Manifesto for the Reverse Engineering of Cognition: Understanding Science from the Inside

The effectiveness of scientific laws and mathematical models does not reveal a mind-independent reality; it reflects the structured operations of human cognition. Science emerges at the interface between a partially accessible physical world and our cognitive capacities for abstraction, classification, and formal computation. This manifesto advocates a reverse-engineering approach to cognition, analyzing how naming, classifying, and calculating generate the laws and models underlying scientific knowledge. By revealing the cognitive architecture of science, this perspective highlights its inherent constraints, biases, and the potential for alternative modes of understanding. Thought experiments with alternative cognitive frameworks, artificial intelligence, and extreme environments illustrate both the limits and plasticity of human scientific understanding. Science is thus a product of cognition—revealing the structure and possibilities of our minds—rather than a complete mirror of reality.