Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Navigating Between Factual and Spurious Science and Philosophy: The Challenge of Drawing from the Thought of Scientist Philip Emeagwali

We had a lengthy discussion of this question some time ago. My recollection was that it seemed he was making fraudulent claims; but i do not remember the details.

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2023 1:23:14 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Navigating Between Factual and Spurious Science and Philosophy: The Challenge of Drawing from the Thought of Scientist Philip Emeagwali

 

Philip Emeagwali is a brilliant computer scientist and a potentially great one.

The problem is that beyond winning the Gordon Bell Prize in Supercomputing some years ago, to the best of my knowledge,  researchers have found no evidence of any other scientific work by him, not in any scholarly journal, not in any self published text and not even on an informal science platform, as Grigory Perelman did with the calculations that earned him the Fields Medal, which I understand is the highest prize in mathematics and which Perelman rejected.

To win the Gordon Bell Prize,  and as the sole individual prize winner, as different from the other winner, which was a team,  Emeagwali must have done some brilliant work.

Why does he not seem to have published that work anywhere?

Even more significant, why does  there seem to be no evidence that he built on that work or did other work, given his level of promise?

Why did he devote himself instead to a fantastic career of self-promotion, largely manufacturing and disseminating falsehoods of gargantuan scientific achievement, placing himself as a prominent figure within a hierarchy in which are to be located such incontestably  supreme geniuses as Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci, amplified with a rich description of his philosophy of scientific creativity and vision and garnished with a vigorously projected Afrocentric ideology, an effort evident in the totally unabashed craft of self promotion represented by his website, a story that snared many people, including at one time, myself, until it gradually dawned on many that beyond his Gordon Bell Prize win, all his other claims of scientific achievement and recognition were so far impossible to find evidence for. Even the claims of the influence of his work and it's impact in industry have so far proved impossible to verify.

Yet, beyond this likely unique narrative of scientific fraud, Emeagwali is truly a fine philosopher of science, the little he has written in that field being compelling and lucid, whatever might be the factuality or not of the scientific creativities he attributes to himself and which he used in reinforcing his philosophy of science.

It seems that Emeagwali's incontestable positive achievement, as different from the negative achievement of his intercontinentally influential scam,  is that of winning the Gordon Bell Prize and the creative effort involved in winning that prize, as well as the articulation of a nature centred, imaginative philosophy of scientific creativity and an effort to anchor his scientific achievement in foregrounding the potential of science in Africa and of African and African-American scientists everywhere.

How may one take advantage of the positive side of Emeagwali's achievement without seeming to endorse the fictional self promotion that permeates almost everything he has written?

How could one draw on his description of Natural Computing, computing inspired by nature, and his description of the cosmic  scope of his scientific vision without seeming to endorse his yet unproven claims of magnificent inventions emerging from this superlative drive and creative capacity?

How may one reference Einstein or  Newton and Emeagwali in the same piece without giving the impression that one identifies with his presenting his achievements and those of those scientific heroes as existing on the same plane when there is yet no evidence for the glorious claims he makes?

In exploring the Emeagwali story I remain open to any conclusive evidence of scientific achievement from him as well as to contributions to understanding his story as a unique narrative, as far as I know,  in the history of science, and perhaps of knowledge generally.

Any information I discover that modifies the opinions I have presented in this essay will be shared on the same platforms where this essay is published.

 

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