A group of female jazz musicians, The Ingenues, serenaded cows in a 1930 American barn. Was it because no one else was interested in hearing them? Regardless, the musicians had picked a captive audience that couldn’t just leave. In 1930, photographer Angus Boyd McVicar came upon them in a Madison, Wisconsin, cow barn.
The astonished cows
There are a lot of cows in Wisconsin. A lot. We now have 1.3 million dairy cows for every 6,000,000 people on the land. As a result, it is one of the top milk-producing states in the country. Only around 8,000 dairy farms remain now, compared to the 125,000 that existed in 1930. However, annual milk production has increased from 5 million to 14 million tons.
On August 8, 1930, the “Capital Times,” a local newspaper, told its readers the story of the barnyard serenade: Under the title “Twelve musicians play for a herd of cows,” the publication reported on a meeting between an “enthusiastic band of girls” and “astonished cows” at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for a social experiment. The goal of the experiment was to compare the milk production of a cow that had been exposed to the soothing sounds of a trombone with that of a cow that had been subjected to the monotony of daily life.
The university’s cowshed and dairy had served as a vital educational and research resource for the dairy industry since the turn of the 20th century. The purpose of the research was to increase milk production for dairy farmers and ranchers by optimizing cow-raising and feeding practices, eliminating illness, and artificially inseminating the herd.
Consequently, studying the effect of music on milk production made sense. More so since the jazz band The Ingenues had recently finished a three-night run at the Revue Theater in town. The name originated from the fact that naïve female performers used to be referred to as “ingenues,” a phrase that described a common kind of theme in musicals and plays.
They had performed in every civilized nation
The Ingenues. The Band Beautiful (1928). (Image: Arizona.edu)
It wasn’t hard at all to find opportunities for performance for Chicago’s 25 young women in the orchestra. Among the many stops on their 60,000-mile voyage were Cairo, Melbourne, and London.
The Ingenues were not afraid of difficulty, performing in every civilized nation and even in those regions that weren’t nearly as civilized.
The article said that the group’s tour manager’s peace was disrupted only by the energetic women’s need to purchase mementos. One time, he allegedly stopped them from spending their pooled funds on a white elephant in India.
It’s possible that the Madison varsity cattle concert was planned to help the musicians get over the loss of the elephant. There was no definitive outcome from the experiment because “the cows were too astonished by the unusual treat to respond in an anticipated way,” as reported by the newspaper. For reliable results, it was said that more thorough documentation over a longer time frame was required. The band members advocated for scientifically-minded bands to perform every day during milking time.
The idea that playing music to cows makes them produce more milk has survived into the modern day. An English farmer in 2009 hired an opera singer to perform for his cows with the help of an ice cream firm. The cows were uninterested, and they proceeded to eat in their usual stoic fashion. Additionally, there were also scientific experiments.
The increase in milk production
University of Leicester psychologists conducted the largest study to date in 2001. For nine weeks, they listened to the sounds of around a thousand animals every day for twelve hours. The udders were on average 3% fuller (or 0.73 liters) when slow music was played.
The British found that by playing soft music during milking, they were able to reduce the tension the animals felt throughout the process, resulting in increased production. They also made a playlist of barn songs, including “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed, “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M., and “Symphony No. 6” by Beethoven, while “Space Cowboy” by Jamiroquai and “The Size of a Cow” by Wonderstuff were not well received by the cows.
Those who didn’t believe it still had their doubts. It was noted in 2014 by Canadian agricultural researcher Anne Marie de Passille that there had been no further large-scale tests to validate the findings.
Such studies are both difficult and costly to carry out.
Nevertheless, many American dairy farms do play music, often of the Spanish or country kind, as reported by the U.S. magazine “Modern Farmer” in 2014. Some researchers attribute this to staff members’ individual tastes. According to De Passilles, “they are individuals, and we didn’t select them for their taste in music.
Whether it’s a twin in space, Achilles racing against the tortoise, or Schrödinger’s cat, scientists and philosophers have been using thought experiments for thousands of years to illustrate abstract concepts or make open questions more vivid. To this day, such analogies are important tools of science.
Many famous thought experiments are still used today to convey complex and abstract concepts, and are even part of the school curriculum. But such thought experiments are also helpful for researchers to approach a solution to their problem. In modern science, computer simulations now often take over the role of such virtual scenarios or help to concretize and verify thought experiments.
Twins and a spaceship that is almost as fast as light. One of them travels in his spaceship at breakneck speed through the galaxy, and the other stays at home. When the space traveler returns after a long time, he is surprised to find that his twin brother on Earth is now years older than he is.
Albert Einstein is known for popularizing thought experiments, particularly in the development of his theory of relativity.
Analogy for Real Phenomena
Of course, this is not about a real event. The so-called “twin paradox” is a thought experiment. It was invented a good 100 years ago by Albert Einstein, who used it to illustrate the consequences of his theory of relativity. It states that time can be stretched by acceleration and gravity, a prediction that results from the absoluteness of the speed of light.
The stretching of time described in the twin paradox has been proven experimentally ever since – first by measuring time aboard an airplane. In the meantime, highly accurate atomic clocks can measure these effects down to tiny fractions of a second. Because the atomic clocks on board the GPS satellites are also subject to time dilation, satellite navigation would not work without taking this principle into account.
Einstein’s thought experiments, such as the twin paradox, played a crucial role in his development of the theory of relativity. These experiments helped him explore the behavior of light, time dilation, and the equivalence of gravitational and inertial forces.
Thought Experiments Since Antiquity
Thought experiments are a tool of the imagination that help you look at the nature of things from new angles. They are usually done because an actual experiment is not possible, whether for physical, technological, financial, or ethical reasons. Sometimes thought experiments illustrate very abstract concepts and thus contribute to the process of understanding. They’ve been around since ancient times, in all fields: philosophy, but also economics, history, mathematics, and the natural sciences, especially physics.
Achilles and the Tortoise
One of the most famous thought experiments of antiquity came from the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, who described it in the 5th century BC. It has puzzled generations of thinkers ever since. The story goes like this: Achilles, the fastest runner in the ancient world, is challenged to a race by a tortoise. Sure of his victory, he gives the turtle a head start. The race starts, and both run off.
But when Achilles reaches the turtle’s starting point, the turtle has already covered another stretch of road. Achilles must therefore overcome this stretch before he can overtake the tortoise. But if he has succeeded, the turtle has again gained a smaller lead. The lead of the turtle thus becomes smaller and smaller, but it always remains a lead. Achilles can thus never catch up with the tortoise and thus never overtake it.
Achilles and the tortoise paradox. (Credit: PCMag)
Obviously, any amateur runner would overtake the tortoise with ease, but Zeno’s logical reasoning is not so easily shaken.
Thought Experiments of Quantum Physics
That thought experiments can help to understand processes better is also shown in quantum physics. Because objects do not behave there as we know them from everyday life. They do not assume a tangible, stable state, but obey the laws of probability.
So an atom, for example, in terms of its decay, is in a so-called superposition of states. It has decayed and not decayed at the same time, as long as we don’t observe it. This is also the point of the famous thought experiment about Schrödinger’s cat, which can be dead and alive at the same time.
Schrödinger’s Cat: Dead and Alive at the Same Time
In this world-famous 1935 thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, a cat is placed in a box. To this is added a small amount of a radioactive substance, a detector, and a jar of poison. Then the box is closed. If even a single atom of the substance decays, the detector strikes and automatically releases the poison, and the cat dies. But it is equally possible that no atom decays. In this case, the cat remains alive.
As long as one does not look into the box, the cat’s state is undetermined; it is both alive and dead at the same time. Of course, a cat cannot be dead and alive at the same time. However, an unobserved atom can certainly be in two states at the same time, according to the rules of quantum mechanics. Scientists have already demonstrated these superposition states in photons, electrons, and molecules. A mobile version as well as a “quantum cat” that sits in two boxes at the same time have also already been implemented.
The Enigma of Entanglement
EPR paradox: If one of the two receivers measures the spin of its entangled photon, this affects the result of the other receiver – without direct communication between the two. (Credit: Nemirov1)
Quantum scientists use thought experiments as hypotheses that they then test with scientific tools. They, for instance, use computer simulations to better understand a particular phenomenon in quantum theory: quantum entanglement. This was described in 1935 in a thought experiment called the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (EPR paradox). Quantum entanglement means that two particles are linked together, even if they are far apart.
But how does this linkage work over such great distances? How do the particles know about their respective states? Do they exchange information, and “communicate” with each other? Albert Einstein doubted this possibility to the end, famously calling quantum entanglement “spooky action at a distance.” This is because it would mean that information is exchanged faster than the speed of light.
Not all of his colleagues agreed with Einstein—to this day, there are a variety of different interpretations of how quantum entanglement works. Discussions about it have filled countless books, journal articles, and now Internet sites for 80 years.
Mind Games on the Computer
With the help of their computer simulation, scientists checked the thought experiment and found that Einstein might have been right: There must be causes other than “communication” for the states of entangled particles to affect each other. Being able to use computer simulations to verify thought experiments is a major, relatively recent advantage for science.
With a computer simulation, we can play with particles and test hypotheses in a kind of protected setting. We can look at everything without affecting or even destroying our object of study. That’s often different in the lab.
There, the necessary apparatus—for example, particle sources and detectors—must also be implemented in a technically correct way. That can’t always be realized.
Laboratory experiments have also been conducted on the EPR paradox since the 1970s. It is always difficult in this situation to unambiguously assign two particles to a linked pair. For example, particles that do not belong to the experiment at all, such as cosmic rays, can be mistakenly registered. In addition, procedures are necessary in the laboratory that Einstein never intended in his thought experiment. Both lead to false conclusions, as scientists were able to prove. In a simulation, scientists can precisely control all these framework conditions.
Thought Experiments on AI
Thought experiments can also influence and stimulate research. Take the “Silicon Brain” thought experiment, for example: in a person’s brain, each neuron is replaced one by one by an electrical circuit. One after the other. In the end, the biological brain would be replaced by a technical one. Would the human being still be the same in the end, with the same consciousness?
How Does the Brain Work?
This is just one of a whole series of thought experiments dealing with the human brain. They often deal with complex and sometimes highly philosophical topics such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, or the role of sensory impressions. However, there is always a fundamental question behind it: How does the human brain work?
Thought experiments show where assumptions and hypotheses ultimately lead, especially when you think beyond what you can actually do or determine in practical terms. Because, of course, a thought experiment like the Silicon Brain can’t be tested in the lab. And physicists also use computer simulations for their research.
100,000 Neurons in the Computer
Researchers are working on a simulation of the human brain. They describe a nerve cell with a few equations and use them to build networks that should be as similar as possible to the human brain. They believe that the cooperation of the nerve cells in a network is what’s really interesting here.
Scientists spent years simulating a cubic millimeter of a human brain: About 100,000 cells, each with about 10,000 contacts leading to other cells. The philosophical question of consciousness naturally takes a back seat for the time being.
The Silicon Brain is about identity and self-awareness. As with many thought experiments, however, there is an ethical component here.
The Chinese Room
The Chinese Room is one of the famous thought experiments. A person who does not know Chinese sits in a closed room. In front of him is a text written in Chinese characters, to which he receives question cards – also in Chinese – through a slit in the wall and is supposed to answer.
In addition, he has a manual in his native language and Chinese scripts that contain the information necessary for the answer. The manual contains instructions on which characters he should answer in response to certain characters in the question. The human executes these instructions in a purely mechanical and formal way, without understanding the meaning, and passes the answer cards back through the slit to the outside. And the people outside? They assume there’s someone sitting in the room who knows Chinese.
American philosopher John Searle used this thought experiment to illustrate that a seemingly intelligent computer need not possess or develop consciousness to perform its functions. In his view, even passing the Turing test would not prove that an artificial intelligence possessed real intelligence in the human sense. Whether Searle was right is still highly disputed today.
