Mihai Nadin: Disrupter of Science

“[My book seeks to] disrupt science in the sense that it gets us away from the myth that doing more physics and chemistry will be the answer to understanding the living and, in particular, the human being.”

On January 15th, Dr. Mihai Nadin, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Dallas, joined Merion West contributing editor Jonathan Church for a discussion about Dr. Nadin’s new book Disrupt Science: The Future Matters and the nature of what he calls anticipatory systems. Dr. Nadin is widely revered as the father of anticipatory systems in computing. Throughout his interdisciplinary career, he has written more than 30 books and over 200 academic papers in science and philosophy. Formerly a director of the Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Nadin’s primary research focus is on the nature of these anticipatory systems. In Disrupt Science, Dr. Nadin assesses many of our most pressing societal problems such as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and artificial intelligence, while advocating for the cultivation of what he calls “an anticipatory mindset.” Dr. Nadin argues that an anticipatory mindset overcomes the shortcomings of a deterministic worldview that one finds in mechanistic science, as opposed to in biological science.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Thank you for joining me today, Dr. Nadin. To get started, how would you summarize the nature of anticipatory systems?

Anticipatory systems are characteristic of the living. There is no stone or anything that is not alive that performs in an anticipatory manner. The living—in order to survive—have to be anticipatory.

For me, anticipation is definitory of life. Life, in order to survive, in order to exist, has to be anticipatory. Why? Because we live in a world that is in continuous change. And, in order to adapt to the change—in order to be able to survive in a changing world—one has to, as a living entity, deal with possible futures.