This series has traced a path from familiar assumptions about representation to a relational understanding of science as a practice that shapes possibility. The previous post argued that science produces orientation and operational myths. This final post asks: what kind of practice is science, once representation is no longer doing the work?
Not representation, not accumulation
Science is often described as:
representing reality,
building a stock of knowledge,
or progressively approximating truth.
From the perspective developed here, all of these are secondary effects. The primary work of science is not about mirroring, describing, or collecting.
Science as stabilisation of possibility
Science is a practice that stabilises regions of possibility through disciplined systems, coordinated experiments, and shared semiotic resources.
Its operations include:
defining what counts as a phenomenon,
structuring distinctions that matter,
constraining what can recur reliably,
producing cuts that generate phenomena,
and coordinating these across time, space, and communities.
In short: science holds possibility steady enough for actualisation and coordination.
The generativity of science
By stabilising structured possibility, science is generative rather than representational. It does not merely describe what exists; it enables what can exist within a system of constraints.
Its generativity manifests in multiple ways:
new phenomena can appear,
new concepts become intelligible,
new experiments and methods can be devised,
and new forms of explanation emerge.
This generativity is disciplined: not all possibilities are realised, but only those permitted by the systems and practices of science.
Coordination and objectivity
Science is deeply social, not in a trivial sense, but because coordination is the mechanism by which possibility is stabilised.
Protocols, instruments, shared conventions, and communicative practices allow multiple researchers to enact the same cuts and observe the same phenomena.
Objectivity arises relationally: it is a property of coordination within a system, not a property of statements mirroring independent reality.
Science as operational myth-making
Science produces myths in the relational sense described previously. It stabilises frameworks of orientation that guide what can be thought, observed, and manipulated.
These operational myths are disciplined, repeatable, and testable. They enable communities to navigate possibility reliably, while leaving the space of potentialities open for transformation.
Why science persists
Science persists because it does not exhaust the space of possibility. Systems cannot close, and each cut opens new regions of potential actualisation.
The ongoing evolution of possibility, sustained by experimentation and conceptual innovation, ensures that science is never merely reactive or archival. It is performative, transformative, and generative.
The series conclusion
Viewed through a relational lens, science is:
not a mirror,
not a repository of facts,
not a march toward completeness.
It is a practice that actively shapes the structure of what can be actualised, thought, and coordinated.
Its work is the stabilisation of structured possibility, the production of orientation, and the ongoing creation of operational myths that sustain the evolution of knowledge itself.
Science, in this sense, is both rigorous and generative: a practice that evolves possibility while holding it steady enough to be intelligible, actionable, and communal.
The series closes here, leaving open the ongoing inquiry: how will the evolution of possibility continue to unfold, and how will scientific practice participate in that unfolding?
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