Scientific Revolution: Cause, Origin and Process

Theories are developed to reduce the cost of information processing. A good theory is one that can explain a broad range of problems of common interest with low cost. People often face different problems in different environments.  Existing dominant theories often find it difficult to explain new problems with ease, which is the fundamental reason why new theories are created and adopted. 

Costs consist of fixed cost and variable cost. For a scientific theory, the fixed cost consists of learning the basic foundation and variable cost is the cost to apply to each individual problem. Fixed cost helps reduce variable cost. In general, lower variable cost theories entail higher fixed costs.

In a scientific revolution, a very fundamental theory, or a paradigm, will be replaced an alternative theory. Why and how a scientific revolution occurs? Take Copernican revolution for example. Before Copernicus, the earth was considered the center of the universe and was motionless. The sun moved around the earth. This geocentric theory was easy to understand, explained daily phenomena well and hence was a good theory. The Copernican theory, which states that the earth moves rapidly around the sun, was a far less intuitive and far more complicated theory. Then why the Copernican theory eventually got accepted?

When the market demand of a product is very high, a company builds very expensive equipments to reduce the variable cost in production. That is, a high fixed cost system is very profitable when the market size is large. The earth centered system describes the relation between the earth and the sun very well. But it had considerable difficulty describing the movements of Mars, Venus and other planets. As the observation of the celestial bodies became more accurate, it took more and more epicycles to describe the orbits of Mars and Venus accurately. The sun centered theory, on the other hand, can describe the movement of Mars and Venus much easier. Although the fixed cost of a sun centered system is high, its variable costs are lower. When the market size is large, i.e., when a theory need to describe the orbits of several planets, the sun centered system became more advantageous. That is why the Copernican theory eventually replaced the geocentric theory.

Different cosmological theories could be purely intellectual differences. Why then they arose such bitter debates over such a long time? We know that a company generates more profit when the market size of its products becomes larger. When theology was the foundation of cosmology, priests were much more prestigious than scientists. For example, Kepler wanted to become a priest. He reluctantly accepted a position to teach mathematics only because of financial constraints. The erosion of market size of theology since Copernicus’ time corresponds to the erosion of the power and prestige of priests. That is why most priests, who were the guardians of knowledge in the middle age, were fiercely against the Copernican theory. In general, rarely the development of a new theory is not accompanied by the shift of power and prestige among the professions and people.

On a personal level, the accumulation of knowledge takes many years. In academia, it often takes more than thirty years of learning and working before one can secure a tenured position. The fixed cost of academic career is extremely high. If a fundamentally new theory emerges on the horizon, it often means that the fixed assets accumulate over many years will depreciate very fast. This determines that the establishment has instinctive distain over new theories with revolutionary nature.

Most standard scientific researches are indeed carried out by researchers at elite institutions. However, many revolutionary theories are developed by outsiders. Although scientists take great pride working in the beautiful campuses of the first class universities, the theories they labor on often originated from a humble background. History is full of such examples. For example, neoclassical economics today is taught at Chicago, MIT and worshiped worldwide. But Gossen, a pioneer of the theory, died in obscurity after been fired from his civil servant position. Walras, the chief architect of the neoclassical theory, didn’t get an academic job until he was thirty six, when he was offered a job at a small university. Modern finance is often linked to high flying figures. But Louis Bachelier, the founder of quantitative finance, had great difficulty finding an academic position in his life. Fischer Black, who established the theory of financial derivatives, was a math graduate. “Fischer [Black] never took a course in either economics or finance, so he never learned the way you were supposed to do things. But that lack of training proved to be an advantage, Treynor suggested, since the traditional methods in those fields were better at producing academic careers than new knowledge. Fischer’s intellectual formation was instead in physics and mathematics, and his success in finance came from applying the methods of astrophysics. Lacking the ability to run controlled experiments on the stars, the astrophysist relies on careful observation and then imagination to find the simplicity underlying apparent complexity. In Fischer’s hands, the same habits of research turned out to be effective for producing new knowledge in finance.” (p. 6, Mehrling, 2005) In fact, most important figures in scientific revolution are either very young or outsiders, who have the least amount of bag to carry forward.

Because of the resistance of new theories from the establishment, by necessity, many pioneers in science choose to reach the public directly. One way is to write in popular styles. For example, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, is a very pleasant read even today. In Cybernetics, Wiener introduced a highly technical field with beautiful verses. Another way is to circulate the writings in informal channels. The emergence of internet provides an unprecedented opportunity for authors of humble origin to reach a wide range of audience.

References

Mehrling, Perry, (2005) Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance, John Wiley and Sons.