Review of “Revisiting the Scientific Method” by Vinod Kumar Wadhawan

To view life as we know it in the context of life as it could be.

In “Revisiting the Scientific Method: The Need to Make Science More Inclusive in Scope” (2026), Vinod Kumar Wadhawan revisits, more comprehensively, the “8-fold Way of the scientific method”, which is also the title of his previous book released in 2021 (metaphorically similar to the rigorous 8-fold way of yogic life (Ashtanga Yoga)).

In his new book, Wadhawan expands the scope of the scientific method by going beyond reductionism.

The author, a former senior scientist at the Indian Department of Atomic Energy, writes that the Big Data tool kit enables “wonderful new and unconventional ways of doing science.” Wadhawan explains how Big Data can enable us “to do science without having to postulate hypothesis /models/ theories.” As mentioned in his earlier book, there are no restrictions on how we arrive at a hypothesis: We can draw inspiration from scriptures, we can refer to anecdotes, just about anything goes as long as our hypothesis explains our data and makes predictions that are found to be true by empirical evidence.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

The modern data-driven scenario is a recent development. It enables us to deal with complex systems by discerning patterns or correlations in the data. The book includes just about everything: the God hypothesis, complexity transitions, life, intelligence, consciousness, artificial intelligence, artificial life, artificial consciousness, machine consciousness, transhumanism, Apocalyptic AI. The author quotes Carl Sagan, Kant, Godel, Subhash Kak, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Geraci, Karl Popper and many others to explain his inclusive approach in the method of doing science.

Wadhawan quotes Christopher Langton to explain artificial life - or A-Life - as an inclusive paradigm that attempts to realize life-like behavior by initiating the processes that occur in the development or mechanics of life. This chapter (Chapter 5) interests me as my current study is somewhat this and reading it instantly reminds me of one of Rabindranath Tagore’s great compositions:

Khelaghar bnaadhte legechhi aamar moner bhitare... (I have set out to build my play-house inside my mind) - my translation.

The whole treatment reverberates in the author’s attempts to explain “other possible biologies in new media namely computers and robots.” Artificial life is actually a synthesis of biological life forms in the laboratory through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry, leading to the next stage of evolution of life inside computers or out there in the real world (Chapter 5, page 79).

Big Data will be of big help to dig in life itself from scratch “as pattern formation is an important characteristics of many complex systems,” just like Tagore creates life philosophically in his mind.

Wadhawan thinks of building life artificially in machines. The author concludes that “the idea is to view life as we know it in the context of life as it could be,” echoing Tagore again:

Purano bhaanga diner dhela, taai diye ghar gori... (I am building my play-house deep within the heart from the remnants of the days past) - my translation.

The underlying truth and science beneath consciousness, the idea of building life from scratch, and the scientific plausibility of what the author calls “artificially extended consciousness (AEC)” as science and technology advance, will all unveil in due course of time. The author concludes by quoting Ray Kurzweil: “Sophisticated behavior arises from the complexity of information processing in the brain – and this in turn is largely determined by how flexibly it can represent information and how many hierarchical layers are in its network.”