When Science No Longer Belongs to a Single Brain

Knowledge, Feelings, and the Emergence of Shared Discovery

The Moment When No One Knew the Answer

Imagine five researchers standing before a screen.

A graph displays an unexpected result.

The first researcher feels excited. Perhaps they have discovered something important.

The second is skeptical. There may have been an error in data collection.

The third recognizes a pattern previously observed in another experiment.

The fourth remains silent.

The fifth asks:

What if we are asking the wrong question?

Something changes at that moment.

Perhaps the excitement fades. Perhaps the skepticism finds an explanation. Perhaps a hypothesis that once seemed sufficient must now be transformed.

None of them possessed everything needed to understand the result beforehand.

And yet something begins to emerge from their differences.

Who made the discovery?

The person who noticed it first?

The one who questioned it?

Or the one who made it possible to formulate a question that had never existed before?

Doing Is Science

At BrainLatam, we have developed an analogy among three capacities we recognize within the Body-Territory.

Religion imagines. Science acts. Politics evaluates.

These are not universal definitions of these activities. They are functional analogies for investigating how we imagine possibilities, act, and judge consequences.

We call Doing–Science–Executive the capacity to act upon the present available to us.

To investigate, experiment, observe, compare, and modify our actions.

Imagine a child trying to cross a small stream.

The child observes the stones.

Imagines a path.

Attempts to place a foot on one.

Realizes that a particular surface is slippery.

Reorganizes the movement.

The child does not need to know the word Science to learn from experience.

Likewise, we do not need to belong to a scientific institution to formulate questions and investigate possibilities.

But the scientific method adds fundamental requirements: controls, documentation, confrontation with evidence, reproducibility when applicable, and openness to criticism.

Doing becomes scientific investigation when we organize our experiences so that others can also examine and challenge them.

The Present Does Not Obey Our Hypotheses

Let us return to the laboratory.

The team expected one result.

They found another.

We can ignore it.

We can select only the data that confirm our expectations.

Or we can investigate the difference.

This choice involves more than technical procedures.

There is an emotional experience.

The frustration of discovering a mistake.

The fear of losing months of work.

The joy of recognizing an unexpected possibility.

The embarrassment of presenting an incorrect interpretation.

Feeling demonstrates that we are experiencing something, but it does not demonstrate that our interpretation is true.

For this reason, emotions do not need to be excluded from Science.

We need to recognize them without automatically turning them into evidence.

Trust may allow us to express doubts.

Curiosity may sustain further attempts.

But excessive confidence can also make mistakes harder to recognize.

When Disagreement Produces Knowledge

Hanne De Jaegher and Argentine researcher Ezequiel Di Paolo proposed the concept of participatory sense-making.

This approach allows us to investigate how interaction itself can transform the meanings constructed by participants.

Imagine a researcher presenting a hypothesis.

Another researcher identifies an overlooked variable.

She reconsiders the experiment.

A third person suggests a different comparison condition.

The original question is no longer the same.

This does not mean that three brains have become one larger brain.

Each Body-Territory preserves its own experiences.

But interaction can generate paths that none of them had anticipated individually.

Truth may exist between Us without belonging exclusively to any one of Us.

And disagreement does not need to threaten belonging.

It may constitute one of its most important possibilities.

Who Can Change the Research?

Researchers also occupy different positions.

A principal investigator knows the equipment.

A student notices a problem during data collection.

A technician recognizes interference in the signal.

A participant describes an experience that the protocol failed to represent.

Who will be heard?

Imagine that everyone must follow the interpretation of the most experienced researcher.

Perhaps the team will work quickly.

But important information may go unnoticed.

Now imagine that any team member can present a well-founded observation and request verification.

The organization of the research can change.

Scientific leadership should not mean a permanent right to determine which questions are allowed to exist.

Within the Jiwasa hypothesis, a coordinating role may change according to emerging needs and contributions.

Noticing a difference, communicating it, and reorganizing collective action does not require becoming the owner of the discovery.

Knowledge Also Emerges From the Territory

Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals-Borda developed participatory action research as a way of integrating investigation, knowledge, and social transformation.

In this approach, communities do not need to remain merely the objects of research.

They can participate in defining problems and producing knowledge about their own conditions of existence.

Imagine researchers investigating water quality in a particular territory.

Residents recognize changes in color, odors, and periods of scarcity.

Researchers have instruments to measure substances and compare results.

Neither experience needs to automatically replace the other.

Lived knowledge can help formulate questions.

Measurements can confirm, correct, or expand interpretations.

Those who live with a problem can participate in the Science that seeks to understand it.

This does not eliminate methodological requirements.

It expands the possibilities of investigation.

When Science Learns to Listen to Feelings

Researcher Amy Edmondson investigated how psychological safety relates to learning within teams.

Her work identified associations between people's perceived ability to take interpersonal risks and their learning behaviors.

Imagine a student who notices an error.

If the student fears humiliation, they may remain silent.

If they can express their observation, the group can investigate the problem.

But welcoming a question does not mean accepting every conclusion.

It means allowing the question to be examined.

A Science that does not welcome doubts may become efficient at repetition while remaining limited in discovery.

We must also recognize that feelings of belonging can produce conformity.

A laboratory may be welcoming and still resist interpretations that challenge its established convictions.

For this reason, trust and disagreement need to coexist.

Who Owns a Discovery?

Brian Uzzi and colleagues analyzed millions of scientific publications and identified relationships between scientific impact and combinations of conventional knowledge with unusual elements.

The study also examined the contribution of research teams to uncommon combinations.

This does not demonstrate that every collective investigation is superior to individual research.

But it supports the importance of studying how different forms of knowledge may produce new associations.

Perhaps a discovery begins when someone recognizes a possibility.

Perhaps it continues when another person demonstrates its limitations.

And perhaps it acquires new meaning when a third person identifies an unexpected application.

Scientific authorship must recognize actual contributions.

But knowledge also depends on instruments, institutions, previous experiences, and people who often remain invisible in published results.

Recognizing authorship does not require declaring exclusive ownership of truth.

Can We Measure Collective Doing–Science?

Imagine an experiment involving five researchers.

First, each participant individually analyzes ambiguous scientific data.

We record their hypotheses, confidence, feelings, and decisions.

Next, everyone analyzes the same data under fixed leadership.

Finally, they conduct a cooperative investigation in which any participant can modify the question, request controls, and propose new experiments.

We record EEG, fNIRS, ECG, heart rate variability, respiration, and behavior.

We need to distinguish similar responses to shared stimuli from genuinely reciprocal changes.

Brain synchronization, by itself, does not demonstrate shared discovery.

We can investigate who modified a particular hypothesis, which evidence was used, and how decisions changed.

But we need to add another stage.

After the encounter, each participant returns to working individually.

Can they now formulate questions they had never imagined before?

When We Transforms One

This may be our most important experimental question.

It is not enough to discover whether five people can solve a problem together.

We need to investigate whether their shared experience changes the repertoire each person takes away.

Perhaps one researcher learns to consider previously overlooked variables.

Another develops greater tolerance for uncertainty.

A third recognizes new possibilities for collaboration.

Negative outcomes are also possible: conformity, dependence on leadership, or reduced autonomy.

At BrainLatam, we call Human Quorum Sensing the hypothesis that certain conditions of interaction may reorganize individual and collective possibilities.

This is not equivalent to the molecular mechanism of bacterial communication.

Nor does it demonstrate an independent collective consciousness.

We propose investigating whether a We can expand the possibilities of Being for each One, even after the encounter has ended.

Science, Executive, and the Jiwasa-State

Now imagine that the researchers are investigating a problem affecting their own Biome.

Science produces results.

But who decides what to do with them?

In BrainLatam's analogy, Religion–Legislative represents the capacity to imagine futures and formulate rules that may make them possible.

Doing–Science–Executive represents experimenting with actions in the present and observing their consequences.

Politics–Judiciary represents evaluating outcomes, conflicts, values, and possibilities for correction.

We call the circulation among these capacities Religare.

Within the Jiwasa-State, none of them should belong exclusively to a single authority.

The Body-Territory remains an agent of perception, investigation, and decision-making.

A public policy should not operate merely because we believe in it. We need to observe its results.

And we must allow those who live with its consequences to participate in its evaluation.

The Science That Continues After the Encounter

Let us return to the laboratory.

The graph remains on the screen.

The excited researcher still feels curious.

The skeptical colleague has found a possible explanation.

The previously silent student has proposed a new experiment.

Now everyone can follow different paths.

Perhaps they will never reach the same interpretation.

This does not necessarily mean they have failed.

If their hypotheses are confronted with evidence, they may construct knowledge that was previously unavailable.

The wonder of shared Science does not lie in making everyone think alike. It lies in allowing each encounter to transform what we are capable of asking, feeling, and doing.

Perhaps scientific discovery does not belong to a single brain.

But every Body-Territory can participate in it without ceasing to Be.

And our question remains open:

Does collective investigation expand the repertoire of hypotheses, feelings, and actions that each researcher can subsequently develop when returning to investigate alone?

Annotated References

De Jaegher, Hanne; Di Paolo, Ezequiel (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6, 485–507.

Develops the concept of participatory sense-making, providing a framework for investigating how interaction transforms meaning without eliminating individual autonomy.

Fals-Borda, Orlando (1987). The Application of Participatory Action-Research in Latin America. International Sociology, 2(4).

Introduces the Latin American tradition of participatory action research, integrating knowledge, action, and community participation in investigating lived conditions.

Fals-Borda, Orlando; Rahman, Muhammad Anisur (eds.) (1991). Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action Research.

Examines the democratization of knowledge production through participatory research experiences across different territories.

Edmondson, Amy (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Investigates the relationship between psychological safety and team learning, helping us understand conditions in which doubts and mistakes can be openly discussed.

Uzzi, Brian; Mukherjee, Satyam; Stringer, Michael; Jones, Benjamin (2013). Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact. Science, 342(6157), 468–472.

Analyzes conventional and unusual combinations of scientific knowledge and their relationships with impact and collaborative research.

Woolley, Anita Williams; Chabris, Christopher; Pentland, Alex; Hashmi, Nada; Malone, Thomas (2010). Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. Science, 330(6004), 686–688.

Investigates small-group performance across different tasks. Its findings on collective intelligence and associated factors have motivated further research and debate.

Daston, Lorraine; Galison, Peter (2007). Objectivity. Zone Books.

Historically examines how different ideals of objectivity and scientific judgment developed, helping distinguish empirical evidence from interpretation.

Maturana, Humberto; Varela, Francisco (1984). El árbol del conocimiento: las bases biológicas del entendimiento humano. Editorial Universitaria.

A foundational Chilean contribution to understanding cognition, the organization of living systems, and the history of interactions between organisms and their environments.

Cionek, Jackson. Religare — Religiosidade Plena em um Estado Democrático, Laico e de Direito.

Provides the philosophical basis for the original analogy among the capacities to imagine possibilities, act in the present, and evaluate consequences, here associated with Religion, Science, and Politics.

BrainLatam (2026). Completude do Movimento.

Develops the original Completeness of Movement hypothesis, addressing perception, mobilization, action, feedback, and the reorganization of possibilities of Being.

Scientific note: Participatory research, shared sense-making, and certain aspects of collective performance have empirical foundations. The Doing–Science–Executive analogy, Human Quorum Sensing, and the Jiwasa-State are original BrainLatam proposals. The cited studies do not demonstrate that neural synchronization produces a collective consciousness or that collaboration necessarily expands each researcher's future individual capabilities.

BrainLatam | W44/2026 · Shared Knowledge · Emotions · Participatory Science · Human Quorum Sensing · Jiwasa-State