1 The Participatory Nature of Scientific Knowledge
Science is not the discovery of an independent world, but the co-creation of meaning within it.
We often imagine science as a mirror held up to nature — a clean, objective reflection of what is. But what if science is not about uncovering truths out there, but about shaping meaning in relation? What if knowing the world is less like mapping terrain and more like dancing with a partner — where every move we make is part of what the world becomes?
This is the view we want to explore in this series: a relational epistemology of science. Here, knowledge is not possession but participation. It emerges not from distance but from involvement. It is not the capturing of a world but the enacting of one.
From Passive Observer to Active Participant
The classical image of science rests on a powerful dualism: subject and object, observer and observed, knower and known. This split gives rise to the idea that knowledge is a kind of mental copy — a representation that mirrors reality without touching it.
But contemporary insights from quantum physics, systems theory, and the philosophy of science challenge this view. They show that observation is not neutral. Measurement changes what is measured. The very act of inquiry shapes the phenomenon under study. In other words, the observer participates in the construction of knowledge.
This doesn’t mean “anything goes.” Rather, it means that what counts as knowledge always arises within a network of relations — experimental conditions, conceptual models, embodied actions, social norms, and material constraints. There is no view from nowhere. There is only seeing-with, doing-with, knowing-with.
Knowing as Construal
This participatory view aligns with our broader relational ontology. In our previous work, we’ve drawn from systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to distinguish between:
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Experience — the flux of the world as it unfolds
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Meaning — how we construe that experience
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Knowledge — how we make shared construals enduring and accountable
In this light, science is not the passive reception of what is “already there.” It is the construal of experience under particular constraints — constraints that are empirical, conceptual, social, and technological.
A scientific theory is not a mirror but a map. And like any map, it selects, emphasises, and organises according to a purpose. The world it reveals is the world as structured by that purpose.
The Middle Voice of Knowing
To speak of science as participatory is to speak in what some call the middle voice — neither fully active nor fully passive, but co-creative. We do not simply impose form on the world (active), nor simply receive it (passive); rather, we participate in the shaping of what appears.
Science, in this view, is not the extraction of facts from a mute reality. It is a collaborative process of meaning-making. And like any such process, it demands attentiveness, humility, and care.
Looking Ahead
In the posts to come, we’ll unfold this relational view in greater detail. We’ll explore how models act as meaning potentials, how experiments instantiate possibilities, how objectivity becomes a matter of constraint rather than detachment, and how science, at its best, becomes an ethical mode of being-in-relation.
2 Objectivity as Constraint, Not Detachment
In a relational epistemology, objectivity is not about removing ourselves — it's about being accountable to what emerges between us.
The traditional image of science prizes detachment. The ideal observer is a neutral, unaffected presence — rational, disembodied, and nowhere in particular. This conception of objectivity as distance has dominated Western science since the Enlightenment.
But it’s a myth.
No observation is made from outside the world. No measurement is made from nowhere. The scientist is never separate from the system, and the knowledge they produce is never free from framing. Recognising this doesn’t undermine science — it deepens it.
What we need is not less objectivity, but a different kind: one rooted not in detachment but in constraint — a constraint that arises from the interdependence between knower and known.
From Detachment to Dialogue
In our relational view, knowledge emerges within a field of participation. The scientist is not an outsider; they are embedded. The world under study is not passive; it responds.
This doesn’t mean anything can count as knowledge. It means that what counts is shaped through dialogue — a negotiation between experimental intervention, theoretical framing, collective practice, and material resistance.
Here, objectivity is not absence of perspective, but the discipline of making one’s perspective accountable. It is about submitting our construals to shared criteria, repeatable methods, and the test of coherence. It is objectivity within relation, not beyond it.
Constraint as Enabler
What holds scientific knowledge together is not some external Archimedean point, but a system of constraints:
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Material constraints: what experiments allow and disallow
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Discursive constraints: what conceptual models make possible or impossible
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Social constraints: what communities accept as credible or absurd
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Epistemic constraints: what counts as evidence, falsification, or confirmation
These are not limitations in the pejorative sense. They are enablers of shared meaning. Without them, there is no science — only noise.
Think of a musical scale: it constrains what notes belong, but in doing so it opens space for melody. Scientific objectivity is like this — a productive constraint that makes collective understanding possible.
The Ethics of Objectivity
To pursue objectivity relationally is to take responsibility for how we are entangled with what we study. It’s an ethical stance as much as an epistemic one.
It asks:
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How are we implicated in this knowledge?
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What are we leaving out or silencing?
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Whose interests are being served?
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What forms of experience are being legitimised or excluded?
These are not threats to science. They are the conditions of its renewal.
Looking Ahead
In the next post, we’ll step back even further to ask how scientific knowledge — and knowledge more broadly — has been shaped by a deeper philosophical shift: from substance to relation. What happens when we stop thinking of the world as made of things, and begin to think of it as made of relations?
3 From Substance to Relation
What if the fundamental units of reality are not things, but ways of relating?
In the dominant metaphysical inheritance of Western science, the world is made of substances. These are self-contained, pre-existing entities that possess properties. The role of science, in this view, is to discover those properties and the laws that govern their interactions.
But this substantialist view is not the only option. Nor is it neutral. It reflects a deeper assumption: that things come first, and relations come later — as connections between things.
What if we invert that assumption?
Relation as Foundational
In a relational ontology, relations do not merely link entities — they constitute them. What something is depends on how it is related. The identity of an entity is not prior to relation, but emergent from it.
This shift may sound abstract, but it has profound implications:
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An electron has no definite position or momentum until it interacts — until a relation is instantiated.
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A gene is not an independent unit of heredity, but a node in a network of developmental, environmental, and epigenetic processes.
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A person is not an isolated subject, but a self constituted through social, linguistic, ecological, and historical relations.
These are not exceptions. They are signals that we need a different conceptual frame.
From ‘What is it?’ to ‘How does it relate?’
Substance metaphysics asks what things are. Relation metaphysics asks how they come to be.
This changes the way we understand both ontology and epistemology:
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Ontologically, the world is not composed of inert building blocks but of fields of co-emergence.
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Epistemologically, knowledge is not a passive reflection of what is, but a participatory act that helps bring something into being.
Meaning, too, is relational: it arises not from transmission, but from interaction — as we’ll explore further in the next post.
Relational Thinking in Science
Many recent developments in science already point beyond substance:
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In quantum theory, particles are excitations of a field — and only manifest through interaction.
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In ecology, no species can be understood apart from its ecosystemic relations.
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In systems biology, function emerges from networks, not isolated molecules.
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In linguistics, meaning arises from choices in a system — a set of relational oppositions, not fixed labels.
In all these cases, the unit of analysis is not a thing, but a relation — a pattern, a dynamic, a context.
From Building Blocks to Dynamic Patterns
Relational ontology invites us to stop treating wholes as the sum of parts. Instead, we attend to the patterns of organisation that give rise to both part and whole simultaneously.
This is the ontological ground of our epistemology. If what exists is inherently relational, then knowing is never outside — it is always within the weave.
And this means meaning is not carried, but brought forth. That’s where we’ll turn next.
Preview of Post 4: Meaning Is Not Carried, but Brought Forth
We’ll explore the relational nature of meaning, and why communication cannot be reduced to transmission. If the world is constituted in relation, then so is meaning — and so is knowing.
4 Meaning Is Not Carried, but Brought Forth
What if communication is not transmission, but co-creation?
We often speak as though meaning is something contained in words, ideas, or messages — like freight packed in a box, sent across space to another mind. This is the transmission model of communication, and it underlies much of our thinking in education, media, and even science.
But the relational epistemology we’re unfolding points to a very different model: meaning does not reside in signs; it emerges in their use.
Communication as Enactment
In a relational view, meaning is not pre-given. It is enacted — brought forth in context, through interaction, in real time.
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A word does not carry a fixed meaning from speaker to listener. It activates a history of meaning potentials within a social and experiential context.
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A text is not a container of authorial intent. It is a site where meanings are negotiated between readers and the semiotic resources they bring.
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A scientific model does not mirror reality. It construes a system of relationships that is always partial, always provisional, and always meaningful for someone, in some context.
Meaning, then, is a relational achievement.
Structural Coupling and Participatory Sense-Making
Biologists Maturana and Varela introduced the concept of structural coupling: living systems are not passive receivers of information. They are active participants in their own becoming. They engage with their environment in ways that change them — and change the environment in turn.
From this view, knowing and being are inseparable. We do not merely interpret the world; our interpretations are part of the world’s becoming. We bring forth meaning together — as structurally coupled beings.
This is true not only biologically, but semiotically.
Meaning Is Not Inside Words, Nor Outside Us
Language is not a conduit. It is a relational system. Its power lies not in transferring content but in co-ordinating attention and experience.
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A metaphor does not explain; it resonates.
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A scientific explanation does not dictate; it scaffolds understanding.
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A conversation does not succeed when one speaker’s intention is reproduced in another’s mind, but when something new is made possible between them.
Meaning is not recovered. It is actualised from potential in a particular context, by particular participants, through particular choices.
Implications for Knowing
If meaning is brought forth, not carried, then knowing is not retrieval — it is enactment. And this radically shifts our epistemic stance:
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We are not neutral observers but active participants.
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We are not receivers of truth but co-creators of understanding.
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We are not outside the system, looking in, but always within the field of relations that make knowledge possible.
In other words, we are observers — but as participants. And that is the theme of the next post.
Preview of Post 5: The Observer as Participant
We’ll explore what it means to collapse the false boundary between observer and observed, and why a relational epistemology cannot support the myth of objectivity without position, history, or consequence.
5 The Observer as Participant
Why there is no view from nowhere
Modern science grew in part by insisting on a clear divide between observer and observed — a legacy of Cartesian dualism that sees the knower as outside and above the known. This stance gave us objectivity, repeatability, and precision. But it also came at a cost.
A relational epistemology asks us to re-examine that stance — not to discard rigour, but to rethink what rigour means when we accept that all knowledge is situated, enacted, and co-emergent.
The Observer Enters the Frame
In quantum mechanics, this is not just a philosophical nuance — it’s a physical principle.
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The act of measurement affects what is measured.
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The wavefunction collapses not from within itself but through interaction with an observer (or apparatus).
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The “observer effect” is not a mistake in method, but a feature of reality at its most fundamental level.
To know something, we must engage with it — and in doing so, we alter both it and ourselves.
Participation Is Inescapable
This principle goes far beyond physics:
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In ecology, the observer shapes the system simply by being present.
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In linguistics, meaning arises not in utterances alone but in how they are interpreted — by particular listeners in particular contexts.
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In social science, inquiry affects the community being studied, and vice versa.
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Even in mathematics, the choice of axioms shapes what can be known.
Every observation takes place from somewhere, by someone, through some means. We are never outside the system. We are always participants in its unfolding.
Positionality and Reflexivity
A relational epistemology embraces positionality: the idea that knowledge is shaped by the position of the knower — culturally, historically, materially, and semiotically.
This does not undermine objectivity; it deepens it. Because it allows for:
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Reflexivity: knowing that you know from somewhere.
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Transparency: acknowledging the means and means-of-means through which knowledge is constituted.
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Accountability: taking responsibility for the ethical and material consequences of what you claim to know.
Science Without Illusions
This is not a call for post-truth relativism. It is a call for science without illusions — science that knows it is a human activity, embedded in relations and powered by interpretation.
Rigour is not the removal of the observer. Rigour is the honest accounting of one's participation.
The Path Ahead
If the observer is always a participant, then knowledge is not something we acquire about the world. It is something we enact with the world.
That’s the focus of the next post:
Post 6: Knowing-with, Not Knowing-about — where we explore what it means to treat knowledge not as possession, but as co-becoming.
6: Knowing-with, Not Knowing-about
Knowledge as co-becoming rather than accumulation
In most traditional accounts, knowledge is imagined as something we have — a substance we accumulate and store. The more we know about the world, the more mastery we gain over it.
But a relational epistemology asks us to reconsider that assumption. What if knowing is not a matter of possession, but of participation? What if knowledge is not a thing, but a process of becoming-with?
From Information to Intra-action
To know about something suggests a separation — a subject here, an object there. But in many domains, especially in quantum physics, this separation does not hold.
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In Karen Barad’s terms, we do not observe from outside but intra-act from within.
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Knowing arises not from standing apart, but from engaging in a relationship that brings both knower and known into being.
You do not come to know a forest by mapping it from a satellite. You come to know it by walking among its trees, breathing its air, listening to its rhythms — becoming attuned to its patterns of life.
Situated Knowledge
Feminist epistemologist Donna Haraway called this “situated knowledge.” There is no universal view from nowhere — only partial perspectives from somewhere. But that somewhere is not a limitation; it is a possibility-space. It is how knowledge becomes meaningful.
To know-with is to:
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Learn through entanglement, not detachment.
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Let the object of knowledge transform you, not just yield to your analysis.
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Accept that knowing is a form of mutual becoming — both epistemic and ethical.
In Practice: Knowing-with in Everyday Life
This is not just philosophical. It affects how we relate to:
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Other people: Do we treat others as data points or as co-authors of meaning?
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The natural world: Do we extract knowledge from it, or enter into a relationship with it?
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Language: Do we use it to transmit information, or to bring forth shared understanding?
Knowing-with recognises that meaning is not delivered. It is co-enacted.
Knowledge Is a Verb
The shift from knowing-about to knowing-with is the shift from:
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Objectivity as distance to objectivity as accountability.
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Truth as correspondence to truth as resonance.
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Knowledge as a noun to knowledge as a verb — an unfolding process of becoming-with.
And that brings us to the final post in this series:
Post 7: Knowledge as Ethical Encounter — where we explore the responsibilities that come with knowing in a co-emergent world.
7 Knowledge as Ethical Encounter
Responsibility in a co-emergent world
If knowing is not about standing apart but becoming-with, then every act of knowing is also an ethical act. In a relational epistemology, knowledge is not neutral. It is world-forming — it shapes the realities we inhabit, and the relations we participate in.
What Are We Bringing Into Being?
Every time we engage with the world — observe, interpret, represent — we help bring something forth. We never simply reflect a reality that is already there. We are part of what is actualised.
This raises a profound ethical question:
What kind of world does my knowing help to bring about?
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Are we enacting a world of extraction, control, and objectification?
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Or are we enacting a world of reciprocity, care, and mutual recognition?
Knowing Is Never Innocent
This doesn’t mean we must always have perfect knowledge. It means we are responsible for how we participate.
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In science: Are we treating the Earth as object, or as partner?
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In media: Are we reporting facts, or reinforcing frames?
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In education: Are we delivering content, or cultivating capacity for shared meaning?
Knowing involves response-ability — the ability to respond to the other not as object, but as co-constitutive presence.
Towards an Ethics of Entanglement
To know ethically is not to withdraw from complexity. It is to accept that complexity is relational, and that our own position in it matters.
A relational epistemology calls us to:
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Be accountable for the standpoints we occupy.
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Be attentive to the ways we shape what we study.
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Be humble about what can be known without participation.
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Be open to transformation through the process of knowing itself.
Knowledge as Care
Ultimately, relational knowing is a practice of care — not sentimentality, but sustained attention, receptivity, and respect for the otherness of the other. It is grounded in the recognition that:
To know something truly is to be changed by it.
A New Path of Knowing
With this, the series reaches its conclusion. We have traced a path from objectivist models of knowledge toward a more relational, participatory, and ethical understanding.
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From knowing-about to knowing-with
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From observation to entanglement
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From objectivity as detachment to accountability as care
In a co-emergent world, knowing is not just something we do. It is something we become — together.
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