What are ‘science demons’ and why are they useful for knowledge

They were born in the minds of great thinkers and live on in scientific and philosophical literature.

They helped make what was once fantasy a reality and continue to motivate the search for what has not yet been found.

Some have even infiltrated everyday life and show no signs of wanting to leave.

These are the demons of science, creatures that occupy the space of laws, theories or concepts that we still cannot understand.

They are a very particular type of thought experiment and “part of scientific language”, Mexican-American physicist Jimena Canales, author of the book “Endemoniados: una historia sombría de los demonios en la ciencia” (“Demoniacs: A Dark History of Demons in Science”).

“I’m a historian of science and I loved seeing how scientists used that word, because it’s paradoxical since we generally think that scientists are secular and not superstitious.”

However, these demons are more similar to the demon or daimón of Ancient Greece than to those evil entities that come to mind when we hear that word.

As the priestess Diotima explains to the young philosopher Socrates in “Plato’s Symposium,” they inhabit that intermediate place between gods and men, and between wisdom and ignorance.

“In science they are useful because they know how to get around the laws of nature and how to get things we can’t do,” says Canales.

“They are generally similar to us, but with exaggerated characteristics: they are a little more skilled or bigger, or smaller or faster or wiser. They are not necessarily evil, but they can unbalance power; they can be useful, although sometimes too malicious.”

“That’s why they’re ideal for science and technology, because it’s about developing, going further.”

And precisely these demons motivated the author to “go further”: they showed that, in telling the story of science, the world of imagination should never be left aside.

“I realized that you can tell the story of the development of science and technology over the last 400 years by searching for these creatures, because they do some things that fascinate us and others that worry us.”

But what the hell is she talking about?

The demon of virtual reality

The first one Canales describes is Descartes’ demon, and she warns, “He wasn’t always called a demon. At first he was an evil genius,” something that happens to many of these creatures. It is other scientists who give them that name.

In the 17th century, French philosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes read Don Quixote — the story of the hero who could not distinguish reality from fantasy — and asked himself: what would happen if “some evil genius with the most extreme power and cunning used all your strength to deceive me?”

His demon had the ability to create a completely illusory yet totally convincing artificial world.

The idea that everything he thought was real wasn’t reality was terrifying.

“Descartes began to think about the few things this demon could not touch,” says Canales.

“Things like 2+3=5, or that a circle is a circle drawn around a certain point, or that a triangle is made up of three straight lines at three angles.”

“These are very simple things, but they became the basis of modern science, of logic, and were inspired by the fear of that demon.”

There was also another source of certainty that the mighty genie could not erode: however deceptive the hallucination, if he was the one thinking it, it existed.

Here then is the famous phrase that appeared in “Meditations on First Philosophy”, from 1641: “Cogito ergo sum”.

“Virtual reality technologies are still developed in reference to Descartes’ demon”, says the historian of science.

“We want to imitate reality, but we are also afraid of getting confused. On the other hand, fake news has shown us how others can deceive us, so we continue to develop methods of critical thinking and pure rationality.”

“This demon fascinates me because he appears at the beginning of modern science and is still alive.”

the most famous demon

Maxwell’s demon looks less scary.

However, Canales notes, “it is more dangerous than Descartes’, as it can act directly on the natural world and does not need to deceive anyone.”

And despite being an atomic size, its mark on the world is huge.

“Most of the electronic devices around us use Maxwell’s demon science, and scientists and labs around the world continue to investigate and try to build better versions of it,” says Canales.

Conceived by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, the devil was—and still is—very important to physics.

“Statistical laws allow for exceptions, so to make sense of the statistical nature of the laws of thermodynamics, a demon was invoked,” explains Canales.

Maxwell initially described him as “a very observant being”.

Later, when the mathematician William Thomson had already given them the name by which he is known, Maxwell wrote that they were “very small but living beings, incapable of working, but capable of opening and closing valves that move without friction or inertia”.

In doing so, the little devil separates the hotter, faster molecules from the cooler, slower ones… violating nothing less than the second law of thermodynamics.

For some, the idea raised the possibility of creating a perpetual motion machine or even reversing the direction of time.

In practice, Maxwell’s research has led to improvements in the efficiency of motors and refrigerators.

Furthermore, his demon proved that no matter how low the odds of something happening, there are always surprises as the rarest events happen from time to time.

The demon of infinite knowledge

In 1773, French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace, who worked during the French Revolution, developed statistical science, created his own demon.

He envisioned a mysterious entity “that knew where all the atoms in the Universe are and what the laws of motion are,” says Canales.

“This intelligence could know which is the future and which is the past. It could know everything.”

For Laplace, the Universe was stable and predictable, so if all the necessary data were available, mathematical analysis could help us understand it.

This faith in scientific determinism helped inspire the creation of machines that could perform the kinds of calculations he attributed to his demon.

Charles Babbage cited Laplace when he created one of the first computers.

And in 1842, British mathematician Ada Lovelace, who worked with Babbage and was familiar with Laplace’s work, was possibly the first to speculate whether computer programs could be considered thinking beings, a debate that continues 180 years later.

But why would that be attributed to a demon?

“The term ‘Laplace’s demon’ was applied in the 1920s because, like other demons, it was an idea that obsessed scientists.”

“And when quantum mechanics started, perfect determinism was questioned. Scientists declared, ‘This doesn’t really exist, it’s a demon.'”

“He’s a figure we’re chasing and trying to build, building more and more powerful computers, but we’re never going to realize that dream of knowing everything and being able to predict the future perfectly determined by initial conditions.”

Still, we keep trying.

The computer triumvirate

“Your computer, for example, in a sense was developed motivated by the pursuit of these three demons,” says Canales, explaining:

• Laplace’s demon, in terms of being a machine for accumulating and processing data
• Descartes’ demon, because it’s also an entertainment and virtual reality machine
• And your microprocessors let you get the job done more efficiently, like Maxwell’s devil.

Darwin’s and Einstein’s

Before writing “The Origin of Species”, Charles Darwin envisioned “a being infinitely more cunning than man” who could produce a new race of humans, just as we are able to create sheep whose wool has the qualities we prefer for our sweaters.

“That was one of the fascinating questions that drove his research,” says Canales.

The strange being ended up disappearing and in the final version of his work what appears is the theory of natural selection, without miraculous causes or supernatural forces.

However, it resurrected in the 1960s, under the name “Darwinian demon”, when biologists wanted to explore what would happen if there were no biological constraints on evolution, spurring research to better understand the theory of evolution.

And did Albert Einstein have a demon?

“Scientists and a very important biographer of Einstein say that his demon was quantum mechanics”, replies the physicist.

“According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But since he introduced the idea, another demon has started to haunt scientists: anything that can travel faster than the speed of light. .”

This would completely change our way of understanding the Universe.

“These demons are important because they are still alive and have had such a long life because they motivate us to carry out an ongoing search.”

“In science it’s very, very, very difficult to verify that something doesn’t exist, because in the future that something may appear.”

And this implies that any theory is fragile, as demonstrated by the famous case of the black swans, which until the end of the 17th century served as an expression to denote something impossible, as it was believed that they did not exist, as European scientists had never seen one. “

“We were able to prove that, for example, the Abominable Snowman doesn’t exist. But there are these little thorns that we haven’t proven yet and are so fascinating in their abilities – Maxwell’s demon can generate profit without loss – that we keep looking for them , mainly because in certain cases they are found, and there are many things that show us that we are about to do so.”

“What is fundamental about the demons of science,” writes Canales in his book, “is how they become real, that is, how our imagination drives discovery and how we can use them to change the world.”