How Could Science be Different?

In this competition, we invite creative and thought-provoking essays addressing science itself by considering the questions: To what degree is the science we have today necessarily the way it is versus contingent on the particular history and human societies in which it originated? What could a science free of prejudice and bigotry have looked like? What can it look like in the future? And how could the process of science be better? The question is timely and important and quite in line with my beliefs that we are in a relatively unprecedented time period: only now can we begin to (more) collectively glimpse at all of the influences at play over time. Science is not simply theory building in a vacuum, and we can now handle and begin to implement the more-just, more-aware, and more-earnest contexts which have widely been untenable in the past. The main argument of my essay is that we must be able to both rigorously critique the limitations of the past while also having a sense of compassion for the emergent paths that have been taken; science, philosophy, or the practice of sharing wisdom is challenging - but we must to better, and we must soberly look at the history and collective inertia of the choices that have been made, as well as the constraints of previous periods. By doing so, we can have a more informed, less naive, and more comprehensible sense of the entire scientific & philosophical endeavor - where we are, where we’ve been, and where we can go. Worldwide consensus notwithstanding, perhaps then we can, at least, make better choices about where we want to go, and give due diligence to how our pursuits afford different trajectories of development.

Jesse Parent

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