Research once began with curiosity—the deep urge to ask why and explore the unknown. Today, much of science feels disconnected from its purpose, shaped instead by predefined project frameworks, funding priorities, and standardized methods. This shift risks creating research without meaning. From the ancient origins of scientific thinking in philosophers like Thales, Socrates, and Aristotle, to modern concerns about how the academic system and funding pressures influence research quality, we explore what happened to science. By understanding the forgotten roots of inquiry and recognizing the dangers of excessive standardization in academia, we can begin rethinking research today—restoring the lost spirit of science and ensuring that inquiry once again drives discovery.
This article is not just a critique. It is a call to remember what science once was—and what it still could be. Because when we lose the spirit of inquiry, we lose more than methods or funding—we lose the very meaning of science.
Science Without Questions: How Research Has Lost Its Spirit
Introduction
Once, research was driven by curiosity and questions. Big questions. Urgent ones. Wonder was at the core—about the world, about life, about what it means to know. Today, something fundamental has changed. Research focuses more on results, papers, and funding—the spirit of inquiry has thinned. The soul of science is fading.
The problem with the deliverable-driven inquiry
In earlier times, to do research meant to wonder and to seek. Today, it increasingly means to deliver. Researchers no longer define their own questions. Instead, many are tied to project frameworks already decided by others—by funding calls, strategic roadmaps, institutional priorities. The shift from questioning to compliance is subtle but profound. It changes the nature of thinking.
From Seeking to Serving — A Culture of Execution
Too often, researchers become executors of other people’s questions. Particularly in junior positions, they may be hired into roles where the problem is already defined, and their task is merely to solve it using pre-approved methods. This model produces competent technicians—but it does not foster scientific thinkers. ➡️ Whole episode on the employment issue
Fragmentation of Thought
Research today is often divided into narrowly scoped projects with clearly defined deliverables. What gets lost is the connective tissue: the overarching problems, the philosophical framing, the conceptual coherence. Researchers specialize early, publish often, and seldom step back. The system rewards quantity, not depth. The result is a patchwork of findings, but few maps.
Methods Without Meaning
Scientific methods have become increasingly standardized, but not always understood. Young researchers are trained to follow procedures without questioning why they are used, or whether they fit the problem. This leads to a form of epistemic automation: data is collected, analyzed, and published, yet the deeper purpose is lost. It is method without method-ology—a technical ritual devoid of inquiry.
Invisible Pressures
In academia, the pressure to publish, to secure grants, to produce measurable outcomes is immense. But these pressures don't simply shape output; they shape thought. Researchers adapt their questions to what can be funded. Risky questions—questions that require time, failure, uncertainty—are avoided. The cost is not just personal exhaustion. It is intellectual shallowness. ➡️ Full article on that issue
The Soul of Inquiry
What is lost is not just individual autonomy, but the soul of inquiry itself. Science, scholarship begins with discomfort, with not-knowing, with the courage to ask: Why? What if? Could it be otherwise? The flattening of research into deliverables turns questions into checkboxes. It drains intellectual life of its vitality.
Fragments of Inquiry — A Historical Approach from Thales to Kant
Let’s remember what research once was. In ancient times, inquiry was central—a creative act of questioning reality. One figure exemplifying this is Thales of Miletus (ca. 620–546 BCE), often considered the first mathematician-scientist. He asked concrete questions: What is the basic substance of the world? His answer—water—was not myth, but a hypothesis based on observation and rational argument. Thales demonstrated geometry as a method: measuring pyramids by their shadows and deducing theorems without invoking divine causation.
Socrates: The Art of Questioning
Socrates left no written works and offered no ready-made theories. His scientific “weapon” was the question. Through his Socratic method, he encouraged his interlocutors to examine and challenge their own assumptions—not to humiliate or disprove them, but to collaboratively move closer to truth. This attitude—that questioning itself lies at the heart of all knowledge—remains a powerful reminder for us today. In much of modern research, this spirit is in danger of being lost: rather than exploring open-ended questions, we often see pre-packaged answers, blindly applied methods, and hypotheses treated as final products. Socrates teaches us that science and knowledge remain alive only when we have the courage to keep asking.
Following Socrates, Aristotle
(384–322 BCE) brought inquiry to a new level. He believed that science
begins by grasping what is known to us and then tracing the underlying
reasons—through systematic observation, classification, and reasoning.
His doctrine of the four causes emphasized that understanding a thing
requires explaining its reason: material, formal, efficient, and final
causes. In works like Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics, he argues
that knowledge requires identifying causes—not just collecting
data. Aristotle thus embedded questioning into the heart of scientific
method.
Centuries later, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) reframed
inquiry by examining the limits of human understanding. He posed core
epistemological questions—What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I
hope?—and insisted that all knowledge begins with inquiry into how we
come to experience the world. His Critique of Pure Reason laid out a
philosophical framework showing that science depends on both empirical
observation and critical reason, not mere data collection. Kant’s work
reminds us that research must begin with why and how before it attempts
to answer what—or it risks creating hollow knowledge.
A Way Forward
If research is to matter again—not just administratively, but existentially—it must recover its source: the question. We need room for slow science. For risky science. For questions that don’t fit into boxes. The future of inquiry depends not just on better methods, but on remembering why we research at all.
References
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Authored by Rebekka Brandt