The Status of Science

Part 2: Generator of Worldviews

In this series, I am discussing how the current moment in time offers us the opportunity to have profound impact on our collective trajectory.  As I discussed in Part 1, we currently have an unprecedented capacity for creating large-scale causal impact. In part, this capacity for impact comes from emerging technologies and scientific discoveries that are enabling us to reformat our relationship with the natural world. It is essential that we are responsible as we wield this level of impact. Therefore, I am looking in detail at how different aspects of our scientific pursuits shape the collective’s trajectory into the future.

In this section, I am describing how I see the world of science as a space that is capable of generating worldviews and how worldviews shape our collective trajectory. While these ideas may not be formally discussed in science, they nevertheless impact our understanding of the world. Over the years I have spent a considerable amount of time studying different worldviews and exercising the capacity to see from their perspective.  Worldviews provide interpretive meaning, value and weight to events. They shape what we think is important and help us determine what the most valuable actions are in response to those events. In a moment where there is so much that can be discovered and so much collective impact that is possible, it becomes necessary to check our own perspective. 

Are we seeing with clear eyes? Or are the boundaries of our worldview obscuring what it is possible for us to see?

By diving into the perspectives that shape our worldview - we can learn about our own strengths and limitations. The ideas we nurture now as a collective are the ideas that will define our future technologies, and those technologies will have far-reaching impact into the future.

Generating worldviews

In the world of scientific inquiry there are many directions of active research across many fields. The lines of inquiry that exist are only a small selection of the many possible lines of inquiry that could exist. How scientists and society prioritize what is researched, not only informs future discoveries and technologies, but it also shapes our worldview.

Worldview: A worldview is a framework through which we see, interpret, and make sense of our world. Some worldviews are scientifically created, others are mythologically or religiously created, and some are created by politics or culture. Worldviews abound, and generating awareness about the worldviews we hold and how they shape what we are able to see is critical.

Scientific worldviews: In science, worldviews are formally constructed by a process that involves theory, experimentation, data collection and data interpretation.

If scientific worldviews are created by a formal process that involves collecting evidence - then why am I calling them worldviews and not just the truth? Because the scientific process has theoretical and technological limits to what it can reveal – and until we know everything – we are only seeing part of the truth and we are creating a worldview around that partial truth.

---

The truest truth

If we seek to find the truest truth, what else do we need to be aware of in our process? Is it enough to investigate questions from the reigning perspectives of a field or are we obligated to pursue alternate avenues of investigation that may show us blind spots in our worldview? Alternate perspectives may reveal facets of activity we did not previously imagine were important and that may ultimately change our understanding of the wider system.

Scientific research creates boundaries for possible worldviews

As scientific research progresses, the collective trajectory of scientific investigations creates boundaries for possible worldviews. These boundaries are formed by the choices to pursue some scientific investigations over other investigations, and by the choices to develop some types of technology over other possible technologies. Collectively, such choices reflect deeper theoretical positions about the systems being investigated. Support for one theoretical perspective over another yields experiments and technologies designed to investigate the system from that perspective.

If investigations only approach a system from a singular perspective or theory then the information that is generated will be constrained to information supporting or rejecting that theory. Thus, it will also constrain what worldview it is possible to see. We can only see what we have tested, and if we are testing from one worldview’s perspective, we can only see it from there or reject it as invalid. The rejection of a worldview does not automatically leave us with another worldview. We must construct alternatives and then test them as well.

This iterative process of worldview generation and testing is most evident in physics, a field that is ripe with active awareness of theoretical understructures. In physics, experiments are designed to directly test theories and can yield results that support or invalidate such perspectives. As these results accumulate, they collectively form and shape different worldviews.

At this time, there exist the competing worldviews of classical and quantum mechanics, both of which have cogent theoretical structures, clear scientific evidence to support them, and functional mathematical frameworks that undergird them. Still, with all this description and predictive accuracy, these remain theories (and worldviews) that individually cannot fully explain our physical system. Therefore, the pursuit of an all-encompassing theory is underway in physics, and if found, would likely cause a major shift in the collective worldview that is used to understand physical reality.

While the generation of worldviews is very evident in theoretical physics, this process is not so apparent in some areas of biological science. It is often submerged and enmeshed within detailed experiments which layer upon one another, slowly revealing an invisible terrain that is made visible through experimentation. The theoretical aspect of this process in the biological sciences is not often actively discussed, and some might say, it is not even occurring at all.

Many people think that most scientific investigations are simply an uncovering of what is true and what has already been established in the natural world. They believe that all investigations will lead to the discovery of this singular truth. While I believe that is part of what is happening some of the time, I think there is also a structuring process that occurs in parallel, which utilizes an interpretive framework and the choice of that framework limits what we can see and how accurate it is.

Structuring occurs through experimental and interpretive choices. In order to make experimental and interpretive choices one must root themselves in a theoretical position and worldview. By utilizing a fixed theoretical perspective to make choices, we solidify our theoretical position and establish limits that define experimental and interpretive bounds. This process may occur actively or passively, but it is always occurring when scientific information is being generated.

Mechanisms by which scientific investigations passively create theoretical structure

There are multiple mechanisms by which theoretical structure is passively created.  Choices made during the scientific process structure information in ways that form and reinforce particular theoretical positions and their worldviews. Some of these mechanisms include:

• The choice to pursue some inquires over others

• The choice to analyze data using one model over another

• The choice of what technologies to use

• The choice to develop some technologies over others

• The accuracy of technology to resolve a particular feature

We can only measure what we set out to measure; and we can only measure what we have tools to measure. Therefore the world we see through science and construct with theory is limited by these choices and bounds the worldviews that can be constructed.

These choices though are not always actively stated, and are often propelled by research trends and collective theoretical understanding. Often, we believe the system to be structured in certain ways, where certain features of the system are the most important to understand because they drive the system, and therefore investigations are focused on understanding phenomena through those features. By generating more information about these features, it reinforces the worldview that that feature is critical to understanding the system, because a compendium of information exists to describe phenomena through that feature.

For example, the genome is clearly an important feature in biological systems. Many investigations have been designed to understand diseases by mapping aspects of the genome - such as gene variants, gene expression and epigenetic markers. Much information has been generated to understand diseases through these terms. But these investigations could have been structured to understand disease through other features of the system. For instance, we could track pH fluxes and gradients, or phase transitions, or cell density, or other features of organelle positioning … the list is endless. The point is that the choice to understand the system through the genome is a choice. It limits what information we can generate. If we set out to understand a disease through gene variants or epigenetic markers - we are not going to end up with a dataset that is filled with pH values. That is not the data that was collected and it would not be possible to use the tools for collecting genomic data to collect pH data. In order to get a pH dataset, we would need to investigate the system from the perspective that pH values were somehow relevant for understanding the disease. We would then need technologies to finely resolve this information and we would need to develop a body of work that was based around this perspective in order for it to be a fruitful avenue of investigation. Therefore, even though these choices are not always actively stated by researchers, they in fact, underlie the experimental design and general approach that a field of research is taking to investigate a particular question.

Summary

The investigation of questions from a particular theoretical perspective and the interpretation of the data through models generate structured information.

Theories and worldviews provide structure that shape how the investigation occurs - they determine what data is collected, what technologies are used and how the data is interpreted.

Thus, the information generated during an investigation has been structured by the theories and worldviews used in the process of generating it.

As a collective, We are actively resolving the truest truth. By bringing awareness to our theoretical worldviews, we can question the boundaries we have passively imposed on our investigations.

Part 1