Philosophy

Open and Reproducible Research

We believe science advances fastest when it is shared. We publish openly, release code and models alongside our papers whenever possible, and design experiments that others can reproduce, question, and build upon. We follow the spirit of the FAIR principles: research outputs should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable [1], because results that cannot be reproduced cannot be trusted [2].

Beyond What Can Be Seen

Our work is about perception: teaching machines to understand a world they can only partly observe. Much of what matters is not in the pixels themselves, but in the structure, uncertainty, and change behind them.

In this we find a quiet echo of an old idea. The Tao Te Ching observes that the usefulness of a wheel, a vessel, or a room lies in its empty space, in what is not there [3]. In the same way, a perceiving system is defined as much by what it must infer as by what it sees. Niels Bohr captured a related insight in physics with the motto contraria sunt complementa, “opposites are complementary”, placed around the yin–yang symbol on his coat of arms [4]. Others have since explored the dialogue between modern science and Eastern thought [5, 6].

We take from this a simple guide: seek methods that are simple, robust, and adaptive, that work with the world rather than against it, and that remain honest about the limits of what they know.

References

1. M. D. Wilkinson et al., “The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship,” Scientific Data, vol. 3, 160018, 2016. doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.18
2. M. Baker, “1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility,” Nature, vol. 533, pp. 452–454, 2016. doi:10.1038/533452a
3. Laozi, Tao Te Ching, chapter 11.
4. Niels Bohr Archive, “Some Niels Bohr quotations,” University of Copenhagen. nbarchive.ku.dk
5. F. Capra, The Tao of Physics, Shambhala, 1975.
6. J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1956.