The Role of Surprise in Scientific Innovation and Thought

It is a feature of many human activities - sports, cooking, music, interpersonal relations - that being able to do them well doesn't necessarily mean you can accurately describe how to do them well. Science is no different. Many successful scientists are not very good at explaining what goes into successful scientific practice. To understand that, it's necessary to study science in a scientific fashion. What kinds of scientists, in what kinds of collaborations, using what kinds of techniques, do well? I talk with James Evans, an expert on collective intelligence and the construction of knowledge, about how science really works.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/10/304-james-evans-on-innovation-consolidation-and-the-science-of-science/

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James Evans received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. He is currently the Max Palevsky Professor of History and Civilizations, Director of Knowledge Lab, and Faculty Director of Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago; External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute; External Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna; and Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google.

• Knowledge Lab web site
• University of Chicago web page
• Google scholar publications