In a poignant lecture on The Logic of Science (412 MB QuickTime video download; 6800 word transcript), Stephen Stearns provides some of the most practical results from the philosophy of science possible in an introductory 45 minute lecture. Together with reading T. C. Chamberlin‘s essay The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses, watching Kevin Kelly’s lecture The Next 100 Years of Science: Long-term Trends in the Scientific Method (video at fora.tv) and participating in a recent discussion on On the Nature, Being, and Logic of Science at The Ben Franklin Thinking Society, I’m inspired to formulate and share some of my thoughts about the ever-changing “ways of knowing” that we call science. Even more so because the 2011 Design Science Symposium that I am helping to organize will try to broach the subject of the science in Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics.

Perhaps, the most intriguing thing I learned from the Stearns lecture was the importance of the method of multiple working hypotheses. I decided to read the source, a 1965 reprint of T. C. Chamberlin’s classic 1890 essay “The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses” (here is a printable PDF). I was hit by the insidiousness of the bias inherent in the hypothetico-deductive model of science which unfortunately is still taught as dogma in many science classes today. I was shocked to realize how counterproductive it can be to focus on developing and testing a simple working hypothesis, a style of thinking that I have frequently used and must now grow beyond!

Chamberlin convinced me that in science and in life we must challenge ourselves to imagine a comprehensive array of possible explanations (hypotheses). Only in this way can we get sufficient perspective to clearly see the kind of questions, observations and experiments that might tease out Truth from the inherent complexity of Universe. Wow, isn’t that the essence of Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics: comprehensive thinking?

[In practicing the method of multiple working hypotheses] the mind appears to become possessed of the power of simultaneous vision from different standpoints. Phenomena appear to become capable of being viewed analytically and synthetically at once. — T. C. Chamberlin, 1890

My next step on the ladder to understanding scientific knowledge was Kevin Kelly’s fascinating 02006 talk on Long-term Trends in the Scientific Method (video). Kelly suggests that science is driven by applying knowledge to itself recursively or self-similarly. Kelly included a timeline which I have modified to give a slice through some milestones in the history of scientific ways of knowing:

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In Buckminster Fuller’s essay Guinnea Pig B, he lays out the hypothesis that the purpose of Humans in Universe is to support the integrity of cosmic evolution:

In our immediate need to discover more about ourselves we also note that what is common to all human beings in all history is their ceaseless confrontation by problems, problems, problems. We humans are manifestly here for problem-solving and, if we are any good at problem-solving, we don’t come to utopia, we come to more difficult problems to solve. That apparently is what we’re here for, so I therefore conclude that we humans are here for local information-gathering and local problem-solving with our minds having access to the design principles of the Universe and — I repeat — thereby finally discover that we are most probably here for local information-gathering and local-Universe problem-solving in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe.
—R. Buckminster Fuller

This precept of the function of Humans in Universe is, to me, one of the most deeply motivating responsibilities that I have ever taken on as a working hypothesis. I love the way it engages me as a co-designer in Universe. And I love the way in which it inspires me to a higher purpose.

Recently I read a National Geographic news article that Time Will End in Five Billion Years, Physicists Predict and my mind went into a tizzy. The following fairy tale emerged:

A Cosmic Evolution Fantasy

Captain’s log of Brenda S______ dated 5,000,002,010 CE (that is, 5 three-illion, 2 one-illion and 10 years CE).

“I have just returned to Earth after a 7,042 year survey of our galaxy cluster testing the integrity of the fabric of space-time throughout the isotropic vector matrix. What a trip! Our team has verified that all the millennia of research and development by countless humans and other sentients throughout Universe has succeeded in holding time together: the Universe will continue for the foreseeable future! We have verified that all vital parameters for managing the entirety of the cosmos are within fail-safe tolerances!

“Of course, there are a few issues (there always are);

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