Paradigms Regained: A Further Exploration of the Mysteries of Modern Science

Bravo to John Casti for another splendid contribution. It would be extremely difficult to live up to the insight and clarity of Paradigms Lost, an essential classic, and I'm not sure this book quite hits that mark. But it surely does not disappoint either ! This book, like its predecessor, is exemplary science writing and full of the most profound insights into both the process and content of modern scientific theorizing. Casti starts by addressing the academic 'science wars' in his usual sympathetic but uncompromising style, illustrating how the odd notion of the "social construction" of science can arise among sophisticated scholars from a narrow look at the work of scientists. Taking a different tack from that of another excellent writer-on-science, Norm Levitt (Prometheus Bedeviled, etc.), Casti recognizes the social and political influences on science while also drawing a clear line between that and the notion that scientific theories are arbitrary constructions.A thankfully brief section on the perennial issue of science and religion presents the simple conclusion that science and religion are completely different "reality-generating mechanisms," in the sense of lenses for interpreting nature. This is a theme very consistent with and explored in more detail in Michael Shermer's "How We Believe." Casti then briefly reviews the cases made in Paradigms Lost (in order that this volume should be self-contained), and presents evidence on both sides of each question. He does not duplicate much of what was found in the previous book, but builds upon it significantly with recent research and changes in scientific worldview in each case.True to the tentative model of science Casti espouses, several previous conclusions are altered, and one overturned. The sociobiology controversy in particular, previously "not proven" is now interpreted as having been won ... by the gene crowd. Although this book stands on its own, it's hard to imagine that someone reading this one wouldn't be fascinated enough in the details to go back to Paradigms Lost for more background on the many elegant treatments of modern competing theories.Given the importance of being scientifically literate today, and the misleading impression we get from reading blurbs in popular newspapers and magazines, Casti has done an invaluable service to all of us in framing some of the biggest questions in science in such a clear and thorough way.

Over ten years ago, the author wrote the book Paradigms Lost, where six of the deepest questions currently being explored by science were argued both pro and con. They are: the origin of life, the genetic role in behavior or nature versus nurture, the acquisition of language by humans, the creation of machine intelligence, the existence of extraterrestrial life and the nature of quantum reality. In the original book, each was put forward as a specific claim and argued as if it were a legal trial. The six claims are: life arose out of natural physical processes here on Earth, human behavior patterns are dictated primarily by the genes, human language capacity stems from a unique, innate property of the brain, digital computers can, in principle think, there exist intelligent beings in our galaxy with whom we can communicate and there exists no objective reality independent of an observer. In this book, the author examines the progress in these areas and revisits the verdicts in Paradigms Lost based on the new evidence. The one point that immediately becomes clear is how complex these problems are. Despite tremendous progress in all of these areas, none of these questions is that much closer to being resolved. The two where the greatest changes have taken place are in the areas of machine intelligence and extraterrestrial intelligence. And yet, these are still the farthest from resolution. A computer defeated the greatest chess player in the world and the media is now full of repeated discoveries of planets around other stars. Both very impressive feats and most likely essential preconditions for the discovery of both types of intelligence. The problem, as the author so well describes, is that a definitive definition of intelligence is elusive and conclusive proof of machine intelligence is even harder to specify. Furthermore, the first and fifth are closely linked. If life on Earth was seeded from space, then the answer to five is most certainly yes. Furthermore, if life arises spontaneously as a consequence of the laws of the interaction of matter, then the existence of many planets dictates that it exists on other worlds. The debate is then reduced to the development of intelligence once life forms and whether we can communicate with intelligence that developed from other evolutionary trees. This question is linked to an answer to question three. If the acquisition of complex language is due to something special in the human brain, then it is possible that it is unique to this planet. In that case, communicating with other creatures with different special qualities may prove extraordinarily difficult or impossible. I found the arguments easy to follow and largely free of emotional entanglements. Even when I disagreed with the conclusion, there was no reason to question the evidence, only the interpretation. If you are interested in the current thinking about these fundamental questions, I suggest

Dr. Casti has written a number of popular science books. This one tackles the Big Questions of our day: the origins of life; nature-nurture; language; artificial intelligence; extra-terrestial life; and wave-particle mechanics. As always, he is lucid, entertaining and painstakingly fair to all sides of the issue. Paradigms Regained is the successor to Paradigms Lost, published in 1991. There have been exciting discoveries in the decade since then. Casti looks especially closely at the paradox of objects that seem to live a double-life, like Schrödinger's unfortunate cat. For the benefit of readers who want to learn more, the author has provided a 'To Dig Deeper' section with a list of books and articles for each 'question'.