New approach methodologies in science and the philosophy of human nature and change
The truth is, man lives in a world he poisons. He breathes it, eats it, bathes in it. We even go to a degree to industrialize comfort such that our own minds and habits groan under the weight of our creations. Ultimately, man does not seek truth. He seeks safety. For if he truly seeks truth- there will be listening and there will be silence. He builds fortresses of habit and confuses them with knowledge.
This is no less true in science. Scientists have gripped rituals tightly: animal trials, statistical traps, sanctioned routines. He calls this progress. It is not. These methods, rooted in the 1950s, have calcified into dogma. A few authorities decide what is “correct” through influence of the reputed. Tradition is not wisdom. It is inertia.
Knowledge itself, is not a monument but a conjecture, a guess tested by hypothesis, reshaped by the truth. If you understand where not to go, you understand where to go. New approach methodologies (NAMs): cell cultures, organ on chip, omics methodologies, advanced computational methods (neural ODEs, Stochastic models), artificial intelligence, synthetic systems, are not just tools. They are a rupture, a chance to guess in a more transparent way, to reach beyond the stale certainties of the gaps and also the dissections and the regulatory constraints. The interconnected view is only starting to open- and we must accept the ways of multimodal knowledge to weave the bigger picture. Despite its shortcomings- like noise etc. because these shortcomings equally exist in methods from 1950s. So why is it that we rest in concordance with the past but not in the future? Man prefers the devil he knows (doesn't matter what guise he lives- of scientist, entrepreneur etc.)
All knowledge is provisional, all progress is error-correction, and no tool, no matter how clever, can bypass the human act of imagining and shaping new knowledge. Thus, in science- we must not loose the edge of innovation and the sense of conjecture. And yet, regulations put a blinder on the very air of inquiry, by calling them necessary. Why? Regulations often appear as the bureaucracy of safety- or a dogma of order which I think are the chains on conjecture and creation. I am not saying its not important to regulate. I think we can come up with a better decentralized system for regulation such that there is less bureaucracy and more transparency in regulation. At the moment- these regulations are creating more space for hinderance to NAMs than of acceptance- and the biggest gap lies in literacy of such organisations towards the full understanding of the biases of uncertainties from the NAMs vs uncertainties from the past established methods. Companies and scientists are hesitant to deviate from established testing paradigms that regulators accept, even if they recognize the limitations of animal models.
Why do NAMs matter? Because they demand conjecture. They tear down the altar of tradition—the rats, the rabbits, the rest of it—and force man to ask: What is poison? How does it weave through life- in totality? They help the mind to hypothesize, to test, to fail. The man who sees these shackles, go towards the questions so deeply, that abandons the guessed, the tested, the created. He lands in the frontier to explore and this exploration is done for the sake of it.
Old toxicology/ safety/efficacy measures compound content in animals and calls it fact. NAMs invite creation: models that probe the the connected, systems that are built on collective data that goes far beyond into the evidence than what traditional methods have been able to do. It is a world of living process, an endless refinement. NAMs, are not the truth. They are a path to it, if man stops clutching at finality of animal experiments. Most of science has begun with the discovery of truth through a guess. However, in domains like toxicology, where the processes are standardized (hence habits), man prefers to control- and this is where the conjecture fails. Silencing the criticism is like stopping the growth from taking place.
So, if as scientists- when we demand certainty- aren't we no different than priests who demand faith? In both context- there is shrinkage due to the vastness of what human knowledge can create.
Science is not a ruler—Man is a seeker, bound by no limit but his own refusal to conjecture from different perspectives. Knowledge- is infinite. And we have hardly scratched the surface.
I wonder- a lot. So, I write my wonder here. What to expect? The chaos and curiosity that my being brings. As living a human life is not bound by definitions in the macros- the posts here will be spontaneous and identity-less! I like to give and create art. So if you buy an act of creating I will use it for things that I am passionate to give for. Obviously, a little support on my art will make me feel visible.
"Change. Change. Change. Change … change. Change. Chaaange. When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do."
