Smarter Faster: Blurring the lines of science & speculation
A “fringe scientist” weighs in on our current scientific paradigm.
with Stephen Johnson • Thu 29 May, 2025
Hey Big Thinkers,
“Perhaps this isn’t a scientific question, but…” an interviewer once said to the astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol. As the Director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, Cabrol’s life work is scientific questions. But she replied: “You don’t have to be scientific all the time.”
That stuck with me. Not because it’s profound — obviously, nobody’s always scientific (imagine the small talk) — but because she has no problem taking off her science hat when conversations step outside the reach of modern science, as often happens in debates about the true nature of reality or consciousness.
The alternative? Keep the science hat on and risk stepping off the map.
In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, Jonny Thomson speaks with author and parapsychology researcher Rupert Sheldrake about his controversial view that we need “a larger, more inclusive model of reality” that remains empirical without ignoring what our current paradigm can’t explain. The question, as Jonny writes, is whether expanding the map helps us see more clearly or just blurs the lines between science and speculation.
Read on,
Stephen
MINI PHILOSOPHY
Fringe or frontier: Is our current scientific paradigm still the best fit?
By Jonny Thomson
The revolution is the easy bit. Any old brute with a big enough sledgehammer can knock down a building. The hard bit, the ingenious bit, is building something better in its place. So, too, with scientific paradigms. It’s one thing to say, “Our existing scientific framework is inadequate and incomplete.” It’s another thing to say what should replace it.
In this week’s Mini Philosophy article, I spoke with Rupert Sheldrake about the need for a new paradigm. Sheldrake firmly believes that the existing paradigm leaves out too many things, not least “consciousness” — something quite dear to most of us, I would suspect. But Sheldrake is not an anti-scientific mystic. He wants to replace our current paradigm with something that’s just as empirically guided. All science should follow and accommodate the evidence. But is it really possible to build up a new edifice when you need something more than bricks to do so?
Read on to find out more.
Subscribe to Mini Philosophy on Substack for even more from Jonny Thomson.
Fast Stats
1 — The number of sentences that constitute a biography of Jesus Christ, if limited to what historians can say confidently.
4 — Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s rules for a good philosophical debate.
17 & 29 — The prime numbers used in the rhythm and chord sequence of Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” keeping the music out of sync for 493 chords and creating a sense of timelessness.
1930 — The year the neutrino was proposed; now, scientists have finally narrowed down its mass with unprecedented precision.
THE BIG FLOW
What Leonardo’s obsession with water teaches us about longevity
Leonardo da Vinci’s resumé would put most of us to shame. He painted history’s most famous portrait. He designed helicopters centuries before they flew. He dissected cadavers to study the body from the inside out. But lately, Eric Markowitz has been thinking about one of the polymath’s lesser-known interests: fluid dynamics. Da Vinci was obsessed with how fluids move in nature; how they shape and sustain it over time. And in that obsession, Markowitz sees a clue to why Leonardo’s work has lasted over time.
THE BIG GAP
Ancient China was less equal than the Roman Empire. Here’s why.
The Roman Empire and Han China existed at the same time, ran similar bureaucratic machines, and even knew of each other (though they never formally met). But a new study reveals a striking difference: Han China, despite its Confucian ideals and progressive taxes, was far more unequal than Rome. In this Strange Maps piece, Frank Jacobs maps the wealth gaps — and what they might reveal about why one empire endured and the other fell apart.
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THE BIG CONTROVERSY
Peter Singer: The enormous moral cost of censoring dangerous ideas
Peter Singer is one of the world’s most influential philosophers, famous for his work in applied ethics, particularly animal welfare and effective altruism. But my favorite Singer production came in 2021 when he helped publish the first issue of The Journal of Controversial Ideas, which is exactly what it sounds like. (We’ve covered one of the journal’s articles; it’s too disgusting to explain here.) Big Think recently spoke with Singer about offensive ideas — and why he thinks silencing them helps nobody.
Stephen Johnson is the managing editor at Big Think.
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I couldn’t see anywhere else to comment on the “Jesus” article, so I hope it’s OK here. There is a significant and growing debate around the historicity of Jesus, and the references made to the “evidence” in Josephus and Tacitus in your article are misleading. Briefly, the Josephus reference looks like a late insertion, and Tacitus was reporting a report of a report. For a much more informed debate, and (for balance) one that comes down on the side of the probable mythic Jesus, see Richard Carrier “On the Historicity of Jesus” and Ralph Lataster “Questioning the Historicity of Jesus”. In the first century CE there most certainly were Jewish sectarians, there were preachers, there were itinerants, there were crucifixions. There could, therefore, have been a crucified itinerant Jewish sectarian preacher. But to go from there to claims of “miracle”-working, divinity and resurrection is a step nobody can rationally take.
A very poor and superficial discussion of the reality of consciousness.