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Rethinking the experiment: necessary (R)evolution

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Abstract

The current assumptions of knowledge acquisition brought about the crisis in the reproducibility of experiments. A complementary perspective should account for the specific causality characteristic of life by integrating past, present, and future. A “second Cartesian revolution,” informed by and in awareness of anticipatory processes, should result in scientific methods that transcend the theology of determinism and reductionism. In our days, science, itself an expression of anticipatory activity, makes possible alternative understandings of reality and its dynamics. For this purpose, the study advances G-complexity for defining and comparing decidable and undecidable knowledge. AI and related computational expressions of knowledge could benefit from the awareness of what distinguishes the dynamics of life from any other expressions of change.

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Notes

  1. Pertaining to or involving the study or explication of individual cases or events.

  2. Pertaining to or involving the study or formulation of general or universal laws.

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Acknowledgements

This study is the outcome of a long-term endeavor. Interactions with distinguished colleagues and many young researchers helped in defining the foundation for this work. The author would like to acknowledge Robert Rosen for his pioneering work in defining the living, and colleagues from the University of California–Berkeley, Professors Harry Rubin (Biology) and Lotfi Zadeh (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science); Professor Solomon Marcus (mathematician, Member of the Romanian Academy), Aloisius H. Louie, Stuart Kauffman, Kalevi Küll (University of Tartu, Estonia), and more recently Arran Gare (Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia) for their intellectual openness to new ideas and their encouragement. An anonymous reviewer suggested the inclusion of arguments pertinent to AI (and ALife). Luigi Longo took time to discuss in detail the arguments presented in a preprint version of this study. Both deserve acknowledgment and my gratitude.

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    Mihai Nadin

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Nadin, M. Rethinking the experiment: necessary (R)evolution. AI & Soc 33, 467–485 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0705-8

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