I am an internal auditor by profession. Auditors look over their colleagues' shoulders to see whether they are complying with all relevant regulations in their work and whether their business processes are appropriate. Sometimes we discover that the audited parties are not even aware that they have ignored the relevant regulations so far. In such situations, it takes many conversations to make the auditees realize that they have completely overlooked relevant aspects.
In my work as an auditor, a passage from the Bible often comes to my mind. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asked: 'Why do you see the mote that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the plank that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the mote out of your eye,’ when there is the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the mote out of your brother's eye." Apparently, it is easier for us to discover blind spots in our fellow human beings than in our own world view. It's damn hard to see for yourself what you can't see. This requires either the advice of others or critical self-reflection.
Due to some turmoil in the middle of my life, usually referred to as a mid-life crisis, I felt compelled to look for my own blind spots. My first impulse was to say: I don't have any notable blind spots! But on honest reflection, that couldn't really be the case, because I discovered motes in the eyes of all my fellow human beings that blocked their view of certain aspects. Why shouldn't other people discover such motes in my eyes? It was only after a long and sometimes painful search that I became aware of some systematic blind spots in my own perception. Without outside help, I would hardly have discovered them.
It is a natural psychological mechanism that we ignore the limitations of our own perception. This also applies to science. Scientists are also human beings who are subject to cognitive limitations. Scientific publications are therefore critically reviewed by colleagues for errors. However, this peer review does not help against the collective blind spots of an entire specialist community. And there are no external reviewers in science. Who should be able to monitor the highly specialized work of researchers from the outside?
Our current state of knowledge cannot have been the last word. Just as the generations before us believed in false theories and convictions, our current theories certainly also contain many errors. We recognize the motes in the eyes of our ancestors in all their sharpness - but where are the planks in our own eyes? As no outsider can show us these planks in front of our collective eyes, we have to actively search for them ourselves. If we set out to examine the current state of knowledge with an informed but unbiased eye, we will come across a plethora of peculiarities and oddities. Since it has often been the case in the course of science that inexplicable findings and logical contradictions have become the starting point for new considerations, I am convinced that an examination of the peculiarities and contradictions in today's knowledge can lead to new explanatory approaches. Let's look for the planks in front of our eyes!
Yours,
Matthias Kölbel
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