Doug Erwin has been a part of SFI since the late 1990s, at various times a visiting scholar, a member of the external faculty, chair of the Science Steering Committee, a part-time resident professor, and now (since July 1, 2011) chair of the faculty. The Update sat down with Doug recently to discuss his thoughts, and his plans for SFI science, during his two-year appointment.
Update: You’ve been Faculty Chair for a few months now, and you are splitting your time between Santa Fe and your role as a senior scientist and curator of paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. How are you balancing what looks like two full-time positions?
Doug Erwin: Well, it’s a challenge. When we first started talking about this, there was some disagreement on whether or not this could work, but Jerry convinced me I could do this and still keep my position at the Smithsonian. There are times when I have to put one or the other role first to focus on something I’m doing. But I can never be in one or the other role for long. The big challenge right now is that I’ve been trying to finish up a book. Once that’s out of the way I think it will be easier. But I am not planning to give up my research, so I will be half-time at SFI for the full two years.
Update: What originally brought you to SFI?
Doug: When I read Brian Arthur’s book on increasing returns [Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1994] it really resonated with the work I was doing in paleontology and how evolutionary innovation happens in biological systems. I think economics and evolution are about the same thing: the distribution of scarce resources by intelligent agents. Economics and evolution are, in fact, descended from the same eld. Thomas Malthus gave his ideas to Charles Darwin. So there is a long intellectual link between the two. The hard problem is whether you can move beyond metaphor and find some underlying traction. I think you can. In the last couple of years I have been using ideas from economics a lot more, such as positive feedbacks, and applying them to issues of evolutionary innovation. And I finding connections. Jennifer Dunne and I have done some research on food webs in the paleontological record. Doyne Farmer and I, over lunch and tea, have worked out an idea to study the evolutionary patterns of hedge funds. So the more time I spend at SFI, the more ideas I nd to work on. I think that’s the experience of everyone here.
Update: How has the Institute changed?
Doug: The first thing that comes to mind is the emphasis on data. When I got here, SFI was becoming more involved with empirical datasets. It had been almost purely theoretical. With the data revolution in science, we are all swimming in data, to the point where we almost need to go back the other direction and develop the theory with which to understand the data. In many fields, such as high-energy physics and astronomy, they actually throw away more data than they use. Confronted with that problem, there are, I think, two paths. You can say, well, all we can do is describe the patterns we see. The other is to say, well, we need theory to know what we are looking for in the data.
Another shift I have seen at SFI is that the [Omidyar Fellowship] has continued to grow and to become a central activity. That is today a major strength of SFI. Also, and I’m not sure if this is a positive or a negative, there are far fewer workshops than there were 10 or 15 years ago. There is a tendency now toward smaller and shorter-duration working groups. Finally, a trend that I think is not unique to SFI but is part of a broader trend within the sciences is that there are fewer crazy ideas. That reflects, I think, a maturing of SFI. SFI has always been good at, and maybe needs to be better at, allowing people the freedom to challenge assumptions and ask out-of-the-box questions. The sort of thing that Eric Smith has been doing in his work with Harold Morowitz on the origins of life. We need to make sure we have a place for people to do that. I’m really glad to see that Simon DeDeo has started up the Friday-afternoon “Reckless Ideas” discussions.
Update: How is SFI science doing?
Doug: I think we’re doing well, overall. The challenge we have is making sure that we’re asking broad enough questions. That’s one of my responsibilities: challenging people to ask questions they couldn’t ask if they were at a university or federal institution, where creative thinkers are selected out. For example, should we be studying human migration patterns in one area of the world during a particular time period? My answer is no. There are dozens of scientists around the world probably asking that same question. But if we ask what do human migration patterns in many parts of the world at many different time periods have in common, and what demographic and social conditions drove those migrations, and what do those similarities and differences tell us about the human species, that is a better question for SFI.
One thing I would like to see more of is a focus on themes that cross-cut the research here, themes like robustness, networks, and (one I hope will develop) resilience. We’ve learned after 9/11 and after the financial crisis that many of our complex systems are not now resilient, and we can do a lot better. I think we can learn a lot about biodiversity and other important issues through a better understanding of resilience. So a theme like that is both broadly important to SFI and also has a lot of inherent societal value, and so it is a perfect fit for SFI. We’re talking about hosting theme weeks starting next year in which we invite outside experts and encourage many members of the external faculty to come, and we essentially devote an entire week to a single theme. Out of that we hope will come new initiatives and workshops and working groups that lead to interesting new collaborations.
Update: In your view, what is SFI’s special role in the world?
Doug: It’s creating the space and encouraging people to ask questions across disciplines, and to continue to broaden those questions. In the last couple of years we’ve seen studies of the evolution of cultures and the laws of history. We’ve continued to make inroads into the social sciences while solidifying our foundations in physics and mathematics and biology.
One thing I’ve been asking myself is if people like Doyne Farmer or Brian Arthur were 25 again, would they be able to do at SFI what they did in the 1980s. There are lots of transdisciplinary research centers around the world these days, but not everybody is good at picking out and nurturing these types of thinkers. We’ve done pretty well for the last 27 years, but it’s getting harder and harder to do that. We should make sure this is a safe place to think in an unorthodox way, and encourage that revolutionary spirit.