Scientific enterprise is a term that refers to science-based projects, developed by private entrepreneurs. Often such projects are innovative and daring, and represent a risk of money and resources. A scientific enterprise undertakes research in some process known to science, in addition to the usual risks which are handled by project management. Thus the risks in a scientific enterprise are primarily intellectual, although the history of science records that the lives of some researchers have been lost, even as they were performing their experiments. A scientific enterprise does science. In the English language, enterprise has a connotation, that obstacles are being overcome, and that successes are being won: enterprising being an adjective like can-do.
See protective agency, below, for a discussion of the factors which a protected enterprise does not have to deal with, and without which a scientific enterprise could not exist. For example, overwhelming fear or rage are not conducive to rational thought.
Universities historically have provided the protections afforded above, but academia is not necessarily entrepreneurial.
Albert Einstein said, partly in jest, but also in truth, If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
A science is a body of knowledge whose scope is defined by a smaller set of knowledge, its defining principles (much like mathematics, which might be seen as being defined by a set of given axioms, upon which a mathematical structure rests).
But since we have limited cognitive capacity, the practice of science is limited to new knowledge, with existing knowledge relegated to the education of others; thus there is a demand for original findings by the researchers, first of all, in conversation with their peers, then in meetings, then in publications, and then, perhaps, in applications.
When a subject is in the air, say in a meeting, it is tentative and possibly ill-formed; the researcher who utters it is at some risk of being labelled; but if the subject is well-received by peers, the success of the idea can feed on itself. Free discussion is perhaps the best method of learning a subject, as stated by Stanislaw Ulam, with articles and textbooks less effective.
Free access to new scientific research world-wide could be a disruptive technology for science. This may affect some constraints of the scientific method, meaning peer-reviewed articles and reproducibility of experiments, and may very well affect scientific enterprise in the years to come. Thus an e-mail address together with a protected venue may, in time, become an effective mechanism for the progress of a scientific idea. No researcher would fail to note an e-mail from a distinguished name; just as in business and commerce, brand name merits attention.
Today, many scientific laws have been formulated; the risk behind them is low (but non-zero), because of the requirement for reproducibility at every conceivable level of knowledge, whether phenomenological or theoretical; even the limitations of the laws are known, in some cases, such as Newton's laws, and Maxwell's equations. In our times, risk can even be limited to some intellectual topic, and what is at stake is relatively small compared to the risk involved in past times. Thus, from today's point of view, there is a progression of knowledge:
Before these scientific laws were known, the risk was high. Men embarking on enterprises did so with the knowledge that they could even lose their lives in those enterprises, as discussed below.
The scientific enterprise began in the Age of Exploration, first in monarchies like Portugal, in which leaders like Henry the Navigator founded schools of navigation, from which stemmed voyages of exploration. Other civilizations, like China also funded voyages of exploration. These monarchs had profit or perhaps direct plunder in mind, as part of their program of direct expansion of power. Portugal later had succession problems, and lost their overseas empire as that nation was subsumed temporarily by Spain. Other monarchs, from Spain, the Netherlands, England, and many of the other monarchies embarked on a race to colonize the rest of the world.
During the voyages, no expense was spared; gunners, astrologers, navigators, mariners, and supernumeraries were signed on, in exchange for the privilege of embarking on an enterprise with an unknown result, but with the promise of reward for the participants.
How did these enterprises differ from simple conquests?
What risks did they take?
What did these explorers find?
Peirce's Law, 'If P then Q' implies P. Therefore P. is a syllogism which can be used in inductive reasoning. It is what Ben Franklin did when he risked his life with the Kite Experiment. Note that logic is only half the story. Intuition, cognition, etc all play a part in a discovery, which is the topic of heuristic. Inductive reasoning has a place in an open system, ie. science is open because of the continual growth of it's knowledge - science, like life, is an open system. One underlying assumption behind deductive reasoning is the closed universe hypothesis which attempts to limit the universe of discourse in order to permit deduction and evalation of a manageable set of possibilities.
Feynman said once the wonderful thing about science is that it's alive.
The scientific method is a cycle of the following processes:
One technique for proving the truth of If H then P is to disprove its contrapositive If Not P then Not H. Thus, when Albert Einstein was trying to disprove the basis of quantum mechanics, he developed the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, which is the theoretical basis for quantum teleportation.
Some notable scientific advances occur when a scientist intuitively links observations form different fields to discover underlying relationships. For example cosmology and thermodynamics were usefullly combined in deloping thiinking about singularities, black holes etc.. See the work of Stephen Hawking.
In physics, for example, when quantum entanglement was a disreputable concept, some researchers were willing to design experiments to test it, and did so. After the experiments, quantum entanglement then became fashionable in physics. (Note the role of non-risk to the bystanders.)
There is a role for fashion in this social activity; Chen Ning Yang has stated that all the physics he needed, he had already learned from his education in China, but that it took going to the University of Chicago, which had Enrico Fermi, to learn what the good problems in physics were, to be worked on. (For more on an insider's view of physics in the twentieth century, see Abraham Pais' Inward Bound.)
Note that the work of a scientific enterprise is a link in an ecology of ideas; for example, in the list below, if quantum information processing were at step 6, the phenomenon of quantum entanglement would correspond to an item within step 3, and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox an item within step 1.
Change or progress in science is effectively the result of several of the above recursive cycles intersecting and grinding along together smoothly, perhaps for a limited period.
For example, a scientist discovers a new chemical process after hypothsising and testing: he publishes his work; the principle or theory is further refined and popularised through criticism, comment, confirmation or amendment through attempts at replication; then the social implementation through commercial development can begin (as in this section's illustration).
'Scientific method' probably can be used in a loosely descriptive, sociological sense to include the above empirical and quasi-empirical methods. The term can also be used didactically or prescriptively. In one of the above recursions for example it could be said that the author has not acted in accord with scientific method, and this would be held to undermine the validity of some of the tests. This dual sense of the term is proabably the cause of the controversial nature of this topic.
Historically, the protection afforded by a protective agency (such as a monarch) allowed an enterprise to concentrate its energies on its own mission and vision without having to worry about other factors. These factors include:
An iteration of the scientific method occurs when some phenomenon is not well understood. But by patient examination of the issues, that phenomenon can become understood, and eventually subsumed under existing scientific laws or perhaps creating new scientific knowledge.
A recursion of the scientific method occurs when some issue itself becomes the topic of investigation; the previous theory and its data become the phenomena under investigation; in this sense, the scientific method becomes even more powerful, bootstrapping a science with a new, more compressed section of established knowledge, to become part of a more general science.
Scientific enterprise is a term that refers to science-based projects, developed by private entrepreneurs. Often such projects are innovative and daring, and represent a risk of money and resources. A scientific enterprise undertakes research in some process known to science, in addition to the usual risks which are handled by project management. Thus the risks in a scientific enterprise are primarily intellectual, although the history of science records that the lives of some researchers have been lost, even as they were performing their experiments. A scientific enterprise does science. In the English language, enterprise has a connotation, that obstacles are being overcome, and that successes are being won: enterprising being an adjective like can-do.
See protective agency, below, for a discussion of the factors which a protected enterprise does not have to deal with, and without which a scientific enterprise could not exist. For example, overwhelming fear or rage are not conducive to rational thought.
Universities historically have provided the protections afforded above, but academia is not necessarily entrepreneurial.
Albert Einstein said, partly in jest, but also in truth, If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
A science is a body of knowledge whose scope is defined by a smaller set of knowledge, its defining principles (much like mathematics, which might be seen as being defined by a set of given axioms, upon which a mathematical structure rests).
But since we have limited cognitive capacity, the practice of science is limited to new knowledge, with existing knowledge relegated to the education of others; thus there is a demand for original findings by the researchers, first of all, in conversation with their peers, then in meetings, then in publications, and then, perhaps, in applications.
When a subject is in the air, say in a meeting, it is tentative and possibly ill-formed; the researcher who utters it is at some risk of being labelled; but if the subject is well-received by peers, the success of the idea can feed on itself. Free discussion is perhaps the best method of learning a subject, as stated by Stanislaw Ulam, with articles and textbooks less effective.
Free access to new scientific research world-wide could be a disruptive technology for science. This may affect some constraints of the scientific method, meaning peer-reviewed articles and reproducibility of experiments, and may very well affect scientific enterprise in the years to come. Thus an e-mail address together with a protected venue may, in time, become an effective mechanism for the progress of a scientific idea. No researcher would fail to note an e-mail from a distinguished name; just as in business and commerce, brand name merits attention.
Today, many scientific laws have been formulated; the risk behind them is low (but non-zero), because of the requirement for reproducibility at every conceivable level of knowledge, whether phenomenological or theoretical; even the limitations of the laws are known, in some cases, such as Newton's laws, and Maxwell's equations. In our times, risk can even be limited to some intellectual topic, and what is at stake is relatively small compared to the risk involved in past times. Thus, from today's point of view, there is a progression of knowledge:
Before these scientific laws were known, the risk was high. Men embarking on enterprises did so with the knowledge that they could even lose their lives in those enterprises, as discussed below.
The scientific enterprise began in the Age of Exploration, first in monarchies like Portugal, in which leaders like Henry the Navigator founded schools of navigation, from which stemmed voyages of exploration. Other civilizations, like China also funded voyages of exploration. These monarchs had profit or perhaps direct plunder in mind, as part of their program of direct expansion of power. Portugal later had succession problems, and lost their overseas empire as that nation was subsumed temporarily by Spain. Other monarchs, from Spain, the Netherlands, England, and many of the other monarchies embarked on a race to colonize the rest of the world.
During the voyages, no expense was spared; gunners, astrologers, navigators, mariners, and supernumeraries were signed on, in exchange for the privilege of embarking on an enterprise with an unknown result, but with the promise of reward for the participants.
How did these enterprises differ from simple conquests?
What risks did they take?
What did these explorers find?
Peirce's Law, 'If P then Q' implies P. Therefore P. is a syllogism which can be used in inductive reasoning. It is what Ben Franklin did when he risked his life with the Kite Experiment. Note that logic is only half the story. Intuition, cognition, etc all play a part in a discovery, which is the topic of heuristic. Inductive reasoning has a place in an open system, ie. science is open because of the continual growth of it's knowledge - science, like life, is an open system. One underlying assumption behind deductive reasoning is the closed universe hypothesis which attempts to limit the universe of discourse in order to permit deduction and evalation of a manageable set of possibilities.
Feynman said once the wonderful thing about science is that it's alive.
The scientific method is a cycle of the following processes:
One technique for proving the truth of If H then P is to disprove its contrapositive If Not P then Not H. Thus, when Albert Einstein was trying to disprove the basis of quantum mechanics, he developed the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, which is the theoretical basis for quantum teleportation.
Some notable scientific advances occur when a scientist intuitively links observations form different fields to discover underlying relationships. For example cosmology and thermodynamics were usefullly combined in deloping thiinking about singularities, black holes etc.. See the work of Stephen Hawking.
In physics, for example, when quantum entanglement was a disreputable concept, some researchers were willing to design experiments to test it, and did so. After the experiments, quantum entanglement then became fashionable in physics. (Note the role of non-risk to the bystanders.)
There is a role for fashion in this social activity; Chen Ning Yang has stated that all the physics he needed, he had already learned from his education in China, but that it took going to the University of Chicago, which had Enrico Fermi, to learn what the good problems in physics were, to be worked on. (For more on an insider's view of physics in the twentieth century, see Abraham Pais' Inward Bound.)
Note that the work of a scientific enterprise is a link in an ecology of ideas; for example, in the list below, if quantum information processing were at step 6, the phenomenon of quantum entanglement would correspond to an item within step 3, and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox an item within step 1.
Change or progress in science is effectively the result of several of the above recursive cycles intersecting and grinding along together smoothly, perhaps for a limited period.
For example, a scientist discovers a new chemical process after hypothsising and testing: he publishes his work; the principle or theory is further refined and popularised through criticism, comment, confirmation or amendment through attempts at replication; then the social implementation through commercial development can begin (as in this section's illustration).
'Scientific method' probably can be used in a loosely descriptive, sociological sense to include the above empirical and quasi-empirical methods. The term can also be used didactically or prescriptively. In one of the above recursions for example it could be said that the author has not acted in accord with scientific method, and this would be held to undermine the validity of some of the tests. This dual sense of the term is proabably the cause of the controversial nature of this topic.
Historically, the protection afforded by a protective agency (such as a monarch) allowed an enterprise to concentrate its energies on its own mission and vision without having to worry about other factors. These factors include:
An iteration of the scientific method occurs when some phenomenon is not well understood. But by patient examination of the issues, that phenomenon can become understood, and eventually subsumed under existing scientific laws or perhaps creating new scientific knowledge.
A recursion of the scientific method occurs when some issue itself becomes the topic of investigation; the previous theory and its data become the phenomena under investigation; in this sense, the scientific method becomes even more powerful, bootstrapping a science with a new, more compressed section of established knowledge, to become part of a more general science.