The 3 ‘demons’ that haunted legendary scientists, with Jimena Canales
Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ►►    / bigthink  
Up next ►► Why It's So Hard for Scientists to Believe in God?    • Why It's So Hard for Scientists to Be...  

If one opens any dictionary and you go to the entry of demon, one of the entries refers to the scientific demons. Descartes' demons, Laplace's demon, Maxwell's demon, they're not considered to be real when they're first mentioned, they're considered to be possibly real.

They're trying to find a hole in theories. What they are, in the most literal sense, are little creatures that are concocted by scientists. When they're confronted with something that they don't really understand, these creatures that we have always thought of as little entities that can bend or break the laws of nature continue to be very useful and very common ways of thinking in advancing our knowledge and understanding of the natural world.

These demons share similar characteristics to those other demons in the past, like Beelzebub and Lucifer. They can break the laws of nature, they're not necessarily evil, but they create power imbalances. They can be helpful or they can be mischievous to science.

Read the video transcript: https://bigthink.com/series/the-big-t...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Jimena Canales:
Jimena Canales is an expert in 19th and 20th century history of the physical sciences, working for a better understanding of science and technology in relation to the arts and humanities.She received an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in the History of Science and a BSc in Engineering Physics from the Tecnológico de Monterrey. Her first book, A Tenth of a Second: A History explored the relation between science and history as one of the central intellectual problems of modern times. Her widely-acclaimed second book, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time has been translated in Chinese, Greek, Spanish and excerpted in other languages. Her third book Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science, covering four-centuries of scientific discovery, is now available.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more of our stories on scientific demons and scientific theories:
Einstein’s demon-haunted quantum world
►► https://bigthink.com/13-8/einstein-sp...
Has science made religion useless?
►► https://bigthink.com/thinking/has-sci...
Study: Viewing religion, science as incompatible is uniquely American
►► https://bigthink.com/thinking/science...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Big Think | Smarter Faster™
► Big Think
The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century.
► Big Think+
Make your business smarter, faster: https://bigthink.com/plus/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Want more Big Think?
► Daily editorial features: https://bigthink.com/popular/
► Get the best of Big Think right to your inbox: https://bigthink.com/st/newsletter
► Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook
► Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instagram
► Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter