Introducing “The Whole Story”
Today there is a need for conversation involving science, common sense, and philosophical reasoning.
In our age of public opinion polls and shifting positions on moral issues and social policy, science has become the handmaiden of ideology. Scientists are made to direct their analysis and conclusions to a predetermined set of ethical considerations about the world around us. For many years the conversation on truth has attempted to free science and scientists from the metaphysical shackles of worn-out theories on human nature. Although movements like empiricism and feminism have done much to sharpen our commitment to certain basic standards of human living, they and their cousins have left science naked, unable to contextualize the rich conclusions drawn from scientific discovery into the fabric of a well-lived life.
Yet there exists a desire in our own generation to explore scientific data and its corollary conclusions within a context in which outcomes don’t cater to desired results. The scientific community, by and large, has for too long construed its findings per its own philosophical prejudices. Perhaps the search for hard and necessary truths has saddled science with a burden far beyond its—or any intellectual discipline’s—power to bear: The quest for a utopia of ideas, wherein the only pursuit that remains is one of conforming our lived experience to discovered, hard, data-driven truth.
Enter The Whole Story (TWS). Originally launched 18 months ago as Reproductive Research Audit (RRA), The Whole Story expands and focuses the conversation between scientific pursuits and the broader human desire for truth. It celebrates a view toward inculcating and sustaining a narrative discourse that neither expects data to yield hard truths nor imposes metaphysical or moral frameworks upon the subtle realities of discovery. The flashpoint for many of these conversations lies precisely at those points on which passion in the public square is most inflamed: issues like reproductive health, contraception, abortion, elder care, pain management, psychological illness, and public education concerning all of these issues. (Passionate) disagreement in these arguments is understandable; the non-dialogue between science and philosophy ensues the erosion of a common framework for understanding such issues. Sentiment for the good replaced dialogue in search of truth, and the referee (common sense) was overwhelmed by the deluge of unexamined consensus in favor of certain narrow commitments.
The Whole Story does not and cannot seek to restore a common philosophical framework; that is a task for generations. What TWS can offer—and what has been offered through RRA—is an invitation. We invite scientists of all disciplines—from the natural sciences in biology, chemistry, medicine, and mathematics, to the social sciences of sociology, history, data analysis, and anthropology—to converse fluently with each other. We provide a forum within which members of these discipline-communities can present scientific conclusions, theories, and ideas to the public square, catalyzing honest conversations.
In some respect we are asking our contributing scientists to be boldly humble: Present your findings, insights, and even anecdotes, but be prepared to draw conclusions with less certainty about the world than you are used to invoking. We ask this of them because we see that the search for wisdom collectively begins with a common sense commitment that none of us sees the whole story in our own little experiential corner of the world.
Thus, TWS relaunches a project committed to bringing wisdom to bear in the public square. Conversational difference can bespeak not just disagreement but a mutual lack of understanding. This lack of understanding is not simply unfortunate; it is dangerous among our leadership class—politicians, journalists, educators, and scientists, among others—who make decisions, especially hard decisions, not just on biased and incomplete data and analysis, but ultimately on conclusions that do not serve the collective human wisdom handed down and refined by discovery through the ages.
Here at TWS we invite authors in all fields of sciences—physical and social—to contribute to the ongoing conversation whereby science serves the pursuit of truth and the experience of common sense informs our quest for truth. The Whole Story hopes that this wisdom gleaned from discovery and honest analysis will ultimately serve to expand the conversation and help people who might be on opposite ends of ideological lines to see their own biases and the limits to their own understanding.
Science authentically serves the human good, and it should not be used to morph it toward an end for which humanity was not intended. Will you join in our conversation?
