Until recently, research rhythm followed a broadly linear path: read the literature, form a hypothesis, design the experiment, publish the results. Creativity often lived at the margins, in half-written notes or sporadic conversations, while most thinking happened in isolation. Science was not always organized this way. The first academies of science, such as the Royal Society, thrived on correspondence and disputation, and knowledge emerged through dialog and collective reasoning. Over time, that conversational culture gave way to specialization, formal reporting, and the economy of publication. Large language models (LLMs) now may be reopening that space for dialog, although the interlocutor is nonhuman.
