Skip to main content

Speculation and science

My latest book, Interstellar Tours, is set on a tour starship of the twenty-second century. Clearly the context is fictional, to give what can sometimes seem the rather remote sciences of astrophysics and cosmology a more hands-on feel. But the science itself is based on our best current knowledge. This does, however, raise a wider question - how to deal with the relationship between speculation and science.

Given that the book is set in the future, I have to occasionally speculate about how our scientific knowledge will progress. As much as possible, I describe phenomena as we believe them to be now, but inevitably there are some circumstances where things are currently uncertain and I need to come down on one side or another. So, for example, despite visiting many planets, in my future life has yet to be discovered for certain beyond our solar system. To make sure readers don't confuse my speculation with 'real science' I have a number of speculation alerts - boxes that highlight what was not known in the 2020s.

If I'm honest, as I wrote about recently, I am not usually a great fan of speculative science. Infamously, speculation used to be at the heart of cosmology, to the extent there was a saying (with many variants) doing the rounds): 'There's speculation, then there's wild speculation, then there's cosmology.' It's fair to say that cosmology has settled down a bit, but there is still a lot of effort being put into various topics where there is little or no real evidence to date.

Speculative science is not, of course, limited to cosmology. In quantum physics, for example, while the outcomes are described and predicted with stunning accuracy, the many interpretations that attempt to show what is going on 'underneath' are currently pure speculation. Some people love this kind of thing - I find it, dare I say it, boring. Until there's some evidence to make one interpretation stand out, I really don't care. I'm not saying people shouldn't work on this kind of science. It's only by doing so that we can move our understanding beyond speculation, at least with speculation where there is some chance of ever realistically getting proper data to identify what is correct. But in some circumstances we probably never will - and even if there may eventually be evidence, while it remains speculative, I find it a bit of a yawn.

Out in space, without the benefit of experiment (yet), speculation will always rear its head. Whether it's black hole firewalls or the book by Rovelli I have sitting on the shelf yet to read on white holes, speculation is going to be rampant. And science writers need to write about it. But, for me, it dominates coverage too much in physics, cosmology and related fields. New Scientist, for example, hardly ever seems to have a lead physics story that isn't highly speculative.

It might seem hypocritical, then, to put my own speculation into Interstellar Tours - but it was necessary for the format of the book. And it is a very minor part. One aspect of speculation where I do enjoy stirring things a bit is over dark matter, where I am reasonably convinced that something based on modified Newtonian gravity (MOND) will partly or wholly supplant the existence of dark matter as a new kind of particle. I was delighted when esteemed science writer John Gribbin read the book that he commented 'The conclusions re. dark matter vs MOND are very bold and will intrigue people!' - my answer was 'I know!' 

So it's not that I don't appreciate the importance of speculation (especially when I think it's right) - but at least this speculation is based on a lot of evidence (see the excellent blog Triton Station for details). It doesn't stop me feeling, though, that speculation in science needs very careful management in the way that it is communicated. And that often isn't the case.

Image by Adrien Converse from Unsplash

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin Five Way Interview

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (born in 1999) is a distinguished composer, concert pianist, music theorist and researcher. Three of his piano CDs have been released in Germany. He started his undergraduate degree at the age of 13 in Kazakhstan, and having completed three musical doctorates in prominent Italian music institutions at the age of 20, he has mastered advanced composition techniques. In 2024 he completed a PhD in music at the University of St Andrews / Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (researching timbre-texture co-ordinate in avant- garde music), and was awarded The Silver Medal of The Worshipful Company of Musicians, London. He has held visiting affiliations at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL, and has been lecturing and giving talks internationally since the age of 13. His latest book is Quantum Mechanics and Avant Garde Music . What links quantum physics and avant-garde music? The entire book is devoted to this question. To put it briefly, there are many different link...
Post a Comment
Read more

Should we question science?

I was surprised recently by something Simon Singh put on X about Sabine Hossenfelder. I have huge admiration for Simon, but I also have a lot of respect for Sabine. She has written two excellent books and has been helpful to me with a number of physics queries - she also had a really interesting blog, and has now become particularly successful with her science videos. This is where I'm afraid she lost me as audience, as I find video a very unsatisfactory medium to take in information - but I know it has mass appeal. This meant I was concerned by Simon's tweet (or whatever we are supposed to call posts on X) saying 'The Problem With Sabine Hossenfelder: if you are a fan of SH... then this is worth watching.' He was referencing a video from 'Professor Dave Explains' - I'm not familiar with Professor Dave (aka Dave Farina, who apparently isn't a professor, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate for someone calling out fakes), but his videos are popular and he...
Post a Comment
Read more

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on...
Post a Comment
Read more