{"id":4139,"date":"2012-02-13T11:34:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T16:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4139"},"modified":"2014-03-11T18:19:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T22:19:00","slug":"generative-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4139","title":{"rendered":"Generative science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m thinking about writing another book.  I won&#8217;t disclose the title or topic yet, but there&#8217;s a bit of research for it I think can be usefully crowdsourced, and may also give a clue about the book for those of you interested.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written before about the difference between descriptive and generative theories.  To recap and simplify, a descriptive theory accounts for what is; a generative theory finds causal regularities beneath a descriptive account and predicts consequences not yet observed.<\/p>\n<p>Now I want to zero in on a parallel difference among entire <em>sciences<\/em>. Some scientific fields &#8211; like, say, evolutionary biology &#8211; are tremendously productive of models and insights that can be applied elsewhere.  On the other hand, some other sciences &#8211; like, say, astronomy &#8211; seldom export ideas or models.<\/p>\n<p>Note that while it is appropriate to think of sciences that export lots of ideas as &#8216;generative&#8217;, the class of sciences that don&#8217;t are not merely descriptive. Astronomy, for example, has lots of generative theory inside it; astrophysics, for example makes predictions about stellar spectra and elemental abundances.  But astronomy as a whole is not generative because none of its theory really informs anything <em>outside<\/em> astronomy.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m going to start with a (non-exhaustive) list of scientific fields, indicating roughly how generative I think they are and what if anything they export.  I invite additions and corrections from my readers.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Evolutionary biology &#8211; <em>extremely<\/em> generative. Principal exports: evolution by selective pressure on random variation, adaptive radiation, genetic drift, mutation, and many others.<\/p>\n<p>Mathematics &#8211; not an empirical science but extremely generative nevertheless.  All kinds of abstract mathematical models end up suggesting applied-math models of the real world with interesting testable consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Economics &#8211; highly generative.  Principal exports: supply\/demand equilibria, satisfaction under constraint, implicit knowledge, deadweight losses, search costs, coordination overhead, rational ignorance.<\/p>\n<p>Linguistics &#8211; not very generative at all except for a small corner near psycholinguistics that exports some provocations about the relationship between thought and representation.<\/p>\n<p>Physics &#8211; highly generative. Principal exports: conservation laws, principles of least action, entropy, state spaces, symmetry and symmetry-breaking, energy levels.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomy &#8211; gorgeous, but almost completely non-generative. <\/p>\n<p>Geology, zoology, agronomy &#8211; non-generative<\/p>\n<p>Additions?  Corrections?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m thinking about writing another book. I won&#8217;t disclose the title or topic yet, but there&#8217;s a bit of research for it I think can be usefully crowdsourced, and may also give a clue about the book for those of you interested. I&#8217;ve written before about the difference between descriptive and generative theories. To recap&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4139\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Generative science<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5418,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139\/revisions\/5418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}