The secret life of scientific ideas - physicsworld.com
01/10/15 13:40
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The secret life of scientific ideas
Sep 3, 2015
1 comment
Taken from the September 2015 issue of Physics World
Dispelling the myth of Eureka moments, Vitor Cardoso describes what he's learned about
how ideas in physics really come about, thanks to the essays penned by physicists in The
Birth of an Idea – the web-based project he co-founded with artist Ana Sousa Carvalho
The birth of an idea
I've always wondered what triggered the great ideas. When I was a child, I often imagined
that somewhere out there, there was a superior being whispering secrets to the chosen
few – to those humans lucky enough to gain some special new insight into the world.
Indeed, this view seemed to fit with stories such as Newton's apple or Archimedes'
"Eureka!" moment, in which a serendipitous event precipitates some sudden epiphany. So
notorious are these tales that they've become myths, used as a shorthand for those
moments when our understanding of the world advances to a new level.
When we tell and retell the fall of that fateful apple, or of Archimedes' bathtub revelation, it
sometimes feels as if we are saying that this is how all scientific discoveries take place. But
is it really? The truth is that science is built upon many untold smaller discoveries. But what
do these smaller discoveries look like, and what leads each individual scientist to their own
revelatory moment?
The nuclear question
These questions re-surfaced for me a few years ago during a conversation with artist Ana
Sousa Carvalho. We were talking about scientific curiosity and its consequences. At a
certain point in our discussion, she asked me if knowing everything we know now – and if
given the chance – I would have helped to build the nuclear bomb. This was, of course, a
hypothetical question, and my initial response was, "Yes, just out of curiosity." My gut
feeling was that I'd want to show myself that I could crack the problem.
On reflection, however, I became annoyed with myself for having had such a reaction and
so I decided to research the history of the atomic bomb to find out more about the
decisions the physicists involved faced at each step. While going over a few books, my
attention drifted to the technical details, and I began to think that similar ideas could be
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used in gravitational physics. Well, this incursion eventually gave rise to new work and a
scientific paper on instabilities in black-hole systems. This was also the first time in my role
as a scientist that I found myself thinking in a serious manner about the way in which ideas
come to life.
At the same time, Ana and I had been talking about the similarities between creativity in art
and science. After some back and forth, we hit upon the idea of creating a repository of
essays written by scientists describing the genesis of their ideas. It was our hope that
these texts would eventually grow into an archive that would, with time, take the shape of
an informal history of contemporary science, captured from a personal perspective. We felt
that the project could be of interest not only to the scientific community, but to students and
the general public as well. We called the project The Birth of an Idea) and set about asking
the science community to share stories with us.
Our approach was very simple: to write to colleagues and ask them to write a short essay
on the genesis of their ideas. It was important for us to emphasize that we weren't
interested solely in tales about breakthrough discoveries. We were also after the trivial and
the ordinary, the small victories and the long struggles. As a physicist, I am well aware that
this is the territory where most of us toil. It took a while for the project to get off the ground,
but we put our focus on the physics community and so far the response has been amazing
– we now have a collection of 64 essays in total, from physicists and astronomers in a
diverse range of research fields and from countries the world over. We usually send out
five requests a month and right now we have a success rate of roughly 30%.
Unquestionably, most of the work lies on the contributing authors, who have been
extraordinarily generous with their time and experiences.
Just have a bath
Reading the essays has been a rewarding experience – going over these first-hand
accounts is like being granted a behind-the-scenes view of physics. From Roberto
Emparan, we learn how the association between black-hole entropy and entanglement
entropy was born while he put his son to sleep. Pauline Gagnon reveals in her account
"Only women could think of it" the surprising way in which she and a female colleague
managed to fix a detector at CERN. In some other great examples, Michele Vallisneri
recounts how the work of Richard Feynman helped him to optimize gravitational-wave
detection, and Andreas Warburton describes the discovery of the top quark. Two examples
are given in full below.
Above all, these essays give the reader the human perspective. Each, in its own way,
offers a glimpse into an incredible world that usually remains unseen. For instance, Eric
Poisson's contribution does a beautiful job of rendering the restlessness that comes with
the struggle to understand a problem: "That night I walk the streets of downtown
Milwaukee in a state of agitation. There is something wrong somewhere, and I have to get
to the bottom of it."
We hear from colleagues that they have their best ideas walking home or in bed or in the
shower, and we can't help but nod in agreement while reading Masaru Shibata when he
tells us, with the concision of a haiku: "In my experience, ideas often come to me when I
am taking a bath. Thus, I recommend taking a bath every day." Perhaps there was
something to Archimedes' approach after all.
There are moments of elation, as in this experience described by Shahar Hod: "It was
incredible to know that, at that moment, I was the only person in the Milky Way who knew
the simple truth about the quantization of the black-hole horizon area: k = 3!" But most
often, and perhaps by virtue of what Paolo Pani identifies in his essay as the sadistic
nature of science, we watch these scientists as they confront the despair of witnessing
their ideas die many deaths before they are finally allowed to get their hands on the
reward.
Collective creativity
I had many personal conversations with colleagues who did not contribute because they
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claim that none of their ideas are original but stem from other ideas already in existence.
These people make up a considerable fraction of the community and say that their work
relies on conversations with colleagues, meetings and workshops. In fact, even some of
the colleagues who did send in their contributions assert that the majority of their work gets
done in groups, by talking to other colleagues. I find this fascinating, because it is a
testament to the existence of a kind of collective creativity – a spontaneous brainstorming
that happens when scientists meet.
This concept contradicts the widespread notion that science advances only in big leaps
made by an individual, through new big ideas that materialize out of the blue before
instantly crystallizing into their final form. As Nicolas Yunes puts it in his essay: "The image
of the lonely genius with her or his 'Aha!' moment is an illusion. The birth of an idea is
much more of a community activity than we sometimes care to acknowledge."
Vitor Cardoso and Ana Sousa Carvalho are currently looking for submissions. To submit
your story, go to http://birthofidea.tecnico.pt or e-mail [email protected]
"The glimpse of an idea" by Pedro Figueira
An idea is a neat little thing. Ideas can easily show up,
uninvited, and disappear without warning. They are of such
a fleeting nature that sometimes they seem to lead a life of
their own.
For me, more interesting even than an idea, is the glimpse
of an idea. Some ideas are big and clumsy, and what they
lack in subtlety they compensate for with persistence. They
look at us in the face until we look back. But others are far
more elusive; we only feel they should be there. We look at
something and think "well, that's funny" or "this was not supposed to happen", and frown or
make a funny face. For a brief moment, the chaos of the world seems not to enter our ears
as loudly as before, and we hear little gears grind in our head. When that happens we are
at one end of a thread that, once followed, will take us to the feet of a new idea.
But too often we are too busy to care. Or simply forget, somehow, that an idea is
something worth searching for, and only get the big, loud and persistent ones. My advice
on the subject is: practise finding new ideas. Next time you feel the funny feeling and hear
your gears grinding, focus. Do not let the moment fly away, unnoticed and unused. The
thread is before you.
Do not wait for the ideas to come, go after them, and with a club. You will miss the first few,
but that doesn't matter. Experience will render your senses more acute, and practice will
sharpen your hunting. Learn to examine your ideas against the background of evidence
you have gathered, so that you can tell good from bad, useful from useless. As you do this,
you will find not only a way of collecting good ideas, but the person you are will be changed
by the quest.
And when you are struggling, remember: the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you
off.
Pedro Figueira is a researcher at the Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto,
Portugal
"A journey" by Djordje Minic
I would like to recall the foggy and emotional beginnings of an ongoing journey regarding
the foundations of quantum gravity and string theory.
The idea that quantum gravity, in the guise of a novel formulation of string theory, should
represent a new framework for physics that goes beyond (and also sheds light on) the
current framework based on quantum theory (as well as its puzzling relation to the classical
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world), presented itself to me in a rather vague form in the
fall of 1997 as I was moving from Chicago to State College.
I still remember the initial, almost tactile, sensation of
excitement and elation, as well as the feeling of dread, of
profound fear at being completely wrong and deluded.
These initial contradictory emotions have since then
become almost an obsession as well as a concrete research
programme.
The most important aspect of the flowering of this initially misty notion is that many friends
and collaborators have provided at least partial sanity checks to the original intuition.
Perhaps the most exciting and concrete realization of the idea that quantum gravity/string
theory is a new framework for physics has been realized in my recent work with two dear
friends: Laurent Freidel and Rob Leigh.
It is still not clear where this journey will take us, but it has so far been a wonderful
example of Antonio Machado's "Traveller, there is no path/The path is made by walking."
Djordje Minic is a professor of physics at Virginia Tech, US
Enjoy the rest of the September 2015 issue of Physics World in our digital magazine or
via the Physics World app for any iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. Membership of
the Institute of Physics required
About the author
Vitor Cardoso is a theoretical physicist working on black-hole physics at the University of Lisbon in
Portugal and a visiting fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, email [email protected]
1 comment
Add your comments on this article
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markjb
Sep 4, 2015 1:46 AM
Clayton, Australia
Thank you for the Encouragement
Dear Vitor,
Thank you for the encouragement I gained from your article. I am chairing a conference at the moment, often a
thankless task. Your section on Collective Creativity reminded me why we go to the effort to organise scientific
meetings. I hope some good new ideas and science come from our conference too. Best of luck for your birth of
an idea project.
Warm Regards from Australia,
Mark Boland
Edited by markjb on Sep 4, 2015 1:47 AM.
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