Investment in science is a pillar for any dynamic, equitable modern society, and promoting scientific literacy across all levels of society can help foster innovation, dialogue, and consensus that crosses disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Science also helps to uncover answers to foundational questions that have captivated, confounded, and divided our species for millennia. But what is “science,” and what kind of “evidence” ensures that an approach is scientific?
If we take “science” to broadly mean, in its purest sense, a “dynamic search for the truth,” or more explicitly, “the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence,” as the Science Council aptly defines it, then science extends beyond the established, highly specialized disciplines of reductionist natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, geoscience, and space science) that have been so successful in fostering our understanding of our planet and the cosmos. Under this definition, science also includes the rigorous data-driven (qualitative and quantitative) social sciences, the inherently non-reductionist “holistic” sciences such as ecological and Earth system sciences, and the budding interdisciplinary field of complex systems science, as well as robust traditional knowledge systems based on multi-generational experiences, observations, and reasoning.
As with science, “evidence” can mean a lot of things as well, including primary research, pre-existing data, past and planned experiments, and the referencing of peer-reviewed publications and primary sources. It can also include local and traditional knowledge, thought experiments, theoretical proofs, contemplation, verifiable personal experience, and empirical observation.
Broadening and weaving together these forms of scientific evidence holds the potential to address complex, interconnected global challenges and explain deep mysteries that could help unify our polarized societies around foundational understandings.
Foundational Questions
Foundational questions can transcend the divides of generations and cultures:
- How did the Universe begin and what came before it?
- What is the structure and composition of the cosmos and why is our Universe the way it is?
- What conditions make life and consciousness possible, and are we alone in the Universe?
- Who and what are we, where did we come from, and where are we going?
- What is our relationship with the natural and artificial world?
- What is the nature of reality, truth, meaning, and time?
Cosmology, physics, and evolutionary biology have shed a piercing light on many of these big questions that were long unanswerable scientifically, while opening the door to new foundational questions and robust theoretical and empirical methods for answering them.
“Making the arena where physics takes place, which is spacetime, into a probabilistic concept, is something that is making our heads explode,” says Argentine-American theoretical physicist Jorge Pullin, a pioneer in loop quantum gravity theory who currently works at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Explore the full InterDialogue with Jorge Pullin.
But despite such astounding advances in observation and understanding, established scientific frameworks based on reductionism have inherent limitations. To answer questions related to the origin of life, consciousness, and large-scale structures, for example, we may require complex systems science, which explores the interconnected whole. Furthermore, any serious deep dive into questions concerning the nature of reality, truth, and meaning cannot ignore philosophical and metaphysical inquiries, both contemporary and ancient.
James Webb Space Telescope image of the heart of the Messier 74 spiral galaxy, or the “Phantom Galaxy,” showing gas filaments and early star formation. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team.
Fusing these varied perspectives on foundational questions into broad evidence-based research and dialogue may lead us to surprising answers, or even more exciting questions.
Complexity, Interdisciplinarity, and Intercultural Dialogue
As an undergraduate research assistant in theoretical astrophysics, I was given some profound advice that never left me: to cultivate a flexible, adaptive mind and to maintain broad interests in science. In other words, to be more of a generalist than a specialist. My initial broad interest in foundational astrophysics and cosmology has since evolved into working in and fostering interdisciplinary research and evidence-based intercultural dialogue.
Explore the full InterDialogue with Ingo Allekotte.
Western science and much of our modern existence are built upon linear thinking, specialization, and reductionism. This has been a very successful method for scientific discovery, while propelling our species into advanced technological status, but it only shines a light on a small part of reality. The future of great scientific discoveries and innovation may lie within the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of complex systems science, which bridges disparate fields of medicine, neuroscience, epidemiology, language, ecology, biology, economics, social and urban networks, particle physics, cosmology, and much more.
“For having complex communication between humans, you have to be in the frontier between extreme chaos and very regular behaviors,” says Constantino Tsallis – a pioneer in the field of complex systems science and the discoverer of non-additive “Tsallis” entropy. “In that frontier is where biology emerges, where economics emerges, where complexity emerges.”
Tsallis initially demonstrated the interdisciplinary nature of his work to me in 2022, through publications from disparate fields that built upon his nonextensive statistical mechanics framework. This first meeting took place in his office at the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF) in Rio de Janeiro, which is fittingly framed by portraits of Ludwig Boltzmann and Albert Einstein. Many of these publications have since been synthesized into a review article, “Non-additive entropies and statistical mechanics at the edge of chaos: a bridge between natural and social sciences” (republished to The InterPlex), and were also recently presented by Tsallis during a conference that I had the pleasure of being in attendance for, held at the complex systems institute that he founded, INCT-SC.
Explore the full InterDialogue with Constantino Tsallis.
Our world, and ultimately the entire cosmos, is filled with countless interacting, interdependent components. In complex systems—such as neural, socio-economic and information networks, as well as Earth systems, ecology and large-scale cosmological structures—phenomena surface that cannot be understood by the methods of reductionism. These include, but are not limited to, emergence and self-organization; order and chaos; synchrony and scale-independent patterns; phase transitions, criticality, and feedback loops; resilience and adaptation; and nonlinear dynamics.
Explore the full InterDialogue with Rafael Hurtado.
Complexity takes a holistic approach to interconnected nonlinear systems and can be informed by both modern science and traditional worldviews. Viewing, researching, and understanding the integrated whole as greater than the sum of its parts—as many Indigenous and traditional cultures do—may hold the key to addressing some of our most urgent and foundational challenges and questions. These range from climate change and ecosystem collapse to the emergence of consciousness, life, and the origins of our universe.
“I think consciousness is a product of complexity, and indeed the human brain is one of the most complex systems that exist in nature,” says Luiz Davidovich, a Brazilian theoretical physicist and science advocate, whose research has focused primarily on quantum information and quantum optics. “Of course, there are also the brains of animals, and they have consciousness. It’s arrogant to talk (only) about human consciousness because consciousness, part of it, is a product of evolution.”
Explore the full InterDialogue with Luiz Davidovich.
In my experience working with Indigenous Peoples, and through extensive intercultural dialogue, it is consistently at the intersection of ecology, complex systems science, traditional worldviews, empirical observation, education, and foundational questions of origin and reality that actionable common ground is found and built upon. As Marcelino Sánchez Noé, an Indigenous community leader of the Tikuna people of the Colombian Amazon, argues, “We Indigenous Peoples have our knowledge, which surely, from a scientific perspective, can be described as high-level. So, I believe the meeting point that can allow us to understand each other is being able to generate intercultural dialogues.”
Explore the full Interdialogue with Marcelino Sánchez Noé.
Evidence-based dialogue establishes the mutual respect and understanding necessary to implement interdisciplinary and intercultural projects with broad socio-ecological implications, from alternative energy initiatives and integrating traditional and modern medicine (such as vaccines) to helping to protect the Amazon Rainforest from wide-scale deforestation.
Learning from and supporting Indigenous Peoples and the ecosystems they coevolved with is a vital part of maintaining a healthy living planet. Our planet is a complex, dynamic living system. Scaling up from single cells to ecosystems, and regional climatic and biogeochemical cycles to entire self-regulating Earth systems (“Gaia”), the web of life is woven together by trillions of interconnections.
Despite our species’s inclination to alter and exploit our diverse and resilient home, humans are part of the natural world and live within socio-ecological systems. Uncovering the interdependencies that make life as we know it possible, through science and intercultural collaboration, will help to inform broad strategies aimed at protecting our privileged place in the cosmos.
“With science we can find intercultural meeting points and interscientific convergence,” says Teyrungümü Torres Zalabata, an Indigenous Arhuaco physicist from Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Teyrungümü Torres Zalabata defends his masters thesis in particle physics at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Credit: Facultad de Ciencia – UNAL Bogota.
The Local, Regional, and Global Consequences of Distrusting and Undermining Science
There are many ingrained issues with the current scientific research and education ecosystem on a global scale. From geographic, cultural, gender, and publishing biases and inequities to rigid boundaries between disciplines, to overspecialization and a strong disconnect from the general public due to ineffective science communication, to the misuse of scientific discoveries for the development of destructive and exploitative technologies. “I still believe in science and in justice. But I no longer think that power can be shared equitably in the current system,” writes Spanish landscape ecologist Dolors Armenteras in her powerful recent commentary for Nature, after working for decades in Colombia.
But we have entered a divisive and dangerous epoch in which the many issues of the established scientific education, research, and information ecosystem have become amplified, and addressing the precarious state of science and evidence is critical—not only for researchers and research institutions, but for all human and non-human life alike.
Anti-scientific rhetoric, scientific denialism, and deliberate, efficiently spread misinformation breed a polarized environment where reality becomes subjective and science is categorically mistrusted and devalued. This, in turn, makes it easier to confuse, disinterest, or even foster hostility towards science in sectors of society, to discredit scientists, and for anti-scientific governments to defund scientific truth-seeking.
“Denialism is an intentional pseudo-science, (anti-scientific) people put the wrong data to convince normal people that they are right,” says plasma physicist and current member of Brazil’s House of Representatives, Ricardo Galvão. Galvão, the former director of Brazil’s space institute, INPE, was very publicly fired in 2019 for defending INPE’s satellite data indicating rising deforestation rates in the Amazon, a time at which INPE and Galvão personally suffered through campaigns of misinformation and anti-science rhetoric. Deforestation rates further skyrocketed in the Brazilian Amazon after his dismissal for defending science.
Explore the full InterDialogue with Ricardo Galvão.
The interconnected impacts of devaluing and attacking science—on our health, quality of life, and on our beautiful living planet—are profound.
Deforestation and water contamination caused by illegal gold mining. Credit: DH Rasolt.
Mind, body, community, nature, and culture are interdependent. To understand and maintain the health and resilience of any one of them requires an evidence-based scientific approach that embraces complexity and diversity.
Spanish physicist and complex systems scientist Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes takes such an interdisciplinary approach to his research at GOTHAM Lab, where projects focus on modeling collective natural and social phenomena, such as epidemics, urban mobility, and ecology. Gómez is also a co-founder of the LANET conference, which fosters complexity research and education in Latin America, a dynamic collaborative event that I had the pleasure of attending in the summer of 2025.
“In an epidemic, the forecast alters the trajectory because we are part of the epidemic,” says Gómez. “I think that after COVID-19 we know perfectly how important social behavior is in shaping the trajectory of an epidemic: beliefs, misinformation, risk perception, changing behaviors. A lot of social science ingredients have to be incorporated, it’s not only mobility, demography, containers and vital information like mutation rates and intrahost dynamics. So it’s really a complex system. It’s a single problem, but involves many, many skills, many, many systems, many, many interactions between different systems.”
Explore the full InterDialogue with Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes.
Many traditional knowledge systems have maintained this more integrative view of mental and physical health, disease, environment, and the human ecosystem for millennia. Modern science and complexity are likewise uncovering previously unimaginable multitudes and networks within our nervous, endocrine, digestive, and other body systems, through rigorous research, modeling, and advanced technologies.
Explore the full InterDialogue with Dante Chialvo.
In turn, a more broadly defined, collective, inclusive science can, and does, form the basis of mutually respectful dialogue and understanding built around evidence, fundamental knowledge, and technological know-how. If science is to be an unbiased, nonpartisan common language with the potential to inform long-term sustainable policy, investment in science and technology is key, along with effective collaboration and communication, and the fostering of scientific literacy within the populace. “Science is an investment, not a cost,” says Davidovich.
With increasingly polarized modern societies facing so many complex, interconnected social and environmental challenges, the importance of expanding science’s role as a unifying pillar for dialogue, understanding, collaboration, and innovation is only becoming more apparent.
Effective Evidence-Based Communication and the Science-Policy Interface
Improving how science is effectively communicated to the public, policy makers, and between experts in different disciplines is essential for promoting critical thinking and countering the polarization, misinformation, and pseudoscience that are rampant in the modern information ecosystem.
Innovative and engaging evidence-based approaches aimed at fostering dialogue and embracing nuance—as opposed to the engrained silo-structure and overspecialization in both research and broader society, as well as the oversimplified clickbait content that both mainstream and social media rely upon for their business models—is key to fostering scientific literacy, interdisciplinary collaboration and a broader investment in science. Scientists themselves must make more of an effort to communicate effectively between themselves and with a wider audience.
“I was always worried about science dissemination and the importance of showing what we really do as scientists,” says Marcelo Knobel, a Brazilian physicist, the former Rector of Campinas University (UNICAMP), and the present Executive Director of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). “During the pandemic, I realized that we were going through a very complex time. There are now not only ideological views contrary to science, but we are also in an era of fake news and deep fakes—it’s very difficult to separate what is true from what is not.”
Knobel has long been an outspoken proponent of investing in public higher education institutions, as well as the need for more effective communication with the public about the value of these institutions and the research they produce.
“It’s up to us, as scientists, professors, or anyone connected to the university and research system to engage in the communication of why science is absolutely essential for the future. We have problems, as humanity always had, and we need science to solve them. Otherwise, we don’t have any future.”
TWAS itself serves as a very important nexus of collaboration, support, and dissemination for science and scientists from the Global South, whose high-level individual and collective work is often overlooked, ignored, or exploited on the global stage. TWAS—which is based in Trieste, Italy at the campus of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), both of which were founded by the esteemed Pakistani Nobel Laureate Abdus Salaam—supports many important and timely initiatives, such as fellowships, developing skills in science communication, and fostering a dynamic TWAS Young Affiliates Network (TYAN) for early-career researchers.
Explore the full InterDialogue with Marcelo Knobel.
I personally attended and represented The InterPlex at the recent 17th TWAS General Conference in Rio de Janeiro in October 2025. It was an inspirational and eye-opening experience to meet and share with hundreds of brilliant minds from dozens of countries, mostly from the Global South. These highly accomplished and influential individuals have incredibly diverse cultural perspectives, but all share a collective vision of the vital role of science in fostering broad collaborations and tackling complex global challenges for the betterment of all of humanity.
The 17th General Conference of The World Academy of Sciences, TWAS. Rio de Janeiro, October 2025. Credit: TWAS.
As TWAS vividly demonstrates, science is not owned by any one demographic, and there certainly is not a “party of science.” And while it is undeniable that recent anti-scientific trends in Brazil, Argentina, the United States, and several other parts of the world have been driven in large part by “extreme right-wing” political factions, “the left” also contains “progressive” factions that are increasingly ideological, disinterested in evidence, and spread pseudoscience. Science, broadly defined, can and should be a unifying pillar and is inherently nonpartisan.
Scientific evidence-based debate and dialogue are both necessary and healthy between scientists and for society at large. An informed and scientifically literate society must demand long-term sustainable development based on science, with the understanding that science is a dynamic and rigorous empirical process of truth-seeking that often cannot provide the certainty that politicians and the public crave. Evidence and circumstances evolve, necessitating dialogue and possible changes in policy. Scientific evidence must be a foundational benchmark for these necessarily complex dialogues across all sectors of society.
Sustainable Evidence-Based Development
In our globalized, interconnected world, our species has an unremitting influence over our living planet. Achieving the idealistic yet necessary goals set forth in the sustainable development framework will require an integrated socio-ecological approach to complex problems that cross borders and cultures.
In Colombia and throughout the Andes-Amazon ecoregion, where much of my research has been concentrated over the past decade, several integrated frameworks have been promoted, and ambitious initiatives and alliances developed. From the rights of nature to circular bioeconomics to nature-based solutions (NbS), interdisciplinary and intercultural collaborations based on socio-ecology and interconnectivity are emerging and have the potential for broad positive impact.
“Socio-ecological systems provide a conceptual framework to better understand and manage the interconnections between society and nature, supporting sustainable development strategies based on coevolution and balance between both dimensions,” writes Colombian marine biologist and mangrove expert Ernesto Mancera.
“In this context, NbS (nature-based solutions) can generate significant social benefits: contributing to individual and collective well-being, improving quality of life, promoting equity and community resilience, providing financial opportunities, improving land tenure security, valuing traditional and local knowledge, fostering human–nature connections, and optimizing decision-making processes at the local level.”
Explore the full InterDialogue with Ernesto Mancera.
Humans are not separate from nature, and culture is not separate from place and geography. These fundamental biocultural principles have long been embraced within traditional worldviews and must be better understood in order to inform contemporary geopolitical agendas and transboundary policy.
Jesus Rotieroke, a leader of the Murui Muina people of the Colombian Amazon, works within his chagra, a traditional rotational agroecological system. Credit: DH Rasolt.
One such ambitious transboundary, interdisciplinary, and intercultural initiative is the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA). A primary focus area of SPA is the sustainable development of a circular sociobioeconomy of standing forests and flowing rivers in the megadiverse Amazon, through the integration of modern science, technology, and traditional Indigenous knowledge. But the hundreds of researchers spanning a wide range of disciplines—along with the community leaders and policy makers—who are involved in SPA face an uphill battle.
“As a climate scientist, what gives me tremendous anxiety is seeing, in Brazil and around the world, science being ignored and little changing after myself and my colleagues have been sounding the alarm with clear scientific evidence for decades,” says Brazilian Earth systems scientist Carlos Nobre, who co-chairs SPA and leads several other prominent international initiatives aimed at protecting and sustainably developing the Amazon. “The present global trend I observe is particularly concerning, where populist governments from both the left and right are anti-science. They want to hold on to power and view science as a threat, but science can provide a much better life for humans and the planet.”
Explore the full InterDialogue with Carlos Nobre.
Energy and Technology
The lofty goals of sustainable development and a better life for all, through science, ultimately rely on how we harness and distribute energy and technology.
Energy (along with entropy), is perhaps the most fundamental, dynamic, and mystifying entity in our universe. The conservation of energy within closed systems is considered unbreakable by physicists, while energy as a more abstract concept akin to a pervasive underlying force throughout nature is at the core of many traditional worldviews and knowledge systems.
Through its many transformations and manifestations, energy lies at the heart of—and in reality is—everything (that we know of) in the physical world. From subatomic particles to superclusters of galaxies and the expansion of the universe, to biological and artificial life, Earth systems and biogeochemical processes, and all manner of human affairs, energy is what makes and shapes the cosmos and our modern reality.
A night-view of Earth from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA-JSC-Terry Virts.
Ultimately, it is our species’s incomparable ability to innovate and develop technologies that harness energy ever more efficiently that has allowed us to build robust civilizations while also drastically altering our living planet. These energy transitions throughout history have led to remarkable advancements that have touched on all aspects of the human condition, while also leading to profound consequences and existential threats.
“Artificial intelligence (AI) is going to play an increasingly powerful role in the next decade,” writes Colombian land use and remote sensing scientist Paulo Murillo. “Advanced ways of classifying elements over terrestrial surfaces, the cryosphere, oceans and the atmosphere will help us to understand more about the complex processes and changes taking place on our planet, and to make specific informed policy decisions.”
Explore the full InterDialogue with Paulo Murillo.
A Complex, Uncertain Future
What innovations and technologies—from AI, quantum computing, multi-messenger astronomy and advanced nuclear fission and fusion energy, to things still unimagined—will define our future, and will they foster a more healthful and harmonious existence within ourselves, between diverse cultures, and in coevolution with the natural world? Or will a hyper-technological future see humans—or some altered, augmented, homogenized version of ourselves—venturing beyond our home planet and expanding into the vast cosmos?
Regardless of how our lives, and those of other life forms, are inevitably and rapidly transformed over the coming years and decades, moving towards an equitable, meaningful, livable future that is guided by a broad vision of science will require a global energy transition towards cleaner, more efficient, and decentralized technologies. It will also require the reshaping of short-term, growth-driven global supply chains and consumer demands towards more circular economies and sustainable development.
In a time increasingly dominated by polarization, division, conflict, and misinformation, there are many complex, interconnected challenges to address. Solutions will require a range of innovative and collaborative interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches that bridge, weave, and fuse together diverse societal spheres of influence and knowledge, respect and integrate different forms of scientific evidence, and embrace the search for answers to foundational questions that remind us of our shared humanity.
