Generative science
<p>I&#8217;m thinking about writing another book.  I won&#8217;t disclose the title or topic yet, but there&#8217;s a bit of research for it I think can be usefully crowdsourced, and may also give a clue about the book for those of you interested.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve written before about the difference between descriptive and generative theories.  To recap and simplify, a descriptive theory accounts for what is; a generative theory finds causal regularities beneath a descriptive account and predicts consequences not yet observed.</p>
<p>Now I want to zero in on a parallel difference among entire <em>sciences</em>. Some scientific fields &#8211; like, say, evolutionary biology &#8211; are tremendously productive of models and insights that can be applied elsewhere.  On the other hand, some other sciences &#8211; like, say, astronomy &#8211; seldom export ideas or models.</p>
<p>Note that while it is appropriate to think of sciences that export lots of ideas as &#8216;generative&#8217;, the class of sciences that don&#8217;t are not merely descriptive. Astronomy, for example, has lots of generative theory inside it; astrophysics, for example makes predictions about stellar spectra and elemental abundances.  But astronomy as a whole is not generative because none of its theory really informs anything <em>outside</em> astronomy.</p>
<p>So I&#8217;m going to start with a (non-exhaustive) list of scientific fields, indicating roughly how generative I think they are and what if anything they export.  I invite additions and corrections from my readers.</p>
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<p>Evolutionary biology &#8211; <em>extremely</em> generative. Principal exports: evolution by selective pressure on random variation, adaptive radiation, genetic drift, mutation, and many others.</p>
<p>Mathematics &#8211; not an empirical science but extremely generative nevertheless.  All kinds of abstract mathematical models end up suggesting applied-math models of the real world with interesting testable consequences.</p>
<p>Economics &#8211; highly generative.  Principal exports: supply/demand equilibria, satisfaction under constraint, implicit knowledge, deadweight losses, search costs, coordination overhead, rational ignorance.</p>
<p>Linguistics &#8211; not very generative at all except for a small corner near psycholinguistics that exports some provocations about the relationship between thought and representation.</p>
<p>Physics &#8211; highly generative. Principal exports: conservation laws, principles of least action, entropy, state spaces, symmetry and symmetry-breaking, energy levels.</p>
<p>Astronomy &#8211; gorgeous, but almost completely non-generative. </p>
<p>Geology, zoology, agronomy &#8211; non-generative</p>
<p>Additions?  Corrections?</p>
