on the way we, as humans, conduct research? It was then, when such a good example of this strange feature of the scientific method showed up, that my mind started to race through thoughts like the ones explained here. As a physics and philosophy student that is more concerned about the not very answerable questions such as the existence of free will or the actual mechanisms behind quantum mechanics, I find that thought fascinating. The very foundation of science: elaborate hypothesis based on previous knowledge, design experiment to test that hypothesis, conduct experiment, repeat, if necessary, is so restrained by previous knowledge. Saying it like that makes it sound very obvious; of course, new knowledge has as a basis previous knowledge, it feels like that is almost necessarily the case, given the idea of knowledge and the processes behind it, it could not be any other way. However, it is not just the contents of the things we already know that shape the things we can know and will know in the future but also their structure. Even this idea that knowledge builds upon past knowledge could be something like that; how can we be sure it has to be that way necessarily? Perhaps it feels like a necessary truth of knowledge only because it is the only thing we have ever encountered. Newton once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Could it be that being up there makes us miss other things that are too far away from the path made by said giants?

Before continuing, a word of honesty. Although the sentences I have written questioning our current understanding of science and the methods attached to it are sensationalist and categorical, I will be the first to admit that it works. New knowledge is found every day and the current state of technology or medicine for example would be impossible without the scientific method as it was developed formally around the 17th century. The idea that empirical data yields working theories able to predict the behavior of systems has been validated countless times; even more impressively, it has been validated EVERY time. What has worked in the past, if recreated with the exact same conditions, will yield the same thing (or the same probability distribution of outcomes); if something does not work as predicted, it has ALWAYS been because the model or theory was not faithful to reality or not precise enough, it has never been due to the fact that reality is not modellable, or due to the fact that empirically obtained knowledge is all of a sudden useless (again I refrain from using the term causal and deterministic as it is not clear whether that has to be the case, but even for quantum systems the method is still the same, only with probability of outcomes in place of certain deterministic states). I believe it is naïve, however, to assume that we have managed to develop the best possible method and be content with it giving very little second thought to what else could be. There is value in observing and second guessing the totally obvious. Given multiple worlds where humans develop and grow their knowledge, it is at least possible that a method different from our own could appear, and it could be a “better” way. It is very tempting to argue that we cannot fathom a different way, and that is obvious otherwise this better way would have become common practice, however we must also be aware that our human minds are limited and everything we can think of, or even think of thinking of, is not everything there is.

What does that mean for the scientific community? Not much, this is a problem that everyone realizes with a bit of thought and there aren’t any apparent solutions to it. It is also not like innovation never happens or knowledge in forms not previously existent never shows up. Happy ideas as they are called are an important part of the research process, perhaps the most important. Is there a way to induce new ideas? I am not sure. The fate of knowing there are other possible ways of thinking but not being able, by definition, to think in a way impossible for us. There will always be thoughts and ideas out there (in the set spanned by all ideas, if one will be platonic enough to believe in such a place) that are outside our reach, and as soon as we get there, there will be others, always so far away. As I sit in a café in Edinburgh’s airport writing this it is a profoundly humbling and inexplicably sad thought. I must remind myself that it does not necessarily have to be that way. It is also possible, on the other extreme, that there is only one way of thinking, the way we think. In a strong anthropocentric-like justification, we are able to question the way we think because we are able to think outside of our own first-degree thoughts. Maybe that is enough, probably not.

Again, I must reiterate that this is not an attack on science as we see it. It is so far the best thing out there. It is a belief system that is based on facts and the ‘real’ world, as objectively as we can imagine a system to be. I can’t help but feel like something is missing, however. Something misunderstood and deeply strange about the universe we live in and the abstract idea of thoughts and consciousness. Perhaps it is my mind coming up with distractions to distract me, to keep me entertained while the usual nasal voice announces flights. There is a concrete idea to take out of all this however, and it is to pay attention to what we consider obvious, everyday things, stuff that “couldn’t be any other way”, because it probably could. Things that seem necessarily the way they are might not be so, and even those that still appear to be after countless hours of reflection might do so only because our brains evolved mostly to feed ourselves and reproduce the species, not dabbling in the depths of abstract thought and unveiling the utmost secrets of this universe we live in.

 

I would like to thank my advisor Dr Sebastian Schulz, the entire Laidlaw foundation and Lord Laidlaw for the monetary, organizational, and ultimately personal support and opportunities to conduct this research project, as well as the more widespread impact it has had in my life and my mind.

[1] for any interested reader, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adom.201701292

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