The Formation of Biological Knowledge

Speaker:

Thomas Stoeger - Data Science Scholar, Center for Genetic Medicine (CGM) and Northwestern Institute for Complex Systems (NICO)

Talk Abstract:

What drives the formation of knowledge? In 1959, C. P. Snow asserted “a gulf of mutual incomprehension– between science and the humanities. That gulf is still particularly apparent in the disagreement on what drives scientific discovery: curiosity versus the scientific reward system and social power structures.

An aspect not systematically explored by either group is the structure of the natural world. Consider the discovery of how genomes work. What are the determinants of whether and how much a given gene is studied? Is it just scientific curiosity and medical applicability, or is there something else? Could the biophysical and molecular properties of a gene contribute to whether it is highly studied? Without a complete understanding of the formation of scientific knowledge, it will not be possible to distinguish missed research opportunities from research that can be ignored.

I aim to remedy this gap by systematically connecting properties of genes to the formation of knowledge about them. During my seminar I will show that it is possible to cross the “gulf of mutual incomprehension– by looking at individual genes. We will re-discover the history of biological research and see that the accumulation of knowledge is predictable. Finally I will propose maps that focus on the unknown, and visualize the absence of knowledge on top of the structure of the natural world. I hope that my findings will promote scientific discovery, and allow more nuanced decisions within genetic medicine.

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