I’ve been reading The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson. The authors argue that science faces a fundamental challenge: the observer can never be completely separated from what is observed. They call for a broader scientific culture that recognizes human experience not as something outside nature, but as one of the ways nature comes to understand itself.
That idea was on my mind when I attended a recent presentation hosted by the UniMind Academic Journal Club.
The speaker, Tibisay Estupiñan, is a microbiologist working in safety and quality management in the pharmaceutical, food, and beverage industries. She also grew up in a community on Colombia’s Pacific coast where ayahuasca traditions are woven into cultural and spiritual life.
Her talk explored two different systems of knowledge: Western science and Indigenous traditions. Rather than presenting them as opposites, she examined the tensions, overlaps, and possibilities for dialogue between them. What happens when a practice rooted in ritual, community, and generations of lived experience becomes the subject of scientific investigation? Can different ways of knowing coexist without one claiming authority over the other?
Listening to Tibisay, I was reminded of the questions raised in The Blind Spot. If science is ultimately a human activity, then perhaps understanding the world requires us to pay attention not only to what can be measured, but also to the cultural and experiential contexts in which knowledge is created.
This event sketch is a visual summary of Tibisay’s presentation created for UniMind.