The Common Sense of Science

International travel has its benefits. Somewhere between Sydney, Toronto and back again I found time to read Jacob Bronowski's The Common Sense of Science. First published in 1951, it's as profound and relevant today - essential reading for anyone interested in science and science communication (Bronowski would probably argue that the two are inseparable).

If you're a scientist, it's a reminder of why we do what we do, stuffed full of aspirational quotes for those dark moments when we wonder if we're actually doing anything worthwhile. Bronowski is well known for his quotable quotes, but this is far more than a collection of one-liners.

The book focuses on three key themes in science - order, cause, and chance - introduced during a historical trip from Euclid to Einstein, via Renaissance Europe and the Industrial Revolution.

Science, according to Bronowski, begins with the notion of order - the idea that there are distinct categories of things that share important properties and so can be treated as interchangeable. This ordering is itself an experimental act. It begins with intuitions but then these need to be tested:

"It is an experimental activity of trial and error. We must from the outset underline its empirical nature, because there is no test for what is like and what is unlike except an empirical one: that the arrangement of things in these groups chimes and fits with the kind of world, the kind of life which we act out."

Ordering also depends on the question at hand. We often talk about falsely comparing apples with oranges. Yet Newton's key insight was that, in the context of gravity, apples and moons may be ordered together.

Newton is also credited with the modern notion of cause, in which the universe is conceived as a machine whose future can, at least in theory, be predicted if its current state is known in sufficient detail:

"Our conception of cause and effect is this: that given a definite configuration of wholly material things, there will always follow upon it the same observable event... As the sun sets, radio reception improves. As we press the switch the light goes on. As the child grows, it becomes able to speak. And if the expected does not happen, if reception does not improve, or the lamp does not light up, or the child persists in gurgling, then we are confident that the configuration from which we started was not the same... The present influences the future and, more, it determines it."

However, Bronowski points to flaws in this characterisation of cause and effect. The problem is that we cannot fully know the present, even hypothetically, and so our predictions of the future will always carry uncertainty.

This is the third theme - chance - the idea that things are never fully knowable or predictable. The best science can hope for is to reduce uncertainty, to characterise the likelihood of different potential outcomes. It is the most recent of the concepts and the least appreciated, by scientists and non-scientists alike.

"The future does not already exist; it can only be predicted. We must be content to  map the places into which it may move and to assign a greater or less likelihood to this or that of its areas of uncertainty."

Beyond order, cause, and chance, there are other key themes running throughout. Bronowski begins by drawing historical parallels between science and the arts. There was never a "golden age" of the arts that has been somehow supplanted by science. In every great civilization, scientists and artists have "walked together". Ultimately, science is like any form of human thought or culture. What sets it apart is only its organisation.

The pay-off comes in Chapter 8, when Bronowski finally cements the link between science and literature in perhaps my favourite passage of the book:

"We cannot define truth in science until we move from fact to law. And within the body of laws in turn, what impresses us as truth is the orderly coherence of the pieces. They fit together like the characters in a great novel, or like the words in a poem. Indeed, we should keep that last analogy by us always. For science is a language, and like a language, it defines its parts by the way they make up a meaning. Every word in a sentence has some uncertainty of definition, and yet the sentence defines its own meaning and that of its constituents conclusively. It is the internal unity and coherence of science which gives it truth, and which make it a better system of prediction than any less orderly system" (p136).

The book ends where it began with a defence of science. Bronowski was writing just after the end of World War II and the unleashing of nuclear weapons that owed their existence to Einstein and his famous equation,  E=mc². Science stood accused of providing the means of our own destruction.

Bronowski argues that the blame really lies with a society that determines the direction that science takes and provides a situation where science is used to these ends. But he does not absolve scientists entirely:

"They have enjoyed acting the mysterious stranger, the powerful voice without emotion, the expert and the god. They have failed to make themselves comfortable in the talk of people on the street; no one taught them the knack, of course, but they were not keen to learn. And now they find the distance which they enjoyed has turned to distrust, and the awe has turned to fear; and people who are by no means fools really believe that we should be better off without science" (p146).

The Common Sense of Science is now over 60 years old. While some of the language is quite dated and at times pompous, the central message still rings true. Science is not caused by human progress - science is human progress.

"We know that ours is a remarkable age of science. It is for us to use to broaden and liberate our culture. These are the marks of science: that it is open for all to hear, and all are free to speak their minds in it. They are the marks of the world at its best, and the human spirit at its most challenging" (p153).

Pre-IMFAR autism pub debate

Thanks to everyone who commented on the original post yesterday or earlier today. I've taken it down for a couple of reasons.

First, the person I was debating with last night was unhappy about the post and claimed that I had misrepresented his position. I'm not sure how, but that was his view.

Second, and more importantly, I should have asked his permission before posting. I was hoping to give a sense of what it's like to go to a scientific conference and all the informal discussions that actually make going to a conference worthwhile. For that reason, it felt important to post it there and then rather than sitting on it for a couple of days as I normally do before posting here.

But when you have an informal conversation with someone in a pub, you don't normally expect it to appear next day on the internet, even if you're not identified as the person involved. I don't want to be in a situation where people won't have these discussions with me for fear of this happening.

I'm still experimenting with blogging and I think I crossed a line with this post.

A straight-down-the-line review of Day 1 to follow.

IMFAR 2012: Toronto bound

Tomorrow, I'm jumping on a plane bound (indirectly) for Toronto and the annual International Meeting for Autism Research. It should be good. The program, which I've just downloaded, looks pretty exciting. But secretly I'm even more excited about catching up with old friends and colleagues and meeting some of the wonderful people I've come to know through blogging and tweeting.

On Thursday morning I'm presenting a poster in a session entitled Brain Imaging: Resting State fcfMRI and Structural Imaging. This is a little strange as I'm doing neither Resting State, fcMRI, nor Structural Imaging. Such, I've discovered, is often the way of conferences.

70: Atypical Brain Responses to Illusory Auditory Pitch in Children with Autism.

Session 107 -  Thursday 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM - Sheraton Hall

Apparently I have to stand next to the poster for an hour between 9 and 10am. So if you'd like to drop by and say hello, I'll definitely be there then. For everyone else, you can get a sneak peak of the poster here (warning, it's a big old PDF).

My PhD student, Shu Yau, is also presenting a poster. I've just realised that she's on at exactly the same time as me, but in the Neurophysiology session (and no, she's not doing neurophysiology either). So you should go and say hello to her too. 

186: Auditory Processing and Language Impairment in Children with ASD

Session 111 - Thursday 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM - Sheraton Hall

I'm planning on writing a post about the conference, probably after it's over. If anyone else is blogging IMFAR, let me know and I'll add a link.

In the meantime, it seems appropriate to plug an old post from a few years ago. It's about flying to a conference and how that's related to brain networks in autism. Unusually for me, it's actually a pretty decent analogy!

Made it to Canada. Work starts tomorrow!!

Clouds

"Remote control cloud catcher with red detail" by Elliott Brock (age 4)

One of my favourite bits about being a dad is, every now and then, just casually blowing my little boy’s mind - with science. Last weekend, we were out for a stroll when he paused, looked up at the sky, and came out with “I wish I had a rocket so I could go and stand on a cloud”. Sensing an opening, I explained that clouds were made of tiny drops of water that hang in the air, so you wouldn’t ever be able to stand on one. But that, when it’s misty, that’s just a cloud that’s really low down on the ground, so it’s actually very easy to stand inside a cloud. That pleased him, as he acknowledged his chances of owning a rocket any time soon were somewhat marginal.

Sometimes I perhaps take it too far. The other night, as I was tucking him up in bed, I found myself pointing out that the blanket he was snuggling into wasn’t actually hot – so how was it keeping him warm? That backfired somewhat, as he then insisted on getting up and explaining to his mum the newly acquired concept of insulation.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much useful information he picks up from TV programs and DVDs, although sometimes he doesn’t get things entirely right. A couple of weeks ago, after watching an episode of Sid the Science Kid, he was proudly explaining how the digestive system works.

"First you chew it up. Then it goes down, down into your stomach where all the juices break it up into small pieces. Then it goes into a big maze called the intesticles (sic) and it goes round and round (demonstrates). And then it goes all the way down to your feet - and that’s how you grow!”

He must have watched that episode again because a few days later he was explaining to me quite nicely the science of poo.

What I find really lovely is the look on his face when something suddenly makes sense to him. It completely shatters the idea that science destroys the mystery and wonder of childhood; that understanding the universe and how it works somehow devalues it.

Think of what he’s yet to learn. He’s made of atoms that were created in stars as they died. He has evolved from an ancestor shared with every living creature on the planet. His own conscious experience arises from billions of neurons, firing electrical impulses in complex harmony. Science is truly stranger and more beautiful than any children's fiction.

So it was that, this morning, when he woke up, the sky was blue, but a large white cloud was slowly rolling down the valley. By the time we’d had breakfast, we could barely see the other side of the street. As we stepped out of the front door, he looked at me and grinned as the realization dawned. He was walking into a cloud.

Thanks to Jo in the comments for the Calvin and Hobbes link. More C&H Science Dad cartoons here.

This, from my friend and colleague, Jason Friedmann: The science of rainbows!

Autism and the art of campervan maintenance

Sometimes, it's good to get away. In February, we spent two weeks cruising around the North Island of New Zealand in a campervan, quickly christened Campo by my four-year-old. We saw the giant Kauri trees of Waipoua and the giant sand dunes on 90 mile beach; we went sailing on the Bay of Islands and bathing in the volcanic springs of Hotwater Beach. And it only rained twice. I learnt a little of the art of campervan maintenance [1]. And, while I was under strict instructions not to do any work, the winding roads of Northland and Coromandel gave plenty of opportunity for idle philosophising.

For holiday reading, I picked up a copy of Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, in a lovely little second hand bookshop in Devonport. Dawkins, it must be said, is on top form, laying out the evidence for evolution and laying into creationists and flat-earthers at every turn. The highlight for me was his joyful description of Lenski’s experiments in bacterial evolution. Even for someone far removed from this line of research, it’s inspirational stuff, demonstrating the elegance and power of science done well.

The dead hand of Plato

In Chapter 2, Dawkins ventures on an interesting tangent, asking why it took us all so long to figure out evolution. After considering some of the more obvious explanations (religious objections, the unimaginable timespan of evolution), he ultimately concludes by laying the blame at the feet of the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato [2].

Plato’s idea was that all classes of things have an essence – a set of defining properties. Members of that category may vary in other respects, but they all share that essential nature. Chairs, for example, can vary in size, shape, colour, comfort, and so on, but they are still all essentially chairs; they all have the essence of chairness; they are variations on an ideal chair.

As the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr pointed out, this essentialist way of thinking about things becomes problematic when trying to understand evolution. Plato would consider any natural variation amongst rabbits as "flawed deviation from the ideal essence of rabbit". In Mayr's view, Darwin succeeded by breaking away from this Platonic mindset and realising that it is this variation, coupled with non-random selection, that is the driving force behind evolution. For Darwin, there was no essential quality of rabbitness; no ideal rabbit; and, crucially, no guiding hand directing historical proto-rabbits to become more rabbit-like.

Giant Sandunes, Northland

Dawkins concurs with Mayr, and spends the rest of The Greatest Show on Earth piling on the evidence for evolution from every conceivable angle. The relevant point here, however, is that natural selection is counterintuitive. Our default mode of thinking in terms of essential, idealised qualities of different species proved an obstacle to scientific progress. This probably explains why Darwin was so late on the scientific scene; why he wasn’t beaten to the punch by a scientist centuries earlier. It probably also goes some way to explaining why so many people today still deny the possibility of evolution, in spite of the overwhelming evidence. It’s an illustration that our intuitions are often wrong or misleading and that the whole point of science is that it can and frequently does defy those intuitions [3].

The essence of autism

I was trying hard not to think about work. But as I read about Plato, Mayr, and the essence of bunny rabbits, it struck me that there might be important lessons for autism research. It's not that there are any obvious analogies that I can think of. But, like Darwin's contemporaries, I wonder whether we, as people interested in autism, may be stuck in a similar essentialist rut. 

Cape Reinga - where the Tasman
meets the South Pacific

The following, from a recent post on the SFARI blog, expresses a familiar sentiment:

"Autism is a complex, heterogeneous disorder. But the core phenotype, which can be recognized to some degree in any individual on the autism spectrum, nonetheless suggests that there must be some common underpinnings.”

We acknowledge the heterogeneity within autism, but our intuitions still drive us to seek a common essence of autism. 

It’s easy to see where this intuition comes from. Essentialism underlies our definitions of autism. Diagnostic criteria are aimed squarely at defining the “core” (essential) characteristics of the disorder. We can even think of an "ideal" autistic person as someone whom Kanner would have identified as autistic – someone with "classic autism". Diagnostic boundaries indicate how much variation away from this ideal can be tolerated before the individual is deemed to be not autistic. Common symptoms that are not part of the diagnostic criteria, such as language delay, intellectual disability, attention deficit, and so on are considered to be non-essential “co-morbidities”, separate and on top of the autism.

The essentialist view of autism goes hand in hand with the way autism research is conducted and reported. Most studies involve taking a group of individuals with autism and comparing them to a control group. The assumption is that the group average is what matters. Individual differences within the autism group are considered to be non-essential variation.

Sandspit estuary

Studies are then reported as showing, for example, that people with autism are good or bad at a particular test, that their brains are over- or under-activated in response to a particular stimulus, or that they do or do not respond to a particular intervention. This kind of generalization, from the handful of individuals taking part in the study to "people with autism", is only licensed if people with an autism diagnosis are interchangeable - if they are essentially the same. Yet one only has to meet a few to realise that this is not the case.

Universals and specifics

Perhaps most clearly and explicitly, the Platonic mindset is revealed by the widespread view that theories of autism must be evaluated according to their universality and specificity; the theory should apply to everyone with an autism diagnosis but nobody without autism and failure on either of these criteria is grounds for rejecting a theory.

A recent exposition of this view comes from a paper by Kevin Pelphrey and colleagues in a paper criticising the "underconnectivity" account of autism:

Seriously good fush and chups

"it is not yet clear how the underconnectivity perspective accounts for the specific patterns of dysfunction in individuals with ASD. That is, how might this perspective explain what is common among individuals with ASD and what separates ASD from other neurodevelopmental disorders that also feature underconnectivity?"

This is certainly a valid criticism insofar as proponents of "underconnectivity" sometimes portray it as a theory-of-autism, conveniently ignoring the evidence for atypical connectivity in other disorders. But Pelphrey et al.’s alternative is to look for the essence of autism elsewhere - in the brain mechanisms underlying the "core disruptions in social information processing". Notably, none of the evidence they review from their own research comes close to universality or specificity either.

The problem doesn’t just apply to brain imaging studies. At every level of analysis, from genetics and neurobiology through to cognition and behaviour, there is variation within autism and overlap with other disorders. This all tends to undermine the fundamental underlying assumption that there is this discrete thing called autism that people either do or don’t have. This isn’t the same thing as saying that autism doesn’t exist - any more than Darwin was proposing the nonexistence of rabbits. But it does suggest that we need to change the way we think about and research autism.

Variation in individuals

Tane Mahuta - I'm standing at the bottom,

boy on shoulders

There are certainly moves in this direction, with increasing interest in autism subgroups, individual variation, and cross-diagnostic comparison. Perhaps the most radical new approach was recently announced by the Simons Foundation. The Variation in Individuals Project is looking at deletions and duplications in region 16p11.2 of chromosome 16, which has been linked to autism, developmental delay, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. But rather than looking only at people who meet criteria for a particular condition, participants are being recruited regardless of their diagnosis.

This I think is beginning to approach the crux of the problem. Ultimately, “autism” is a label for a set of behaviours. By always beginning with autism and working backwards, we have invested too much significance in the label itself.

Home

Another bookshop, this time back in sleepy old Brooklyn, New South Wales. Hiding behind the anniversary edition of The Selfish Gene is a small battered copy of The Common Sense of Science by Jacob Buronowski. Flicking through, I stop on page 62.

“In many scientific problems, the difficulty is to state the question rightly; once that is done it may almost answer itself.”

Cathedral Cove

Notes:

[1] The main thing I learnt (and it took me a week to figure this out) is that, on a Toyota Hiace, there's a hidden clip that allows you to lift up the passenger seat and get to the engine. But this is really a reference to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is a book about a guy crossing America on a bike, pondering the meaning of the word "quality". I've come to the conclusion that "autism" is equally intangible.

[2] This from our resident philosopher, Prof John Sutton: "In terms of actual historical influence, Plato's extreme and other-worldly essentialism was less influential than Aristotle's version. Aristotle entrenched the idea that biological species are eternal, which didn't help, even though his paradigms or essences were more like prototypes than non-physical forms."

[3] I love this quote from Elizabeth Spelke. “I don’t place much faith in my intuitions, except as a starting place for designing experiments.”


References: 


Brock J (2011). Commentary: Complementary approaches to the developmental cognitive neuroscience of autism--reflections on Pelphrey et al. (2011). Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 52 (6), 645-6 PMID: 21574994 PDF

Pelphrey, K., Shultz, S., Hudac, C., & Vander Wyk, B. (2011). Research Review: Constraining heterogeneity: the social brain and its development in autism spectrum disorder Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52 (6), 631-644 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02349.x PDF

Simons Vip Consortium (2012). Simons Variation in Individuals Project (Simons VIP): a genetics-first approach to studying autism spectrum and related neurodevelopmental disorders. Neuron, 73 (6), 1063-7 PMID: 22445335


Further reading:

• Sue Gerrard: What is autism anyway?
• Pensive Paediatrician: Kids with autism need a truce not a war
• BishopBlog: What's in a name?
• Vaughan Bell: What is the "Bible of Psychiatry" supposed to do? The peculiar challenges of an uncertain science
• Wiring the Brain: Probabilistic inheritance and individual outcomes in neurodevelopmental conditions