364 | Stuart Firestein on How Science Relies on Ignorance and Failure
About this episode
Stuart Firestein discusses how science is fundamentally driven by ignorance and failure, emphasizing the importance of understanding these aspects in scientific research.
One of the paradoxes of science is that it seeks objectively true understanding of the world, but its methodology is driven by ignorance, failure, and uncertainty. Some phenomena we understand pretty well, but interesting research happens at the boundary of what we do and don't know. And there is no foolproof algorithm for moving in the right direction; we need to make conjectures and test them against the world. Biologist Stuart Firestein has been advocating for a better public understanding of the true methods of science, most recently in his new book It Could Be Otherwise: Science In the Age of Uncertainty . Stop piecing your software together. Go to Odoo.com/mindscape to learn more. #ad Mindscape listeners can try StatsKey Pro free for one month with code MINDSCAPE . After that, it's $4.99 per month unless canceled. #ad Blog post with transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/08/17/364-stuart-firestein-on-how-science-relies-on-ignorance-and-failure/ Support Mindscape on Patreon (opens in new tab) . Stuart Firestein received his Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently Professor of Neuroscience at in the Department of…
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