The 2010s were a “mirum decennium” for physics. In 1916, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves which was confirmed in February (Einstein, 1916) 2016 (Abbott & al., 2016). In 1964, Englert, Brout and Higgs proposed a mechanism to explain the mass of fundamental particles (Englert & Brout, 1964) (Higgs, 1964), a proposal that was confirmed in July 2012 at CERN (ATLAS, 2012).

It took 100 years to confirm Einstein’s prediction and 48 years for that of Englert, Brout and Higgs.

Setting up experiments confirming these hypotheses required technical means which did not even exist at the time they were put forward. How, then, can we explain the possibility that scientists have managed to imagine these hypotheses without the slightest possibility of verifying them experimentally? By what kind of reasoning did they achieve this?  This is yet another one of those surprises that the brain has in store for us and that we will try to illuminate in this article.

Reasoning by analogy, by induction, by deduction, by the absurd, by elimination… The typology of types of reasoning is very broad but one of them in particular has our attention: reasoning by abduction.

This is what is offered to us by our creative side. This is what extracts the very essence of what we perceive. The slightest observation, the slightest change is interpreted at lightning speed. And our brains are now making assumptions about what can shed light on the causes of what has just been perceived.

Abduction is virtually wired into our nervous system to increase its efficiency. The illustration at the beginning of the article is a graphic construction of cones whose base is either concave or convex and differently oriented (Idesawa, 1997).

However, despite its absence, it is impossible not to “see” a sphere. You can even hide parts of the cones and you will still find that there is no drawn outline to suggest a sphere. This illusion is the result of the activity in your brain which hypothesizes that the cones thusly arranged can only be so if they are placed on a sphere. Rapid hypothesis, effective and… totally false.

Regardless, the brain immediately makes a hypothesis that gives it an opportunity to act. Obviously if the hypothesis is wrong and the situation is dangerous, the brain risks not having the opportunity to try again.  But our brains cannot do otherwise. It was built on its ability to react quickly. Conversely, it requires a long and drastic formation to build solid, proven and transferable knowledge. In other words, to reason by deduction.

The discovery of the Higgs boson is a good illustration of the reasoning by abduction. In 1964, models of particle physics produced only massless particles, whereas physicists knew that almost all particles have one. They knew this from observation.

They then hypothesized a field that would be like the frame of the universe. Particles that come through this space would trip in this frame which slows them down. However, under the principles of conservation of energy and equivalence between mass and energy (E = mc2), the kinetic energy they lose is transformed into mass. Thus, the stronger a particle interacts with the field, the higher its mass will be. The so-called Higgs boson would be an excitement of this frame, according to the words of Pauline Gagnon quoted in (Gravel, 2015). That is the hypothesis. Emitted by abduction without any confirmation as the means of that time period did not allow for it.

To test the hypothesis put forward by theorists, the experimenters imagined how to excite the universe’s frame by concentrating a lot of energy on a very small point, thanks to CERN’s LHC, and they designed two ultrasensitive detectors capable of detecting all the debris from the decay of the Higgs boson to differentiate them from one another. There is the experimental verification.

All that remains is for us to summarize. Almost all particles have mass. This mass would come from the excitation of a field. If this hypothesis is correct, you would need an experiment capable of exciting the field and to observe the effects of these particles’ mass. And to obtain the same result for all attempted experiments. It would be enough for a single experiment to fail for the whole theory to be refuted.

The abduction reasoning that allowed the production of the Higgs boson hypothesis did not mobilize 48 years of reflection by these researchers. They needed time to acquire knowledge and observations in order to forge a representation of their world, though the emergence of this hypothesis was most probably rapid, like a flash.

The American philosopher S. Pierce integrated the notion of abduction as a form of reasoning that produces ideas and concepts to be explained: “abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea” (Pierce, 1931–1958).

Abduction is therefore the mechanism by which the brain produces new hypotheses, uncertain knowledge. Those are then confronted by experiences other than the ones that allowed them to be intuited. Then, by successive refining, to produce a deeper and deeper knowledge of the world which is then transmitted through language and experience.

We are just beginning to see by what mechanism the brain manages to make these assumptions. This is a central step in the design of artificial cognition. To make assumptions is to open the way to surprise, prediction or creation.

Even if it is still very preliminary, some leads are revealed and we will discover them in our upcoming articles. From self-organization to assumptions, these are our next steps.

Works cited

Abbott, & al., e. (2016, February). Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger. (A. P. Society, Ed.) Physical Review Letters, 116(061102).

ATLAS, C. (2012, September 17). Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Physics Letters B, 716(1), 1-29.

Einstein, A. (1916, June 22). Näherungsweise Integration der Feldgleichungen der Gravitation. Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1, 688-696.

Englert, F., & Brout, R. (1964, August 31). Broken Symmetry and the Mass of Gauge Vector Mesons. Physical Review Letters, 13(9), 321-321.

Gravel, P. (2015, February 28). The discovery of the Higgs boson seen from the inside. Retrieved from Le Devoir: https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/science/433140/la-decouverte-du-boson-de-higgs-vue-de-l-interieur

Higgs, P. W. (1964, October 19). Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons. Physical Review Letters, 13(16), 508-509.

Idesawa, M. (1997). A study on visual mechanism with optical illusions. Journal of robotics and mechatronics, 9(2), 85-91.

Pierce, C. (1931–1958). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce  (Vol. I and II Principles of Philosophy and Elements of Logic). (C. Hartshorne, Ed.) Harvard University Press.