Well perhaps this is too simplistic, but as far as I am concerned there is no such thing as scientific thinking, if you mean some specific protocol for how to get valid information, since science itself is not monolithic nor reductive and various sciences have different approaches for problem solving (John Dupre's work I think is relevant here).

The sciences investigating human behavior require very different approaches than those sciences like physics exploring the material world. But as to how systematic problem solving (basically my view of what scientific thinking is) evolved, it seems to me to be that ordinary trial and error common sense seeking of information done by homo sapiens with a brain capable of self reflective thinking becomes a bit more systematized (repeatable efforts are implemented to see if theories or interventions have consistent outcomes) although still a highly fallible approach relying on negative feedback for correction and taking that feedback and using it to revise your approach or theory and testing that new approach ad infinitum.

Karl Popper among others explains both the development of "scientific" thinking from ordinary common sense and the emphasis of the important role of negative feedback in shaping and directing new theory and its testing very nicely.

Best.

Tomi

Thank you for your response.

I think scientific thinking involves more than trial and error common sense. Hypothetico-deductive reasoning involves the creative imagination. Karl Popper described it as a process of conjecture and refutation - or conjectures (hypotheses) are creative leaps of the imagination. I think all scientific fields involve creative hypotheses that are then tested by observation.

Yes, exactly. But creative leaps of the imagination are not only reserved for scientific thinking and we tend to diminish or dismiss the fact that we use even in commonsense the feedback from the world to alter if we wish to our previous notions and beliefs.

I guess where we see things differently is the apparent placement of scientific thinking on a pedestal versus other very important approaches that help us understand the complex human world of which the material world is only one element. After all what is social science?

And again, no single definition or method serves to define scientific reasoning beyond Popper's suggested approach.

Am enjoying the dialogue.

Best.

Tomi

Well, Popper contributions refer either to classical science, or to the physical sciences, mainly. Regarding to marvelous vitality, diversification and complexification of the sciences Popper's insights become rather limited.

Dear Louis, I haven't read your book yet. (I shall downloaded). This is one of the most passionating subjects in human culture, and there is, I argue, no one single argument that answers satisfactorily the origins of science. Instead, we need a number of cross and transversal explanations.

I have found that science is born not one in the history of the west, but several times. Once in ancient Greece, later again in the Middle Age, then again as modern science and, yes, the ongoing fourth scientific revolution - to say the least. Provided that by "science" we will not encounter one singular, predominant or unique feature.

Hi Tomi and Carlos

While science is 99% common sense, creative hypotheses allows us to make novel predictions - which is unique to science. I think when we evolved creativity it allowed us to apply creativity to science, art, language, music, cooking, and social relationships. But I think natural selection for scientific reasoning which enabled us to make novel predictions is what resulted in creativity in the first place by increasing our survival rate as hunter-gatherers.

I think the very nature of creative science is that science itself evolves over time, but that there may be continuity from hunter-gatherers to Babylonian science, Egyptian, Greek, Islamic, Chinese and Western (Renaisance)... After the development of a sophisticated language, the inventions that have had perhaps the greatest impact on science were writing, mathematics, the printing press, computers and the Internet. Each of these innovations resulted in new methodologies.

But at its core, I believe the ability of the human mind to engage in creative scientific thinking is still essentially the same - we are still using the same brain that evolved more than 100 000 years ago with the first modern hunter-gatherers.

Hi Louis,

Your question is interesting insofar as it raises the issue of the relation between science as an applied and science as a pure form of rational enquiry. In which form did science originate? Did it come purely from human curiosity and an ambition to construct systematic understandings, or did it emerge from a more immediate imperative, for example to more effectively make fire ? Both the applied and pure sciences might be argued to confer survival advantage. The fact that we store information in our minds that is not immediately relevant gives us greater operational freedom in a changing environment - makes us better prepared. The survival advantage of the applied sciences is obvious.

An interesting dimension to the discussion comes when we introduce the notion of science as a political process. Contemporary science is about attracting research funding and influencing government policy. In this context Popper's model seems rather idealistic. I imagine that science has always had a political dimension. The person who understood how to effectively make fire was a powerful member of society. If others came along for more effective ways I doubt if rational reflection was the single factor in choosing who to believe.

It might be that the pure sciences, in particular astronomy, originated in a religious context. The gathering of systematic understandings might confer a sense of security in an impermanent, unpredictable, complex and occasionally chaotic environment.

Hi Mike

Hunter-gatherers not only develop applied science, but also developed knowledge for the sake of knowledge. For example, the /Gwi Bushmen of the Kalahari have eleven species-specific names for ants, including the velvet ant (a wingless wasp), and termites. They have developed a level of detail in their knowledge of ants that far exceed the practical requirements of hunting. But as you point out, that fact that we can store more knowledge than is immediately relevant prepares us for unforeseen eventualities in the future.

I think the political dimension in modern science may well stifle creative innovation by limiting academic freedom. Government funding may make it possible to get a lot of research done in the sense of Kuhn's "normal science" - but creative innovation requires institutions to allow researchers academic freedom, or alternatively creative individuals may choose to work independently. Hunter-gatherers allow a large degree of "academic freedom" in the interpretation of animal tracks and signs - ultimately it is the predictive value of hypotheses that result in successful hunts.

Thanks Louis. I agree that the political and economic dimensions of science are inhibiting to scientific enquiry, although they might still need a degree of creativity in 'fiddling the books'.

I wonder if hunter gatherer societies are as purely disinterested and objective in their evaluation of each others contributions in terms of interpretation of tracks and signs. Might the older or more charismatic tend to shut down the younger or less charismatic? Sometimes people establish a reputation which goes beyond what might reasonably be expected of them - we need totemic personalities (that is why we pay the footballer Wayne Rooney £300,000 per week when he is only as strong as the team he is playing with) Is there not a danger that we idealise the condition of early society ?

Mike.

Hi Mike,

My experience with Kalahari Bushmen trackers are that they are very individualistic. You do get individuals who have dominant personalities that may convince other trackers to follow their interpretation of the tracks. But generally they are very open to critical discussion and even young trackers may challenge the interpretations of elder trackers. What I find most interesting is that critical discussion will bring out the correct interpretation, even if the individual who first proposed the correct interpretation was in the minority. In tracking hypotheses are tested by the success or failure of the hunt, so there is a very direct form of "natural selection" for successful hypotheses, or falsification of unsuccessful hypotheses. In modern science, testing of hypotheses are more complex and more likely to be influenced by political factors.

As I see it, science began when humans decided to *test belief* by careful observation of events in the world.

Hi Arnold,

In tracking animals, you interpret observable tracks and signs by creating hypothetical causal explanations of what you believe the animal was doing and where it was going. This enables you to make predictions, which you then test by careful observation of other signs further ahead. So in a sense tracking involves *testing beliefs* that explain observed signs of unseen animal behavior.

I agree that tracking is a good example of testing belief, but surely there must have been other early modes of behavior for testing belief.

This is why I posted this question - to see if there are other early modes of behavior that may have preceded tracking or may have resulted in the evolution of science. At this point tracking seems to be the closest to what we understand as modern scientific thinking and may therefore be the origin of science.

Again, y'all, as best as I can tell are describing the social history of how problem solving takes place. That and not anything given the apparently for some academics hierarchically special designation of "science" is what is being described, since there is no special discrete definition or methodology of "science." Looking at even the recent over 20 year debate/promotion of "Evidence Based Practice" is devolving from thinking it a scientific protocol worth following to deep criticisms of it that are shifting the rhetoric to "Evidence Informed Practice." The more things change the more they stay the same.

Best.

Tomi

If we want to go to the biological roots of science then I think that the evolutionary emergence of a brain that could represent the surrounding world would mark the beginning. For a discussion of this view see "Evolution's Gift: Subjectivity and the Phenomenal World" on my RG page.

Hi Arnold,

Thank you for referring me to "Evolution's Gift." The ability to see-more-than-is-there seems to me similar to how trackers interpret tracks and signs. Tracks and signs are often incomplete or even just fractions of signs. To interpret tracks you project an imaginary image of an ideal track onto the incomplete track to "see" more than what is objectively visible. In addition, the tracker then creates a model to simulate the movement of the animal, projecting into space (predicting where did the animal go) and creating an internal simulation of the future (predicting where the animal will be found). Based on fractions of signs, trackers not only see-more-than-is-there, they model potential conceivable world (often creating multiple hypotheses). Is this perhaps one of the earliest examples of your theory on how the brain's retinoid system creates a subjective model of our surrounding universe, and therefore the evolutionary emergence of scientific thinking?

Louis: "Based on fractions of signs, trackers not only see-more-than-is-there, they model potential conceivable world (often creating multiple hypotheses).[1] Is this perhaps one of the earliest examples of your theory on how the brain's retinoid system creates a subjective model of our surrounding universe, and therefore the evolutionary emergence of scientific thinking?[2]"

1. I wouldn't say that trackers actually "see-more-than-is-there" (SMTT). What they do is *imagine*-more-than-is-there. In contrast, in the SMTT experiment the subjects actually had a vivid visual *hallucination* of a triangle in motion out there in front of them when there was nothing like that in their visual field. The SMTT experiment gives powerful empirical evidence for the validity of the retinoid model of consciousness.

2. The retinoid mechanisms provide a phenomenal experience of a surrounding volumetric space from each person's privileged perspective. According to retinoid theory this constitutes subjectivity/consciousness. Modeling multiple conceivable worlds and creating multiple hypotheses requires, in addition to the essential retinoid mechanisms, a variety of other cognitive mechanisms, such as synaptic matrices. For example, see on my RG page "Space, self, and the theater of consciousness", and *Creativity* on pp.301 - 302 in "Overview and Reflections". See also "Composing Behavior: Registers for Plans and Actions" on my RG page.

The bottom line is that having the capacity to experience and learn about the world around us, and to invent modes of adaptation to the contingencies of this world, confers an adaptive advantage to humans. The invention of science as a social enterprise based on the principle that belief about nature must be tested and changed according to evidence was made possible by the evolutionary emergence of the brain's retinoid system (giving us our phenomenal world) and its pre-conscious cognitive mechanisms.

Hi Arnold,

Your point [1]: At what point do *vivid imagination* become indistinguishable from *visual hallucination*? In tracking, you can only visualize fractions of signs of you already have an "ideal image" of the track in you mind - you project this ideal image onto the fraction of a sign and actually *see* the ideal track in your imagination. However, sometimes, when two species have similar features in their tracks, your mind may project the "ideal image" of the wrong animal and you will actually *see* the track of the wrong animal. This visual *recognition* of the wrong animal is so vivid that trackers are often convinced they correctly identified the track, when in fact they made a mistake. This often results in heated debates among trackers. I find that when you *see* the wrong animal track in a fraction of a sign, you actually have to get up, walk away to "clear your mind" and then look at the signs from a fresh point of view to make the correct identification of the track. So my question is: when a tracker *recognizes* the track of an animal, does he *imagine*-more-than-is-there or is the the image so vivid that it borders on a vivid visual *hallucination* created by his mind? My experience suggest that a tracker projects an imaginary image onto the signs that is a product of the mind somewhere between *imagination* and *hallucination*

See also my book "The Origin of Science" page 19 where I describe tracking a kudu on a persistence hunt: As we followed the tracks I could visualise the whole event unfolding in front of me. The kudu started to show signs of hyperthermia. It was kicking up sand and its stride was getting shorter. As it ran from shade to shade, the distances between its resting periods became shorter and shorter. In visualising the kudu I projected myself into its situation. Concentrating on the spoor I was so caught up in the event that I was completely unaware of my own state of exhaustion. As if in an almost trance-like state I could not only see how the kudu was leaping from one set of tracks to the next, but in my body I could actually feel how the kudu was moving. In a sense it felt as if I myself actually became the kudu, as if I myself was leaping from one set of tracks to the next.

When tracking you sometimes experience a state that seems very close to hallucination, yet you are looking at real signs in the real world and predicting the movements of a real animal.

I need time to read your publications before responding to [2]

Louis: "So my question is: when a tracker *recognizes* the track of an animal, does he *imagine*-more-than-is-there or is the the image so vivid that it borders on a vivid visual *hallucination* created by his mind?"

The key difference between vividly *imagining* something and *hallucinating* something is this: when we imagine something we know that we are not perceiving the real thing; but when we hallucinate something we experience it as the real thing out there in the world. So, in tracking, we know the difference between vividly imagining the animal and its experience, and seeing the animal in the flesh. In my SMTT experiments the hallucinated triangle was consciously experienced as a real object in front of the subject. In fact, subjects were able to adjust the base of the hallucinated triangle to equal its height which was randomly varied by the experimental apparatus. This experiment demonstrated that consciousness and autaptic-cell activity in the brain's retinoid space are complementary phenomena in the way that the two-slit experiment demonstrated the complementary relationship between particle and wave in quantum electrodynamics.

Thanks for this clarification

I have long been a fan of Louis' idea that tracking requires most of the skills that later led to science. I think one reason why it is such a good example is that it is social and cumulative. Cognitive advances at the individual brain level were probably required for tracking and similar tasks, though proving that may be hard. Chimpanzees and some birds, such as corvids and parrots, seem awfully smart as individuals. What humans have in addition to cognitive "right stuff" is social learning. Neophyte trackers acquire a huge amount of natural history knowledge that has accumulated in expert hunting groups for many generations. Plus, any given tracking exercise is an exercise in social back and forth so that expert trackers collaborate on tough problems. If there is a neophyte with them, he learns from the expert interchanges. Occasionally, some given hunt may lead to a novel observation that is incorporated into the large body of extant natural history.

I wonder if other tasks in hunter-gatherers make similar demands. What about tool-making, gathering and cooking? Perhaps tracking is just a particularly dramatic example because important decisions have to be made rapidly on the basis of enigmatic evidence and success or failure is evident pretty immediately. I imagine that other tasks use the same skills but in a temporally more drawn-out way.

My coauthors and I recently wrote a couple of papers arguing for the importance of social learning and cumulative culture in humans:

Boyd, R., Richerson, P. J., & Henrich, J. (2011). The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(Supplement 2), 10918-10925. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1100290108

Smaldino, P. E., & Richerson, P. J. (in press). Human cumulative cultural evolution as a form of distributed computation. In P. Michelucci (Ed.), Handbook of Human Computation. http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Richerson/smaldino%20richersonhuman%20computation.pdf