As children, we all go through a stage during which we claim whatever interesting object we see as “Mine!” We eventually outgrow this extreme egocentrism, more or less. Such evolution takes many iterative cycles of fitting our current mental model to the new information from experience. As part of our “growing pains,” this stage is accompanied in little children by screaming, kicking and tears over months or years – a long time in the eyes of loving parents – but a relatively short time compared with the millions of years it took homo sapiens to realize and accept that we in fact are not at the center of the universe.
Our displacement from the center of the universe did not come easily either. Copernicus delayed publishing his epiphany until he was on his death bed for fear of the reaction it would incite. This, however, marked the beginning of the scientific revolution, which has gradually extended our presence far into the outer space. Today, science continues to empower and humble. We have invented internet that is turning us into a giant super-organism, we have also come to terms that human beings are not the only tool users. We cloned Dolly yet we found our genome smaller than some fish and plants. And our own body turns out to be an ecosystem where microorganisms outnumber our own cells… In the meanwhile, we have gained the courage to examine our blind spots and the maturity to be more open to (or less shocked by) ideas and discoveries that are outrageous at first sight.
We all appreciate the humor in Lazebnik’s “MIC” (most important component) and “RIC” (really important component). Often, efforts to understand biological systems without comprehension of vital attributes and system-wide connections destined to prove futile. Without a network perspective, one’s center of attention can easily be blown out of proportion and out of context – another manifestation of egocentrism. Biologists are not alone in suffering tunnel-vision. Many papers start with establishing the subject under study as a “MIC” or “RIC”—critical, crucial, essential, to whatever in the periphery. Scientific work demands intense focus for long periods of time, which makes us vulnerable to ignorance of everything else. Although it is true that division of labor results in higher productivity, there is a cost – vital insights lost. While we try to avoid “knowing less and less about more and more until we know nothing about everything”, there is also a danger of “knowing more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing”.
Born in a place called “center of the land” and trained in a “central discipline”, I feel so lucky to work in a lab where brave souls are exploring new grounds between the boundaries, where penetrating insights are being generated across disciplines, and where global mapping is itself the focus. It is enlightening.
- Meilin Huang