[old time music]

So what we're gonna do

is put on the table, um,
a new modification.
We do need to use a scientific,
systematic approach,
but that modified new version I'm gonna call
scientific inquiry,
and it's the idea that
we not only have to go through
a systematic process,
but it's a process that
loops back on itself infinitely,
and this infinite process
of hypothesizing, testing,
observing, synthesizing,
but then takin' those results
and moving back to the point
of saying,
"What I've just learned
"is that A, I know more about what I was investigating,
"and I'm-B, I also know more
about what I don't know
"about what
I was investigating."
So we are always left-excellent
science is always bringing us
to a new juncture
of new possibilities
for investigation,
but also more information
about what we were after.
So it's that
two-pronged approach,
and standard scientific method
does not accommodate that
very well.
So let me give you
some examples. [clears throat]
Um, scientific method
is generally taught
in what I call
the-the cookbook approach.
You could buy this...
infinite wisdom cookbook, right,
so you could have
a very precise process
that was laid out and understood by all scientists,
and really the goal
of the scientist
was to simply and easily
and systematically
walk through that process
from beginning to end
and get some kind
of scientific result that
you could defend,
that you could publish,
that you could have
into the, uh-uh,
inserted into the, uh, lexicon of-of society and science,
and-and then
you'd be successful.
Uh, a good example
is Yellowstone,
where for many decades,
uh, centuries,
people thought that Yellowstone
and other places
where water was really hot,
heated by a volcano,
coming to the surface,
they thought those wires-
waters were sterile
and nothing lived in them.
So, um, scientific method
applied to a place
like Yellowstone would say, um,
the hypothesis is that
life does live there,
and you collect samples,
you do experiments,
and you end up with proving
that life is there.
Scientific method,
as it's taught,
it's a little deceiving,
because it makes you think
that well,
the end game would be
you've proven that life is there and you stop.
The reality is
that by continuing forward,
by taking that idea that life
lives in extreme environments
and then asking
the next question,
and that's what we're defining, in this case,
as scientific inquiry.
It's going back
with the results,
both positive
and negative results.
You know, good science
oftentimes yields information
that isn't what
you were looking for,
and it yields information
that has nothing to do
with your original hypothesis,
but that information
is very valuable.
And so scientific inquiry
is simply that idea of saying
the scientific method is valid,
but you need to understand
that scientific method
is used repetitively
in the cycle of inquiry,
and you go back
to these environments.
So by going back to Yellowstone,
we now know things
like microbes can reproduce
and, um, regenerate and recreate
their-their DNA composition,
um, uh, by using a certain
suite of chemicals,
and those chemicals now are used
fundamentally in human medicine
all the time.
The shortcoming of that
is it only captures one part
of how science
is actually accomplished.
Science requires going back
over and over again
to reevaluate
what was concluded,
to reevaluate
the final results,
but also to capture
what wasn't known before.
Good science usually brings
to the table
brand new ideas,
um, insights you wouldn't
have even asked before.
It tells us what we don't know.
It lets us explore things
in a way,
rigorously and thoughtfully,
that identifies for us,
"Well, we thought we knew
how something worked,
"but now we see
that that one thing
"has four or five
different manifestations
"that come off of it."
So the result
of excellent science
is to generate knowledge
of a topic,
but also to generate knowledge
of what we don't know
about this topic
and related topics.
So it's the concept
of consistent spiraling,
um, scientific inquiry
that brings us back to,
um, uh, a-a process
of investigating
scientific questions.
And let's go
to a-a spiraling vortex,
if you will, a tornado,
and you're going to look right
down the throat of the vortex
into infinity.
So you're gonna view
the-the process as a complete
dynamic swirling entity,
and I call that
scientific inquiry.
So let's just think a little bit
about how that might-
might-might play out.
So number one is that, um,
I-I'll use the word "initiation."
So, originally you have an idea.
Remember the thought of
analogy identifies anomaly.
In other words,
we use our experiential past
to compare to what we see
at the present,
and if what we see doesn't fit
with what we know from the past,
then it becomes anomalous,
it becomes different,
it becomes weird and it becomes of value to study.
Then we initiate
some thoughts about that
and try to come up
with a structured hypothesis,
a prediction, if you will,
of how what we see
might have come into being,
how it works
or how it might be manifested,
um, in the future.
Then once we have
that hypothesis
from the initiation process,
then I propose that, um,
a-and again, this is all based on how I see
really good science being done at the moment,
we'd want to have some kind
of pre-experimentation.
Right, we want to run
some simple logic experiments:
is the hypothesis,
is the context,
is the initiation of the idea,
is it valid
and do we have some
logic experiments we can run?
And the beautiful thing about
logic e-experiments
is that they cost nothing, right,
except a little bit of time
and a little bit
of concentrated effort.
And then once we do
the logic experiments,
that things fit and they-
they-they-they substantiate
themselves,
then we can move and maybe collect a little bit of data,
put together a suite
of analytical approaches,
uh, measurements,
observations, photographs,
use different simple tools
and try to get
some initial data.
And then from that initial
data observation-gathering,
logic experiment technique,
then you can start
to have some results
to let you test the hypothesis.
Well, if after initiation
and pre-experimentation
you're, um, uh, original ideas and hypotheses
still stand the test,
then I'd say that you can launch
into true-scale experimentation.
Now, why wait like this
and why not just do the
experiments at the beginning?
Well, experiments
that are done well
cost a lot of time
and money and effort,
and, um, money
and, uh, money's usually
the-the-the really big
limiting factor here, because
large-scale scientific
endeavor requires significant,
um, uh, financial, uh, support and-and input.
So you want to be very careful
once you-
once you get funding to do, uh, some kind of a-a serious study,
you don't want to,
uh, if you will,
fire those scientific bullets
until you're ready to do so.
You want to do
the experimentation
and-and you're willing to pay the money to do that,
and the time and the effort,
but you only want to do it
when you know it's the highest probability of good results.
So you f-finally then get
to the point
of actually doing
the experimentation.
Then you move to another
really important stage;
I call that
post-experimentation,
the idea that once you get the- the-the full data sets together,
you can synthesize them
and make some hypotheses
based on the initial data.
You-you do modeling,
which means that
you combine the data,
either logically
or in computers,
and, um, you make, um, uh, interpretations
and then predictions of what
the, uh, results will mean,
and then you-you substantiate
and test directly
the-the original hypothesis.
Now, that stage of synthesis
should never wait
until after the experiment
is over.
Actually, it always needs
to begin at some,
uh, moderate level, um,
during the experimentation,
so that you can always
have a-a cross-check
as you're running through
the experiments
to see if the data sets
are coherent,
if they're legitimate,
if they're reproducible,
and if they are actually
getting to a point
of answering the question.
And then, this is the, uh,
riding the giant tornado.
It's the-I call it reiterate
and reinitiate,
and that's where you take
the results of your work
to that point
and you go back
to the very beginning
and you courageously,
with vision and courage,
um, look at the idea
that you need to get back to the very beginning of your process,
and are the results of your work
A, fulfilling and testing
adequately your hypothesis,
and B, what are
the other avenues
and other uncertainties
and other unknowns
that the-the result
of this process has given you?
So the idea that you are-are-
are constantly spinning,
from initiation,
logic experimentation,
early pre-experimentation,
full experimentation,
synthesis and modeling throughout,
and then heavily at the end,
and then ending up with results that need to be reiterated,
you're constantly spiraling, spiraling forward.
You are tightening
the circle of the spiral,
but you're still moving towards,
uh, an infinite truth that's
in the middle of your process.
So let's call that, uh,
that super-tornado
of scientific endeavor, let's call that scientific inquiry,
and that's the kind of process
that evolutionary biology
is built upon.
That's the kind of process
that all geoscience
is built upon,
and this marriage
of evolutionary biology
within the context
of-of historical geology
is all built upon
this scientific inquiry approach.