Introducing Serendipity's Cousins - Leucippity/Aristopity - Validation/Rejection of a Pre-existing Significant Theoretical Insight

This feature is inspired by Professor Sheldon L. Glashow who coined the term Leucippity to describe a hypothesis/prediction that precedes the evidence required for its acceptance as a proper scientific theory.  A classic example of leucippity is Albert Einstein's 1915 prediction of gravitational waves which waited a full century before being experimentally observed in 2015.

In contrast to serendipity which refers to the occurrence of surprising & valuable discoveries that were not actually sought; leucippity refers to the deliberate, often slow, pursuit of experimental validation of an existing theoretical insight. 

The term leucippity is coined in honour of the ancient philosopher Leucippus (5th century BCE) who with his disciple Democritus is credited for founding Greek Atomism that all matter is composed of small indivisible particles which they called 'atoms'.  It took over two thousand years for their idea to become universally accepted!

Examples of leucippity are found in all fields of scientific endeavour - in physical sciences, medicine, geology, mathematics etc. Glashow (1, 2) gives some outstanding examples where the validation of a theory only came after a significant delay.  

The Slide lists a selection of leucippitous discoveries in physical sciences that were awarded a Nobel Prize:   

Leucippity mostly comes in play when a paradigm shift happens in a field of study; new ideas replace old explanations used to make sense of empirical evidence, and in turn generate a host of new predictions.  Such predictions await further empirical confirmation before the new ideas can be accepted as actual real theories (The Scientific Method). Einstein's Theories of Relativity (1905 & 1915) and Quantum Theory (1925) are two classic examples where the new theories explained a host of difficult-to-understand observations of preceding decades but the underlying assumptions in the theories were novel to the extent that few scientists were ready to accept these as real theories.  Einstein was not awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for his theories of relativity but for his explanation of photoelectric effect - such was the reservations in the scientific community for his 'wild' ideas. Same is true for Quantum Theory.  Thankfully both theories made plentiful predictions and all predictions have been verified experimentally over the past 100 years.  The number of Nobel Prizes awarded for experimental work related to these theories is the proof that these are valid real theories with far-reaching significance for mankind's efforts to understand the laws that govern how nature works - and of course providing very valuable benefits to our every day life.  

We reserve the term leucippity for the verification of ideas/hypotheses that are of significant importance and might have waited for a reasonable time for it. Such ideas are deemed to be important and may substantially influence the progress/development of the field even while the idea is awaiting validation.  If a hypothesis is eventually proved to be invalid then it is likely that it would have done much harm to the scientific progress - particularly if the hypothesis was due to a scientist/philosopher of outstanding reputation. With these considerations, I introduce the word aristopity to describe such a phenomenon.

I have chosen the word aristopity to represent Aristotle (384-322 BCE).  Aristotle was a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, known for inventing formal logic and developing a comprehensive system of thought that influenced virtually every field, including ethics, politics, biology, natural philosophy (physics) and arts, essentially laying the groundwork for Western science and philosophy with his emphasis on observation and logical reasoning. 

However, Aristotle did not seek experimental verification of what his theories predicted - his theories were what observations and common sense supported.  The ideas of scientific method and tools (microscopes, telescopes etc.) came much later.  Aristotle's stature was such that his ideas went unchallenged for almost 2000 years and were accepted as eternal truth - to question them could result in getting burned at stake. It is not difficult to appreciate what harm such blind following to his erroneous theories might have done to the development of scientific knowledge. The next two slides list some of Aristotle's scientific ideas that have been discredited.

 

For aristopity, an erroneous hypothesis must survive over a long-enough period of time to affect thinking of a significant number of scientists.  This can be seriously harmful for proper development of scientific ideas. One indeed encounters many aristopitous practices that lasted a long time - for example, astrology, alchemy, phlogiston, Einstein's cosmological constant, Ptolemy's Almagest, Galen's Humourism, Lysenkoism, Phrenology, Miasma Theory and many more.

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