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Books Science

What Role Does Intuition Play in Science? (theamericanscholar.org) 86

Posted by EditorDavid from the feeling-your-way dept.
Recently science author Sam Kean reviewed In a Flight of Starlings, a "slender, uneven collection of essays by Giorgio Parisi about his life in physics, from his student days in Rome to the work that won him a share of the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics."

But the reviewer makes an interesting point: As someone who writes about science history, I have long grumbled about how misleading modern scientific papers are. I understand the need to present scientific findings in a clean, concise way, but the papers also omit all the false starts, blind alleys, broken equipment, and dumb mistakes that beset real scientific research every day. By omitting all the human stuff, the papers fail to explain how science really gets done. Parisi raises a related complaint — that scientific papers omit all sense of intuition. Indeed, the best sections of the book explore the role of intuition in scientific thinking.

He quotes a friend who says that "a good mathematician understands immediately which mathematical statements are true and which are false, whereas a bad mathematician has to try to prove them in order to know." The same applies to science: the early stages of any project are chaotic, and the data can be confusing and even contradictory. Scientists need intuition to cut through the mess and focus on the most promising explanations. Much of this intuition is unconscious and, while still grounded in physical brain processes, remains murky and hard to reconstruct. And for whatever reason, that vagueness makes scientists uncomfortable. "In almost all texts written by scientists," Parisi notes, "these themes are taboo."

So it's refreshing to see a scientist, especially one of Parisi's stature, honestly discuss the fuzzy side of scientific thinking, and not just during the early, groping stages but in the technical phases of a project, too. "The physicist sometimes uses mathematics ungrammatically," he admits, "a license that we grant to poets" as well... In a Flight of Starlings, Parisi writes, "is my attempt to convey to a wide readership something of the beauty, importance, and cultural value of modern science." Does he succeed? At times, yes... Perhaps it's not unlike the hodgepodge of science itself, then...
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What Role Does Intuition Play in Science? More

What Role Does Intuition Play in Science?

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  • More and more it seems that oneâ(TM)s truth (intuition, belief etc) is far far more important than actual rigorous repeatable science.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      More and more it seems that oneâ(TM)s truth (intuition, belief etc) is far far more important than actual rigorous repeatable science.

      Intuition is what gets you to the point of rigorous repeateable science.

      • So everything is built on fuzzy woo-woo feelings?

        • Re: Probably way too much (Score:5, Informative)

          by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:48AM (#63744440)

          So everything is built on fuzzy woo-woo feelings?

          Sure, why not, if you want to be simplistic and think you're making a point to make yourself feel better. As the other person who responded to my post indicated, intuition guides you, or can guide you, to an answer. This abstract [sciencedirect.com] uses the following language:

          The largely unconscious processes involved in generating hunches is quite different from the conscious processes required to test them—thereby vindicating the classical distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification.

          In other words, your hunch then leads you to the point where you can act upon that hunch. But don't take my word for it, let's do an appeal to authority. Specifically, a Nobel prize winning physicist [bigthink.com].

          And a few more examples [p-i-a.com] of where intution came into play. Clearly intution plays a role in science. How much is the question.

          • How long do wrong intuitions get supported by the most rigorous science available? Was Aristarchus's 3rd century BC intuition that the earth actually moved around the sun debunked thoroughly by the epicyclists' intuitions? Was Wegener's intuition denied despite the glaring evidence of coastlines?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              How long do wrong intuitions get supported by the most rigorous science available?

              Often until the science advances enough to change opinions, which is all that formed the science of which orbited which, Sun or Earth. The crucial change there was someone's intuition that orbits might not be circles but rather ovals. Continental drift needed a means for continents to float and something to power the movement.
              Scientists are people, and often get more conservative with age, which means clinging to believes even when confronted with contrary evidence, as shown by the reluctance of science to

          • I agree, the world is just to complicated, or we are too stupid to derive based on actually inferring things in a formal manner. Science take that short cut of the hypothesis, but it also has the checking experimental phase, which is essential for it to be a real science. (I exclude social sciences from what I classify as science).

            When we are perfectly logical beings, who never make mistakes and know all the axioms of the universe then perhaps we can loose the experiential phase.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nutria ( 679911 )

          "Intuition" is a poor and obviously misleading shorthand for "chance favors the prepared mind".

          Fortuna juvat mentem paratam.

      • Re:Probably way too much (Score:5, Interesting)

        by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:16AM (#63744358)

        It might be more accurate to say that intuition is what guides you to avoid all the dead-ends on your way to a scientifically sound solution. It's the heuristics behind heuristically guided search algorithms. Except that it's difficult to codify.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suutar ( 1860506 )

        Intuition can help you bypass some dead ends, but in the end you still have a hypothesis and an experiment to test it.

        However, bypassing dead ends is not always ideal; some "dead ends" can lead to interesting (read: unexpected) results...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      There's two different things going on here:
      1) Come up with the idea
      2) Test the idea
      Intuition is a HUGE part of step one, but should play only a trivial part of step 2.

      • I respectfully disagree re: step 2). As the complexity of problems increases, the complexity of the universe of possible tests increases, perhaps exponentially. Intuition can guide the researcher into coming up with elegant tests, and also prioritizing their order.

        • absolutely!

          If you have a paper which describes a new technique on the cutting edge of measuring something, how the hell do you test it?

          Having been there, the answer is "with a great deal of difficulty", and the tests were nearly as hard as the technique, but requiring completely different expertise.

    • Even the statement in the summary:

      "a good mathematician understands immediately which mathematical statements are true and which are false, whereas a bad mathematician has to try to prove them in order to know."

      Shows how bad its becoming, no a good mathematician may suspect something maybe true, and go on to prove that a statement is true by using mathematics. If you are someone who "knows" without being able to prove you are not a mathematician at all. That is the same in science if you can't do science to support your hypothesis, you are not a scientist.

      And absolutely no to scientist reporting ever mistake and wrong path the take to come to their conclusion, the world has better

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suutar ( 1860506 )

        You have a point, but I believe there is a difference between "knowing without being _able_ to prove" and "knowing and being able to prove it but not bothering to go through the steps right now"

  • Does a good mathematician intuit GÃdel? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blue trane ( 110704 ) on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:12AM (#63744346) Homepage Journal

    Is every math statement true given the Banach-Tarski paradox (1 = 2) and explosion?

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Banach-Tarski paradox

      Now let's not go bringing Bidenomics into this discussion.

    • Based on a quick Wikipedia, it looks like this relies on uncountable sets. So, basically, it's similar to the way you can map every integer to a tiny range of real numbers and still have infinite left over, maybe? That said, yes, in any system where "false" is provable, every statement is true.
    • Banach-Tarski is not a paradox. You are partitioning a unit sphere into non-measurable sets, for which there is no notion of volume (and they are also physically impossible). Reassembling them to form two spheres is surprising, but not paradoxical. After all, you can rearrange the points of the closed interval [0, 2023] to form the interval [0, 1]. Does that mean 2023 = 1 ?!

  • Always has, always will (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:15AM (#63744356)

    It would be more noteworthy if intuition didn't play a role, large or small, in science. If science only proceeded by slogging through one experiment after another without any outside thought, we would not be where we are now.

    Looking through history, there are a multitude of discoveries which came about because someone had a hunch about something and then acted upon it.

    • The scientific method is the means by which we test whether an idea - whether it comes from intuition or not - is correct. Intuition is just one source of ideas to test and it can be a two-edged sword. Yes, sometimes it can lead to a great idea that you test and it works perfectly. Other times, it can lead to you ignoring an explanation because you think you intuitively know what is happening there, only to find that after spending a lot of time eliminating what you intuitively think are far more likely exp

      • Is the scientific method itself an intuition, or bias, that could easily be as wrong as the intuition that orbits must be circles or continents can't drift or humans must have 24 chromosomes?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Falos ( 2905315 )

        My intuition helps me diagnose problems rapidly. I can skip unlikely scenarios. These odds are not just universal, but influenced by present data. eg. Someone calling about a bad sink is 95% likely not having power issues. Finding data that they don't have a Smart Sink changes those odds to 99.9% likely not having power issues.

        There's a post or two down here crowing about that 0.1% where it WAS still a power issue. In the example I end up spending MORE time exhausting plumbing possibilities before finally i

        • That's not really the same thing. A kitchen sink is a well-known, well-understood device that has well-known and well-understood failure modes. Some failures may be highly unusual ones but the fact that we know that they are highly unusual underscores the fact that we have a lot of knowledge about the situation.

          Scientific research is usually dealing with highly unusual situations that may either be completely unique to an experiment or have only been encountered by humans a few times before. As such we h

    • Cause that's what intuition is - a fallacious gamble.

      And as gamblers tend to do, believers in intuition generally fail to remember all the times their intuition was utterly and completely wrong.
      Which is most of time - or they'd be clairvoyant.

      Intuition is literally a fallacy. [logicallyfallacious.com]
      Might as well argue dreams (as in sleeping) or desires or prayers as part of "science".
      Those who believe in a royal road to science fancy themselves kings, but are actually just egoistic fools.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
        Carl Jung would disagree on that.. but if you want to cut yourself from that world by saying it doesn't exist, then go right ahead.

  • Intuition is just another word for bias (Score:4, Insightful)

    by decep ( 137319 ) on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:17AM (#63744364)

    Intuition helps us cut through the noise, so it can be a positive force, but it will increasingly cause problems as things get more complex.

    The Monty Hall problem is a prime example, and that is a simple problem.

  • Why is this important? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by byronivs ( 1626319 ) on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:22AM (#63744376) Journal
    This guy posits that we should know (romantically so, I think) all the bad stuff and false starts and failures ubiquitous that happen in the scientific process. Sounds to me like a project for a budding writer. Which it is. I didn't read it or look it up further.

    This question is a trap. Intuition plays a role in all human activities. In scientific method, it might guide you as you build a hypothesis. Or devise an experiment. You might dream a solution. Nevertheless, if the outcome isn't repeatable, it might be scientific, but if it remains uncorroborated and singular isn't really science, so let's not make a religion where there is none. Belief is required in science as much as belief is required of a hammer, or your car.

    PS I was going to reply to someone who already fell in the trap, but I'm not going to repeat loser-talk.

    • Did Romans build bridges that stand today, despite holding the intuition that heavier things fall faster? Is belief in the science of a hammer like believing the earth does not move, the sun does, because, duh?

  • The "Orient" step in particular is built on life experience and intuition, as well as training and explicit decision-making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • The original author as well as this reviewer appear to have no idea what "intuition" means. No mathematician ever intuited anything without first learning things and learning how to examine things.

    More to the point - just look at some of the famous problems like the 4-color conjecture or Fermat's Last Theorem --- or even whether pi^e is transcendental. "Intuition" only holds until the proof or disproof is found

    • Have you heard about the problem of infinite regress? Do your proofs rely on intuitive assumptions? What if those intuitions about assumptions (Law of Noncontradiction, I'm looking at you!) are wrong?

  • Could someone please define intuition? It makes sense to settle down on the terms before trying to argue.

    • May I suggest you ask your Mom?

      • Nice insult but if you don't know the answer, why did you reply then?

        Please familiarize yourself with the first paragraph from WP:

        Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge, without recourse to conscious reasoning or needing an explanation.[2][3] Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; gut feelings; inner sensing; inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition; and the ability to und

      • you don't post stupid insults?

  • Journalist who writes about science quotes a writer who quotes "a friend" who makes nonsensical statement about mathematicians. Like everything else when it comes to experience, the more experienced you are, the greater the number of things you know are true or false just by looking.

    Are you going to be able to make that curve going 60 in your Chevy? Seems like a more experienced driver knows the answer better than a 15 year old. Same thing with mathematicians. But knowing whether a Lamborghini can do i

  • they want their massive catalog of scientific errors back. There are damn good reasons why modern science places almost no weight on “intuition”. Yes, I rely on it daily, and it can be useful sometimes to help guide research in the “middle phase”, but it just as often leads the research into blind corners. According to scientific intuition:

    “insert the sex different than my own” is obviously less intelligent

    People of “insert any race but my own” are clea

  • ...with all the people around you that don't have that talent, especially if they have a Phd associated with their name. I've worked in R&D for a large part of my working life and can normally look at something mechanical and tell you 1) if it will work or not and 2) what needs to be done to fix it. It's a gift and a curse at the same time. The curse is dealing with people who don't have that gift and trying to convince them that your way is the way to go. I used to get mad when they couldn't see it, no

  • Not the purpose of papers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:58AM (#63744472)
    Scientific papers function to allow the review of scientific information and to distribute it. They are not a good vehicle for teaching how scientists think. There would be some real value to also publishing dead ends, because that information is also valuable, but its difficult to figure out how to motivate anyone to take the time to do that.

    Intuition is important in figuring which scientific approaches to follow but it may not be easy to describe. Even the term "intuition" may mean very different things do different people: For some its an idea with no obvious basis, for others its a sort of fuzzy result of lots of prior data / experience.

    • I kind of agree in concept: the author/reviewer is really bemoaning how science is 'taught' or 'understood' by nonscientists. Journal articles are not the vehicle for that!

      I have no idea how science is taught these days, but I can totally see bad teachers completely ignoring the fascinating stories of serendipitous mistakes and random intuitions. I knew a fair bit about Einstein and Plank, but it was only very recently that I learned they both had a series of very unusual dreams right around when they

  • It seems like they are failing to recognize an important reason why 'intuition' steps wouldn't make it into writeups:

    Having a good intuitive grasp of something, or the ability to work from plausible hunches while trying to develop sufficient information to move beyond needing a hunch is absolutely valuable; but, more or less by definition, if it's a 'hunch' it's something you've arrived at by means you can't really codify. That doesn't mean it's wrong; but it means it's a terrible fit for the methods section; which is supposed to be you communicating the means at which you arrived at something.

    Anyone pretending that there were absolutely no steps where they were faced with multiple possible lines of inquiry and sufficiently limited information that they just had to go with the one that looked best is lying to themselves or others; but of what value is telling someone else "well, if you aren't sure just go with your gut" and expecting them to act on that information? A good 'feel' for a given subject definitely seems to be something you can learn(though some people seem much more capable than others) with sufficient experience and exposure to the right colleagues; but, unlike codified methods, it's downright insultingly unhelpful as written advice.

    • Is the value in admitting science just goes with its gut that my gut feelings become just as valid? Does that threaten your desire to control me?

      • The whole point of the value of 'intuition' is that gut feelings aren't equally valid: a good one can have you choose what turns out to be the productive line of inquiry significantly earlier than you would have arrived at it by systematic slogging; a bad one can send you down a blind alley at best, get you emotionally committed to a blind alley at worst.

        If all avenues were equally valid a good intuitive sense would be of no value because the choice wouldn't much matter; you could just roll the dice and
  • I'm a scientist. I'm pretty sure nobody wants to hear me blather on about all the things I tried that didn't work or how I stumbled upon the answer. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to read most other scientists writing the same kinds of things. You really need to get a Nobel or two before anybody has time to read your ramblings.
  • Almost all of Einstein's discoveries were the result of his intuition acting on top of discoveries and measurements and math. No intuition = no science.

    • Almost all of Einstein's discoveries were the result of his intuition acting on top of discoveries and measurements and math. No intuition = no science.

      Not the case. Almost all of Einstein's discoveries were the result of rigorous analysis.

      Einstein's brilliance was that he didn't accept what everybody else thought was intuitively obvious.

      The one time he did use intuition-- saying that quantum mechanics can't be the final theory of matter because the EPR ("Einstein Podolsky Rosen") thought experiment has a result that is intuitively absurd-- he was wrong. (But even wrong, he was insightful. Pointing out that the EPR result is weird, and exactly how it is w

  • "Well, will he remember what was said?"

    "Why not? It might seem to you, Peter, that a truck driver, one step above an ape in your view, can't remember. But truck drivers can have brains, too. The statements were most remarkable and the driver may well have remembered some. Even if he gets some of the letters and numbers wrong, we're dealing with a finite set, you know, the fifty-five hundred stars or star systems within eighty light-years or so-I haven't looked up the exact number. You can make the correct c

  • When I volunteered for Skeptical Science (an anti-climate-misinfomation site) I was given access to the internal forum where the work and discussion around Cook 2013 [iop.org] was archived. Looking at that, it struck me that publishing the paper was difficult. First, they had to "shop around" for a journal willing to publish it, as several journals weren't interested in the topic (even though the paper went on to make global headlines and generally was among the most popular papers of all time [skepticalscience.com]). Second, when a journ

  • After that, comes the testing and confirmation and peer review.

    Scientists lacking intuition will perform studies with little value.

  • The paper is to expand our knowledge. It's supposed to ignore the person who wrote it, and explain some important (to them) pattern. I don't want to know how Johnny feels about things. I want to know the reality that would be true if I did it or Johnny, or whoever.

    Remove anything optional and you'll remove anything personal. Any opinions. Remove anything personal and you can't offer personal intuitions. Or experiences that felt important but aren't as pertinent to the topic to someone else.

    Generally a

  • I'm currently reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and this very topic is discussed in one of the chapters. Intuition is required in coming up with a hypothesis. The hypothesis is the creative aspect of science. Since most scientists are not creative thinkers, it's the phase where most struggle.
  • The book "Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein is also relevant. He argues that it can be very beneficial (across a wide range of careers) for a person to have gained some experience of several unrelated fields before specializing in one field. When it comes to innovations and problem solving, such people can sometimes reason "The problem I am trying to solve superficially looks like the [such-and-such] problem in another field, and that problem was solved by using [whatev
  • This article is totally accurate. When I had an NIH grant for my research, at one point I reached a block that stopped my progress cold. I was afraid that I’d have to turn the remainder of my grant back to NIH. I obsessed over this for months with no idea about how to make progress. One day I was walking through my lab carrying some glassware when all of a sudden what seemed like a bolt of lightning hit me. It was a very physical experience. But in moment a new direction for my research opened up

  • My gut says intuition plays a big role.

  • The scientific method, if done correctly, replaces intuition with proof. It isn't one or the other.

    Start with "I think that..." and move to "I know and can prove that..."

  • Well, if you want some fails and emotions, read biographies. Or eyewitness accounts, depends on age of research and popularity of the scientist.

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