The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) was mentioned in the comments of Mark’s post about John Barrow’s Templeton Prize. This is a new organization that is devoted to supporting innovative ideas at the frontiers of physics and cosmology. It is led by Max Tegmark of MIT and Anthony Aguirre of UCSC, two leading young cosmologists, backed up by an extremely prestigious Scientific Advisory Panel.
Sounds like a great idea, but some of us have questions, primarily concerning the source of funding for FQXi — currently the John Templeton Foundation. The Templeton Foundation is devoted to bringing together science and religion, which may or may not be your cup of tea. I’m already on the record as turning down money from them (see also this Business Week article) — and believe me, turning down money is not part of my usual repertoire. But Max and Anthony and the rest are good scientists, so we here at Cosmic Variance thought it would be good to hear the story behind FQXi in their own words. We invited Anthony to contribute a guest post about the goals and procedures of the new institute, and he was kind enough to agree. Feel free to ask questions and be politely skeptical (or for that matter enthusiastically supportive), and we can all learn more about what’s going on.
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I (Anthony Aguirre) have been invited by Sean to write a guest blog entry discussing an exciting new project that Max Tegmark and I have been leading: Foundational Questions in Physics and Cosmology (“FQX”). This program was publicly announced in October, and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) was formally launched as a legal entity in February, as was its first call for proposals. There is a plethora of information on FQXi at www.fqxi.org, but the kind invitation by Cosmic Variance provides a good opportunity to outline informally what FQXi is, why we think it is important, to address some reservations voiced in this forum, and to generate some discussion in the physics and cosmology community.
What is FQXi all about? Its stated mission is “To catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.” Less formally, the aim of FQXi is to allow researchers in physics, cosmology, and related fields who like to think about and do real research about really big, deep, foundational or even “ultimate” questions, to actually do so — when otherwise they could not. We boiled this type of research down into two defining terms: the research should be foundational (with potentially significant and broad implications for our understanding of the deep or “ultimate” nature of reality) and it should be unconventional (consisting of rigorous research which, because of its speculative, non-mainstream, or high-risk nature, would otherwise go unperformed due to lack of funding.) The particular types of research FQXi will support are detailed in the FQXi Charter and in the first call for proposals, which also features a handy (but by no means whatsoever comprehensive) list of example projects, and their likelihood of being suitable for FQXi funding. In addition to straightforward grants, FQXi will run various other programs — “mini”-grants, conferences, essay contests, a web forum, etc. — focused on the same sort of science.
Why is FQXi important? There are a number of foundational questions that are of deep interest to humanity at large — and are the (often hidden) passion of and inspiration for researchers — but which various financial and “social” pressures make it very difficult for researchers to actually pursue. National funding sources, for example, tend to shy aware from research that is high-risk/high- reward, or speculative, or very fundamental, or unconventional, or “too philosophical”, and instead support research using fairly proven methods with a high probability of advancing science along known routes. There is nothing wrong with this, and it creates a large amount of excellent science. But it leaves some really interesting questions on the sidelines. We go on at length about this in the FQXi Charter — but the researchers FQXi aims to support will know all too well what the problems are. Our goal is to fund the research into foundational questions in physics and cosmology that would otherwise go unfunded.
More money to support really exciting, interesting, and, yes, fun research seems like an unreservedly good thing. Nonetheless, a couple of significant reservations have been voiced to us, both by writers on this blog and others. These are:
1) Some feel research that is very speculative or “borderline philosophical” is just a waste of time and resources — if the research was worth doing, conventional agencies would fund it. We won’t accept this criticism from anyone who has worked on either time machines or the arrow of time (so Sean is out) :), but from others we acknowledge that they feel this way, we respectfully disagree, and we think that many of the giants of 20th century physics (Einstein, Bohr, Schroedinger, Pauli, etc.) would also disagree. Ultimately, those who feel this way are free not to participate in FQXi. We also note that we think it would by great if some private donors were also to support more conventional research in a way that complemented or supplemented federal funding (as they do in, e.g., the Sloan and Packard fellowships); that, however, is not the case here: the donation supporting FQXi is expressely for the purpose of supporting foundational research. Which brings us to…
2) The second major reservation concerns FQXi’s current sole source of funding: the John Templeton Foundation (JTF), an organization that espouses and supports the “constructive dialogue between science and religion.” It is understandable that some people may be suspicious of JTF’s involvement with FQXi, and in today’s political climate in which Intelligent Design and other movements seek to undermine science in order to promote a religious and political agenda, such suspicion is especially understandable. But it is as important as ever to also be open-minded and objective. The salient points, we think, regarding JTF and FQXi are:
- FQXi is a non-profit scientific grant-awarding organization fully independent from its donors (we are actively seeking other donors beyond JTF, see below) and operated in accordance with its Charter. Proposal funding is determined via a standard and rigorous peer-review process, and an expert panel appointed by FQXi. The structure of FQXi is such that donors — including JTF — have no control or influence over individual proposal selection or renewal. Specifically, scientific decisions are made (as enshrined in the FQXi corporate Bylaws) by the Scientific Directorate (Max & I), on the basis of advice from review panels and the Scientific Advisory Panel. The only condition of the JTF grant to FQXi is that FQXi’s grantmaking be consistent with the FQXi Charter, which, as stated previously, can be viewed in its entirity at fqxi.org.
- JTF’s stated interest in FQXi is captured in the FQXi Charter: the questions being tackled by researchers funded by FQXi intimately connect with and inform not just scientific fields, but also philosophy, theology and religious belief systems. Answers to these questions will have profound intellectual, practical, and spiritual implications for anyone with deep curiosity about the world’s true nature.
- While FQXi’s funding is currently all from JTF, we have been strongly encouraged by JTF to seek (and are actively working on finding) additional donors; furthermore, there is no guarantee of JTF funding beyond the first four years — though we certainly hope FQXi will go on long past the initial four-year phase.
- As for JTF benefiting “by association” with FQXi and the great research we hope that it will support, well, we feel that JTF has been extremely generous not just in giving a large sum of money to science, without strings attached, and with a great deal of support through the complex process of setting up FQXi as an independent institute of just the sort that Max & I wanted. If all this reflects well on JTF, I would submit that they deserve it.
We’ve tried hard to make FQXi’s operation and goals as transparent as possible, so those in the community can make informed decisions on whether they would like to participate in what we are hoping to do. We are very excited by the proposals that are coming in so far, and invite interested scientists to take a look at the call for proposals before it is too late (April 2). For those who are not actively researching foundational questions, we hope to have a very active public discussion and outreach program for both scientists and the interested public; we invite you to periodically check the FQXi website.
Thank you for this opportunity to discuss FQXi at Cosmic Variance.
Hmmm, to qualify for the grant you must already have five or more publications about the project you are applying the grant for.
🙁
Even Max Tegmark himself would barely qualify. He has a few articles on constraining neutrino masses etc. using anthropic reasoning.
Count Iblis:
An application will not be automatically rejected if the five listed papers are insufficiently connected to the proposal. But one of the criteria for success is “The qualifications of the principal investigator and team with respect to the proposed topic”, and this clearly plays into that criterion.
Anthony
Anthony,
My point is that there is no solution to this approach. Therefore, the implication is that you won’t be able to fund any projects that are truly addressing foundational questions, because all those who are not a) and b) will also not be c), in all likelihood, because, in this context, “doing something worthwhile” is, by definition, not recognized as such, or else they wouldn’t be in need of funding! It’s a catch 22, if I ever saw one.
One possibility that might enable you to avoid this is to focus on the proposed project more than the researcher. Many inside academia and/or the traditional research establishment are often labeled “crackpots” for seeking support of their unorthodox views. For instance, the signers of the “Open Letter to the Scientific Community,” which included hundreds of scientists from all over the world, including Halton Arp, the erstwhile student of Hubble, were so labeled by Sean himself, a sentiment with which the majority of other scientists, who are absolutely convinced of the efficacy of BB cosmology, concur completely.
Well, if these people are regarded as “crackpots” by the established majority and denied funding because their ideas, not their credentials, are rejected, yet it’s just these types of unorthodox ideas that you are interested in funding, then why bother with imposing criterion a) and b) at all? The only useful criterion is c), which cannot be determined, by definition.
However, focusing on the proposal, one could ask at least three important questions:
a) Is this idea a new approach to fundamentals? That is to say, does it truly break with the past in some fundamental respect?
b) Is it self-consistent? Does it contain any obvious logical contradictions?
c) Is it contradicted by any established observations? Here, one would have to be extremely careful, because many times contradictions with existing theory are misconstrued as contradictions with established facts.
Given these preliminary criteria, the researcher of any proposal that passes muster could then be granted an opportunity to advocate it in greater detail, which would quickly reveal whether or not the researcher was competent to carryout the project, and not just someone able to spout meaningless jargon, on the one hand, or someone unacquainted with reality, on the other.
Otherwise, I’m afraid your efforts are going to be vain, just like blowing into the wind.
Anthony, thanks for the clarification.
Had I known about this initiative a year ago, I would have written a few relevant articles. 🙂
Doug, I disagree. There are a lot of interesting projects in the field of the anthropic principle that you can’t finish on a rainy sunday afternoon and would require funding. See e.g. here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0303070
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0302071
Count Iblis,
I’m sure there are, but there are also some obscure innovators out there whose ideas are the ideas that FQXi and society need. However, the “peer review committee” process excludes them, mostly based on their amatuer status. History is replete with examples.
Doug,
With respect, it will be interesting to see what projects are actually funded. I think you may be rushing to judgement here without any evidence to back it up. It may be that the actual outcome backs up your concerns but it sounds like the defense attorney who is complaining about the severity of the sentence before the verdict has even been read.
Like any other field, music, art, literature, politics, it is always more of a challenge if you are an ‘outsider’. There is some value in “paying your dues” in a particular field and that needs to be respected. That is not to say some brilliant/charismatic/creative newcomer can’t blow the doors off but I philosophically agree that those who do this as a profession every day should have that taken into account and appropriately weighted. And I say this as a non-practicing scientist like yourself.
Like I said. The jury is still out. Let’s see what they come back with. They’ll be plenty of time for Monday morning quarterbacking later on.
Cheers,
Elliot
In the early 1990’s, when people were thinking about closed timelike curves in GR, Kip Thorne was told by the NSF that he wasn’t allowed to use any of his grant money to support research on “time travel.” (He mentions this in the acknowledgements section of one of his review articles from the time.) That’s the kind of situation where I imagine something like FQXi might be useful.
It sounds like a good idea, but (as Anthony seems to agree) I’d prefer a more diverse funding stream.
Layman, just thinking out loud.
So comparative associations between Kip’s interest in Time Travel, and atheistic valuation, would be considered “on par?”
That while Kip might have been granted under this program, Sean, yours would be in question.
So from that perspective, the example sighted of atheism might not have been an “appropriate example of the policies” on which to issue a grant under that program?
Hmmm….I would hate to think of the repercussions then, if other agendas were allowed while some wouldn’t, the example by Sean, would then seem important?
How do you remain clear in the pursuate of, if such philosophical flavours are injected?
I struggle.
Would I have to abandon “such beliefs,” atheistic or not, if working the principals of science’s questions in regards to reality?
While this organization might be clear then, how might it have moved into the territories of the Templeton Fund without loosing it’s credibility . Is this what can happen?
So Sean,
after you win the WSOP, you’ll donate of course 🙂
Sean: Why Cosmologists Are Atheists essay — a fairly straightforward defense of atheistic materialism in the context of modern physics and cosmology-
Because atheist determination is a “philosophical endeaver” the clear dividing line between scientific pursuate and bias injected, can become “the denigration of the values,” would be as close to those less desired in any association sought by the templeton group?
While I have no association, I wanted to see in what light this comparison might have issued in a public statement, as to the polices with which care and judgement is issuing from the standards being set by Cosmic Variance.
KC Coles introduction to responsibility in journalism is a wonderful addition here, and I am listening.
Words Matter
Anthony,
Perhaps the best response to Doug’s cogent posts is to ask whether FQXi would have supported Einstein in 1904.
The answer appears to be “no”. He didn’t have 5 relevant publications (he may have had precisely zero). He wasn’t even employed as a physicist. Were he able to gather any recommendations, they would not have been glowing.
While I applaud your effort, it’s somewhat disturbing to realize that you would not have supported the greatest known exemplar of breakthrough physics.
I can’t shake the feeling that among the tens of thousands of nonacademically employed physics Ph.D.s there’s at least one with a breakthrough idea. You would expect such a person to be a “free spirit” — rebellious, creative but lazy, undisciplined, and not held in particularly high esteem by former professors (i.e. very Einstein-like). Such a person would of course be unlikely to secure an academic post. And, finding no leisurely employment (this being much harder to come by today than in 1904), such a person’s contributions to physics would be lost.
Perhaps the next iteration of FQXi’s proposal evaluation method could be modified to increase the likelihood of funding such an out-of-the-box person.
Belizean (and Doug),
While I don’t think I agree that Einstein was lazy and undisciplined, I do agree that it would be great if there were a way to a) identify and b) support thinkers that are (primarily by choice) not part of the research establishment. I think there are modern (perhaps sub-Einstein) examples. As I posted before, the indentification part is a real challenge. But for FQXi, part b) is also tough because what is really needed is multi-year, full-time support and our current budget would not provide that for many people. We are definitely trying to think of creative ways to address both issues, however, so hopefully FQXi can do something stronger in this direction in the future.
Anthony
I think there was a guest post in this blog (or maybe Sean’s old blog) a while back by Lee Smolin talking about an essay he wrote about issues in the community with non-mainstream ideas. The background was loop quantum gravity of course, but the essay was more broad. Perhaps someone can find the reference?
Maybe this one?
A foundational perspective insinuated perhaps? 🙂
The case for background independence
Lee Smolin:
Anthony wrote:
The challenge to identify “thinkers” in the early days of Einstein didn’t really need to be so much of an explicit task then, because the “crackpots” in those days (and to some extent, even today) were not able to converse in the lingua franca of the scholarly world. Describing physical concepts in the language of complex mathematics was relatively new then, and those who simply expounded their ideas in essays only were thereby almost automatically excluded from publication.
Nevertheless, Einstein’s ideas were initially too radical for some publications, indicating some editors judged his thinking not acceptable; not that he wasn’t actually a “thinker,” but that he wasn’t an appropriate thinker. Aye, there’s the rub. A more modern example might be Peter Lynds.
Peter’s ideas have been rejected by many editors, but “I got to a point in my life where I was asking deeper and deeper questions,” he says. “If you want to understand reality, you have to get into physics. And if you’re really interested in physics, you have to ask really big questions.” This reminds me of Einstein who said something like he wasn’t any smarter than anyone else, he just spent more time thinking about foundational questions than anyone else did.
But obviously you wouldn’t be able to tell this by just reading a CV!. If you haven’t already read it, Josh McHugh’s article on Lynds, “Time’s Up Einstein,” in Wired Magazine, is right to the point: the search for a revolutionary approach to foundational questions automatically entails a lonely quest only one obsessed to the point of insanity is likely to be willing to endure. Certainly, it’s not likely that the casual life of the career mangaged, wine tasting, exotic cheese aficianado of the established physics community is going to suddenly find a revolutionary insight into the foundations of physics, as soon as he/she can fit some time into his/her busy social/professional calandar to think about it (but what a CV it makes!).
It might take only one, correct, probably deceptively simple, idea about the nature of space and time to revolutionize our understanding of the structure of the physical universe. Certainly, while some of those most determined in searching for that idea could use a little help, there not likely to get it, if they are asked to prove that they are thinkers first, by producing an impressive CV.
It seems to me, that the way to identify a “thinker” is to ask him/her what it is he/she is thinking about, and how much time he/she spends thinking about it, and what their conclusions are. The depth and commitment of his/her thinking about foundational questions in physics and cosmology can be reflected in a CV, but not necessarily so. However, evidence of the required dedication, and even some measure of significant progress, can be found, if the individual is given the opportunity to demonstrate his/her thinking in front of those who care. In my opinion, that is what you should be funding. Fund the opportunity for a shot at the basket, which is based on evidence that the shooter takes the task seriously, whatever form that evidence might take. In a word say:
“Show me the thinking!”
Anthony wrote:
I disagree. A shot at the basket is all you really need to provide. If the shooter can show that he/she can hit the basket consistently, it doesn’t mean that he/she can win the game for the team all by him/herself. We just need to find the right clue that will lead us to the full answer to a given foundational question, Anthony, not the full Monte.
The legal and tax aspect of the grant award is more tricky, but not impossible to work. The government should be asked to help, given the billion dollar funds being expended in search of these crucial answers, a clue to which someone like peter, dwelling in a cave somewhere in New Zealand, may be holding in his crazed cranium.
Doug,
The problem with your “some me the thinking” approach is that it would easily exhaust FQXi’s resources allocated for applicant evaluation. Imagine how long it would take to understand the thinking of, say, a thousand applicants, many of whom are subtle crackpots.
You will always need a crude filter to lessen the number of applicants. While I think that FQXi’s current filter — which requires, among other things, that applicants have published at least 5 relevant papers — is a bit too stringent (in that it would have filtered out Einstein), I recognize the need for a crude filter of some sort.
Doug,
It is a catch 22: how to identify a researcher capable of good foundational research, before they’ve done it? In my opinion, the best way is the traditional path of looking at what someone has done — check their CV, read their proposal, skim through a few of their papers. Other screening techniques just wouldn’t be efficient. The potential for doing something really new and interesting is going to be visible in their history, which may well be a colorful one.
Working on foundational questions is a huge career gamble for a young physicist. But that risk with their time (the most valuable personal commodity) is one they must choose to take or not. Wether to fund them… that’s FQXi’s risk. That risk may not be as great, but that’s not a reason to denigrate the effort, even if the search for researchers to fund is necessarily a bit conventional. Personally, I’m thrilled this organization has come into being at all, and expect some really cool work to come as a result — whether they fund my proposal or not. 😉
(Sometimes I read some of the comments, and just can’t help myself …)
That’s right; you tell those effete, overpaid, spoiled, elitist “thinkers”! Real progress can only be made by a socially maladjusted, misunderstood, semi-crazed, seemingly underqualified “genius”, who is prepared to think outside the box and not follow the mainstream path that the Man has laid down.
Definitely the way to move forward is just to ask people what they’re thinking about and how much time they spend thinking about it. For example, a “professional” physicist, once you get the wine and cheese out of the way, can only spend a limited time thinking about the subject that a decade of postgraduate training prepared them for. But if you interview someone who says
“While I am not formally trained, I have figured out how Einstein was wrong and how a completely different way of thinking will revolutionize physics. I spend 20 hours a day thinking about this, curled up in my bedroom at my Mum’s house, and have detailed notes, scrawled in my own feces on the bedroom wall.”
then get your chequebook out – you’ve found a winner!
LOL! Mark 🙂
Garrett wrote:
I’m not so sure. All the CV of young applicants is likely to tell you is that they can a) reason, b) calculate, c) choose a topics of interest to working physicists. Evidence of originality, inventiveness, and productively unconventional thinking usually isn’t obvious during the early stages of one’s career. That’s because one is normally attempting to establish one’s credibility then. So one’s early papers tend to be maximally conventional.
Properties a), b), and c) are almost as well evinced by the applicants having earned a doctorate.
I’d like to see a screening process that, had it been in place in, say, 1980, would have funded an unpublished Ph.D. who proposed, for example, to “generalize the Church-Turing hypothesis — which assumes classical physics — to the quantum case”.
This particular proposal would not have been funded by any known physics funding source in 1980. The CV of the guy who actually carried this out merely showed him to be a solid physicist. He had no relevant publications this area, because no one did. So FQXi, had it existed, would almost certainly not have funded him. That’s disturbing. Especially since the birth of quantum information theory is arguably physics’ greatest advance over the last 25 years.
Belizean,
Good point. For someone without a track record… you’d have to look at their school performance, and their proposal.
Mark’s comment was priceless. I’m still laughing at the pictures he created in my mind. He is a talented writer. However, it’s not the social extremes at either end that are at issue here, even though I must admit that I left myself open for that sharp wit of his. The issue at this level is between the amateur and the professional, not between the cave dweller and the sophisticated urbanite.
The amateur is not going to have an impressive CV. He’s not trained enough to write like the professional, and even if he were, he wouldn’t be able to get his (let’s pretend the pronoun is gender neutral) unconventional ideas published without professional credentials, even on the preprint archive for crying out loud, where access is denied even to certain individuals with credentials, precisely because their ideas are unconventional.
The point is that, historically, the amateur many times is the one who comes up with the breakthrough idea, but he almost never is a “researcher,” or practitioner of “normal science.” David Gross hit the nail on the head when he told that interviewer on PBS:
New ideas like this are usually simple, often just a new way of looking at fundamental assumptions, and, as such, they are just as much within the purview of the amateur as they are the professional, only the amateur sometimes doesn’t know any better, which turns out to be a great advantage many times.
Bottom line: we need to be careful not to exclude the amateur, if what we are looking for is a “totally new idea” that “has to do with the nature of space and time.”
The main problem with amateur’s is they lack the know-how to prove themselves wrong before bothering others.
I agree, but why then not change the way theoretical physics is practised? I mean, there are far more theoretical physicists than there are amateur physicists…
Doug,
I hope that you’re only considering reasonably qualified amateurs. Slogging through a gigantic slush pile of proposals from anyone who wants to play physicist is a task that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
The minimum qualification in my view should be a doctorate in physics. Unlike FQXi’s current criteria, this would not have disqualified the Einstein of 1904.
[I’m well acquainted with how clueless some of these “amateur physicists” can be. My graduate advisor was a famous physicist who appeared on TV from time to time. Crackpots would actually come to his office. He would politely steer them to my office. I’d have to listen to their nonsense for a few minutes, then tell them whatever it took to get rid of them. A tough job. Some of these people were literally insane.]