The benefits of speculation

In the history of science, Mathematics have always had a prominent role by two completely different reasons. From the pure instrumental point of view, since the main objective of (primary) science is the definition of  quantitative models with predictive capabilities, math is an unavoidable tool both to create the predictive model and to establish its accuracy with respect to the real world. The second role is that of a the exemplary student in class: since mathematics only works with abstract entities, such as numbers, quantities, sets, equation, they are ideal and intrinsically error free. An integer number can be odd or even, but nothing else and, whatever it happens to be, it is unequivocally so and always so. That means that, whenever a mathematician manages to find a law that works to describe a certain behavior it will always work. Furthermore, if a mathematical law stops working under some conditions or if it has certain exceptions, these exceptions will also be the same for ever. This makes mathematics the paradigm of science, which all the others would like to emulate.

The next step down in the hierarchy are experimental sciences. They already deal with physical entities, so they are forced to take measurement, and with the quantification comes the error. To mitigate the contribution of the error, experimental sciences rely on a tight control of their subjects and also make convenient use of statistics: by ensuring that an experiment always takes place in the same temperature and humidity conditions one expects that the experiments are functionally equivalent, so the results could easily be averaged to obtain the ideal behavior. Examples of this modus operandi are the different branches of physics and chemistry, from acoustics to pyrotechnics.

Photo: Josefine S.

Once we start to work with living organisms, the situation becomes a bit more difficult: the sheer complexity of even the most elemental forms of bacteria creates an explosion in the number of variables to control. Minute changes in the concentration of the various chemicals in a Petri dish can make a radical difference in the result of a culture. And admittedly we feel no remorse in breeding and killing microscopic organisms, but when the investigation focuses on small mammals or even our cousins the primates, ethical concerns become an issue and not every thinkable experiment is morally acceptable even if it could provide valuable results. That is why many branches of biology and medicine have to rely heavily on statistical models and are force to deal with a very significant number of cases that simply do not respond in the same way as the others.

The least experimental of sciences are those where the measurements can only be done in the field, because the subjects cannot be caused to have the desired behavior (either not in a reasonable amount of time or not at all). Geologists and astronomers cannot cause continental drift or the collision of two galaxies to see what happens, but instead have to rely on natural occurrences where the situation of interest just happens. That is why volcano eruptions and solar eclipses elicit so much attention, because they are unique (although in this case not that rare) occasions to watch a natural phenomenon happening.

Finally, there are the social sciences, which lie somehow between the biomedical and the non-experimental sciences because the experiments are almost impossible to create on a large scale. One can recruit a few voluntary undergraduates to study the group dynamics as in the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, but it is impossible to extrapolate its appalling conclusions to larger groups and setting up a larger scale experiment would be simply unethical. However, the surge in data availability in the last few decades has given rise to a new kind of social research called natural experiment, where two populations of apparently equal characteristics are subject to different conditions (e.g. because they are separated by a border or they are served from a different water source). One paradigmatic case of these natural experiments is the reduction of the fertility in Brazil as the main produced of soap operas started to operate in different states. The difference between the populations with and without access to the soap operas was not only very strong, but the moment one population was provided access its fertility rates quickly fell in line with the rest of the fellow viewers.

However, this approach has only been possible in the last fifty or sixty years, with the use of computers and the increasing digitization of the public (and private) records. Before that, social sciences were mainly axiomatic: based on some loose observations, economists and sociologists would propose rules from which the behavior could in principle be deduced. This is the case of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, which lacks any observational foundation and relies only on the (incorrect) concept that no person would be so greedy as to bring their society down to make a profit out of it. While it is obvious that this speculation can provide useful insights, it is very dangerous to assume that the premise is true. That is the main reason why, for many centuries, economics were not considered a science and, in fact, the Nobel Prize in Economics is not one of the original five and was established more than 70 years later.

However, there is a form of speculation that I appreciate very much: speculative fiction. In this genre of entertainment the author hypothesizes a world with different conditions and rules, and tries to infer (pretty much in the same way that economists did for more than three centuries) what could be the evolution of that world. Although the exercise is mostly meant for entertainment, its intellectual value cannot be denied and it can in fact inform certain behaviors observed in the real world. It also can also facilitate the analysis of an existing real problem by giving us some distance. For example, the 1963 novel The Planet of the Apes (and its various film adaptations and sequels) depicts the problematic of a world where humans are the slaves of speaking and dress-bearing apes, which is an interesting proxy for the racial segregation. By sharing in the experience of the humans in the movies we get to understand the problematic of African American in the US, and the events an solutions that take place in the story could be, if not directly implemented, at least a first blueprint for real-world solutions.

The main shortcoming of speculation is that it is only limited by its internal logic (sometimes not even that) and might not bear sufficient similarity to the real world to provide useful conclusions. Still, the result is generally intriguing and entertaining, and the cost of the speculation itself is nothing but a few hours sitting at you desk sipping tea. The power of our imagination makes us the gods of worlds that will never be, but which are still nice to look at. Enjoy your evening.