Puzzle Solvers: Reverse Engineering Science

We live through a time when science, and hype about science, may seem more important than the actual work itself - difficult to chain oneself to a desk or laboratory when everyone else is out partying. In my own work I look to the sort of people who see the value in keeping ones nose to the grindstone, and who learned the value in being grateful for the work itself.

The figure who stands behind this book is one Thomas Kuhn, one of many historical scientists who appear throughout my earlier books. Kuhn reset and reverse engineered how many of my generation view science, the creative & brilliant exercise of the mind sort of science.

Noting that failure is not some sort of option, but is in fact essential:

“Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.” ― Francis Bacon, quoted by Thomas S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

And noting the critical element that it is the quality of the questions we ask which underline the whole worthiness of the science:

“The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.” ― Thomas S. Kuhn

I cannot tell you to what degree the thinking or building of anything new and worthwhile, depends on a kind of internal stoicism, the taking of a stand the world does not yet appreciate or validate. Those who build what is new, novel and necessary tend to be inner directed and listening to a different drummer.

In his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, philosopher and physicist Thomas Kuhn reverse engineered science, framing it as a process, and as a set of relationships. Kuhn saw that innovation in science is built upon both understanding work which has gone before but also depends upon breaking free from the foundational work.

Seeing that of course innovators must break free, but only after learning the foundational science. Only in this manner may new scientists see persistent errors where new science may play a role. Find enough persistent errors - and see enough valid corrections to replace the errors - and a new scientific paradigm is born.

It is the workmanlike day to day science which provides the due diligence upon which to base a new scientific revolution. It also requires a love for solving puzzles, an inner stoic dedication to working until a puzzle is solved.

Kuhn saw through the kind of scientific bureaucracy which could hold science down - a lead balloon to innovation and discovery. He saw that real scientific progress is non-linear and more akin to a puzzle solving process which finally achieves some sort of critical mass and then leaps ahead.

Kuhn is the reason I have called this book Quantum Constructionism: for his appreciation of the difficult work, the non-linear and quite exponential manner of arriving at workmanlike puzzle solving, and in proactively preparing oneself to accomplish some reverse engineering.