List of great scientific theories - what are your favorites?
(I’m curious to follow up on the discovery stories behind them). To kick things off:
Gravity, planetary motion (ptolomy > copernicus > newton > einstein)
Temperature (galileo > celcius/farenheit > thompson aka kelvin (themodynamics) > statistical mechanics
Genetic code / central dogma (DNA > mRNA > protein)
Neuron doctrine (cajal vs golgi)
Neurons communicate via chemical transmission (dale/eccles)
Memory engrams (semon …)
The Hodgkin-Huxley model!
I describe some of the history here:
Though you didn't explicitly spell it out with the physics examples, looking at systems in an entirely different way following the great Emmy Noether's theorem (which Einstein outside his own thought was the single greatest work in science): symmetry, conservation, and symmetry breaking.
It encompasses more than physics now. No meaningful understanding of most complex systems is going to be likely without that Noetherian outlook.
@NicoleCRust When I was an undergrad pursuing a degree in Computer Science and Engineering, one of my favorite subjects was Linear Algebra where I was introduced to the concept of Fields, Vector Spaces, Real Analysis,... Proving (-1)*(-1) = +1 from first principles in an assignment was soo darn satisfying and a highlight of my first year as an undergrad 😁 So I'd definitely say Number Theory! I'll throw in Probability Theory in there (not just for all the Bayesian approaches used in #neuroscience).
Another course I was fascinated by and loved was Finite Automata and Formal Languages! So I'd also say Automata Theory and Theory of Computation - Babbage, Lovelace, Church, von Neumann, Turing, Gödel, Chomsky ... it's a long list :)
In the field of aerodynamics, I wish I could give an elegant summary of a few elegant laws, but I don't think there are today any elegant theories/math to describe turbulent flow.
"Recent work in aerodynamics has focused on issues related to compressible flow, turbulence, and boundary layers and has become increasingly computational in nature."
If you can't describe it simply and elegantly...then hammer at it with supercomputers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerodynamics
I'm more into the empirical side of aerodynamics.
When was the last time you took a glider ride?
Funnily enough no single favourite springs to mind. I prefer the overall metatheory that science is about producing models that explain or preferably predict the best (at any moment).
Ooh... maybe: "Not just birds but crocodiles and even turtles had gliding ancestors"😎
Naive set theory despite it being inconsistent because of the power it once promised and the potential it has when embedded in a paradox-resistant logic.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Dialetheism about paradoxes. This is the idea that contradictions can be true and that truth and falsehood can overlap. Motivation is the liar's paradox, "this sentence is false," which is both true and false at the same time in the same sense
The expanding view of our universe from one galaxy to a hundred billion. The underlying cosmic distance ladder is many discoveries, but key are standard candles (Henrietta Swan Leavitt) and the Hubble constant.
Similarly, the discovery of deep geological time, from Lyell’s principles of geology to radiometric dating.
How can I forget something staring right in front of my/our nose and most relevant to our research!!
The inimitable Anne Treisman and Garry Gelade's Feature Integration Theory. Maybe it's not a "theory" as would be accepted by many other scientific fields, but is both one of the most important and influential psychological models/frameworks we have ever had. There are many things to be worked out, but it will remain a starting point.
However, there is a sad sociological fact, most younger people who currently work in visual neuroscience and object recognition have not even heard of Feature Integration theory or Anne Treisman.
McClintock, mobile genetic elements + Woese, the tree of life via ribosomal RNA sequencing > recognition of crosstalk in the tree and broad horizontal gene transfer > chimeric origin of eukaryotes.
The progression in bacteriology from variable forms to the idea of a set of stable forms describing a species to Koch's postulates to today's exhaustion where we realize that we don't really have good definition of species for microbes.
For your examples, I'd take statistical mechanics off the flow of thermodynamics and add classical entropy and Clausius on the end instead.
And I have strong, negative feelings about the central dogma of molecular biology, which I regard as more marketing than science.
@NicoleCRust
Two favorites that I haven’t seen mentioned are Game Theory and the Church-Turing Thesis.
I noticed something interesting. For me, thinking about your question ended up being either about the internal beauty of a theory or more often about one specific thing that the theory allows us to do or explain. For example, natural selection allowed us to explain the origin of purpose in a purposeless universe.
@ehud
Really great examples. I’d really like to dive into the development behind game field more - eg, post Von Neumann, how the theory evolved and what explanations it led to.
I appreciate the latter point too - there are indeed multiple ways that a theory can be great.
for unfavorite one, I just read:
» Tell Me Why It Hurts How Bessel van der Kolk’s once controversial theory of trauma became the dominant way we make sense of our lives. «
For a favorite one, Antonio Damasio's theory of consciousness relaying upon homeostatic feelings:
https://mastodon.social/@teixi/110210703596083131
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-023-09900-7
https://www.the-scientist.com/reading-frames/book-excerpt-from-feeling-knowing-69320
The feeling of being alive still constitutes a major blind spot of contemporary affective sciences research. The mainstream view accepts it as an ‘umbrella notion’ comprising different states, such as M. Ratcliffe’s «feelings of being», T. Fuchs’s «feeling of being alive», E.M. Engelen’s «Gefühl des Lebendigseins», etc. In contrast, I argue for an account of the feeling of being alive as a unique feeling that can be described in several ways. Empirical support for this view comes mainly from Carvalho and Damasio’s hypothesis of the distinctiveness of the interoceptive system as the physiological underpinning of this feeling. This account is also in line with many other approaches recognizing the role of interoception proper in mind and subjectivity grounding, collected by Tsakiris and De Presteer. Over recent decades, Damasio’s organic descriptions have been widely acknowledged as neurophysiological counterparts of philosophical/psychological concepts. However, in my view they have been often misinterpreted, especially due to the mainstream Ratcliffian interpretation mediating his ideas amongst philosophers. Throughout the paper, a critical inquiry into Damasio’s conceptualization is provided, by means of conceptual analysis and an overall taxonomy of the several affective states he has proposed over the past few decades. Ultimately, a critical discussion of his own account of the feeling of being alive is offered from a philosophical viewpoint.
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