"The Evolution of Human Science" or "Catching Crumbs from the Table" by Ted Chiang

First appeared in Nature edited by Henry Gee. It was up for the Locus award.

Summary:

When part of humanity is upgraded to metahumans, whose cognitive thinking we mere humans cannot grasp, what science is left for humanity to study?

Commentary:

At first, they do little but try to interpret metahumans (hermeneutics, that is, interpretation of text). Science falls away. They reverse engineer metahumans technology to better understand. Finally, they decide they need a go-between: They decide to upgrade humans that can bridge the gap.

The second title--the one that the story originally appeared as--is apparently the editor's choice. The editor's is concrete; however, the irony of "evolution"--at least what we assume evolution should be (e.g. progress)--gets lost.