Science, since its early origins, was held in separate, often totally isolated schools. The intellectual wars amid the disparate schools of thought that raged for hundreds of years, have at the very least slowed scientific discovery and innovation; at worst, stopped advance dead.
Now a sea change; a seed change even. At last the intellectual turf guarding is falling sway to the interconnection of ideas.
Ponder this:
To construct a new theory today, a hypothesis must stand with an astronomical number of findings, with many contradicting ideas. The reason? For a scientific discipline to reach maximum evolvability the number of idea interconnections needs to be very rich. As the number of connections goes up, so the possibilities for new discoveries increase.
And now think of this if you will:
To comprehend how life on earth emerged, you have to understand the complexity and systems theories; understand phase transition and thermodynamics; comprehend computational and information theory; grasp quantum and molecular mechanics; interpret microgeology, electro-magnetism and radioisotope decay physics.
You have to interconnect and interrelated each of these discrete science to begin to see how life may have emerged. Neglect or miss any of these disciplines and the answer to life remains a mystery.
The lesson:
Many of the most significant scientific breakthroughs, now and in future, will be a consequence of the interconnection of diverse and often unrelated scientific discoveries and innovation.
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