I’ll tell you a secret: most of my life has been lived moving across borders. Not the kind marked on maps, but the quiet boundaries of disciplines.
As President of FreeAstroScience, I’ve spent countless hours in rooms where astrophysicists argue with philosophers, where biologists nervously sip coffee while engineers explain algorithms. I roll into those rooms in my wheelchair, and I swear—sometimes it feels like crossing customs at an intellectual border. Each field has its passport, its language, its pride. But the most surprising thing? The breakthroughs don’t happen when people defend their borders. They happen when someone dares to put their passport down.
And nothing has made that clearer than artificial intelligence.
Three Bold Myths That Need Breaking
Let’s start with a few heresies. People often say philosophy is obsolete, a relic of dusty bookshelves. Others claim AI is nothing but computer science, lines of code and equations. And then there’s the loudest myth of all: specialisation is the only way forward—that progress requires tunnel vision.
All of these are wrong. Philosophy isn’t obsolete—it’s the quiet skeleton of every question we ask. AI isn’t confined to computer science—it spills into medicine, ethics, politics, art. And specialisation without dialogue? That isn’t expertise—it’s arrogance in a lab coat.
From Myths to Mathematics: The First Walls
Human knowledge began with stories whispered around fires. Myths made sense of storms, harvests, birth, and death. To move forward, we built boxes: philosophy for meaning, medicine for bodies, astronomy for stars. These boxes weren’t mistakes—they were survival strategies. Without them, there would have been no depth, no progress.
But boxes don’t stay closed forever. Psychology outgrew philosophy’s roof. Biology demanded its own house. One by one, the sciences moved out, leaving philosophy with fewer rooms but sharper questions. It’s like a parent watching grown children leave home—painful, yes, but also proof that the family tree is thriving.
When the Silos Collide: My FreeAstroScience Moments
Here’s where my own path comes in. I’ve watched this “erosion of silos” unfold firsthand.
I remember a FreeAstroScience workshop where a particle physicist began explaining machine learning models for data analysis. Halfway through, a linguist raised her hand. She wasn’t interested in quarks; she wanted to know how bias in training data might warp the metaphors we use to talk about the universe. The physicist blinked, then smiled, and what followed wasn’t a lecture—it was a duet. That was the moment I realised: real learning begins when walls collapse.
Another time, during a panel on exoplanets, a biologist casually pointed out that AI models used for detecting planetary atmospheres could also diagnose rare diseases. I remember sitting there, stunned. Two worlds—cosmos and medicine—that rarely spoke suddenly recognised they were cousins.
These are the sparks that make my work worth it. Sparks that come from collision, not conformity.
AI: The Ultimate Stress Test
Artificial intelligence is the perfect litmus test for this messy, interdisciplinary future. It refuses to stay still. For engineers, it’s code. For doctors, it’s diagnosis. For politicians, it’s a threat—or a promise. For teachers, it’s a revolution. For ethicists, it’s a warning bell.
And yet, none of these perspectives is enough on its own. Only in conversation—sometimes messy, sometimes frustrating—does AI begin to show its real shape. I often joke that AI isn’t just a technology. It’s a mirror. Hold it up to any discipline, and it reveals what that field fears, desires, and overlooks.
Walking Through Walls
So, here’s the lesson I carry: sectarianism in disciplines is history. The idea that one field owns the truth—it’s outdated, ineffective, even dangerous. But change won’t come easy. Universities still reward hyper-specialisation. Funding still insists on narrow labels. And pride? Pride is stubborn.
Yet the world doesn’t care about those walls. It hands us climate change, pandemics, AI—questions too tangled for one mind, one field, one method.
So maybe AI’s greatest gift isn’t smarter machines. Maybe it’s forcing us to become smarter humans—humans who know how to cross borders, sit at messy tables, and listen.
Because progress doesn’t belong to physics, philosophy, or computer science alone. It belongs to the bridges we dare to build across them. And I’ll keep building those bridges, wheel by wheel, conversation by conversation, until the walls finally give way.
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