It’s not a secret that the sciences exist because there are questions in the community that need answers. How can pneumonia be avoided? How to make cars more efficient? How to move on from a failed marriage? How to appear and be treated as a professional in a corporate setting? The results of any scientific pursuit will directly or indirectly impact the community.

To pursue answers in any topic of interest, academics and scientists rely on the time-tested scientific method. After they ask their most crucial questions, they review the existing literature on the topic; the answers might already be there. They talk to those who delved in the topic before them just to get valuable insights and direction. Eventually, they settle on a particular way of attacking the issue, and they mine their answers from there.

Universities and other academic institutions often hold conferences so that researchers can converge to share what they have uncovered. Sharing is rightfully a normal thing in the scientific community. After all, an idea that’s left unshared is useless. It can never be refined nor transformed into something more understandable and useful.

Conferences will become a more useful platform for exchanging ideas if they do not limit their attendants to scholars from a specific school of thought only. Read on to know why.

A Multi-Perspectival Conference Significantly Expands Horizons

We know that there a million ways to solve any specific problem. But we are human, and there are limits to our capacities and attention. As a result, we settle for a carefully chosen method.  While this is not necessarily bad, it’s very limiting as the chosen path may not be applicable to others. Whether we admit it or not, we are bound by our circumstance, and our contexts often are strong determinants of behavior. Those in situations that differ from ours might have other means of achieving things.

Hence, inviting scholars who espouse other perspectives and completely different trains of thought will effectively expand the list of solutions to a problem. Consequently, the conference and the insights gained from it will appear more appealing to a much wider audience.

Take the study of car accidents as an example. If only engineers converge to talk about how vehicles can be made safer, the conference will surely miss out on one of the most important aspects: humans. The issue needs social scientists, especially if the goal is to develop accident prevention measures and other car accident resources that the community understands and utilizes. A seasoned car accident lawyer can also be called on for their inputs on policy application and how the legal community, in general, is responding to new knowledge.

Exchanges with scholars from other schools of thoughts lead to professional growth

The scientific stance that we espouse, while practical and valid, will have its own set of blind spots. In psychology, for example, there are scholars who subscribe to behaviorism. Basically, they believe that behavioral repetition is actually a function of whether or not the behavior is punished or reinforced. A behavior that’s reinforced gets repeated. A behavior that’s punished will be suppressed.

However, this particular perspective cannot explain why people still persist even if they are in pain. It also falls short in explaining why people exhibit different behaviors in different contexts. These are dilemmas confronted and given convincing answers by those from the cognitive side of psychology.

Simply put, human behavior is a multi-faceted thing. It can be predicted by one perspective, but such a perspective will never be enough to fully explain it. Hence, any advocate of science should learn how to open themselves to other views not only to develop more practical ideas but also to enrich themselves as professionals.