She stressed the importance of feedback loops, through which theoretical preferences in turn influence the patterns that we are able to discern, and even the way in which our senses report what we find in the world. Anne Harrington emphasized the importance of the full embodiment of a human being. The subject of scientific experience is not only a human mind. She mentioned the placebo effect as one example of an important effect that has long been thrown out in the trash cans of medicine, even though everyone agreed on its efficacy, simply because it did not fit in the objectivistic paradigm of science. Arthur Zajonc extended the thread of the previous two speakers, from mind and body to nature.
Science intends to study nature, but often winds up reducing it to an abstract shadow of itself.
Nature is given through and as phenomena. Good science focuses first and foremost on these phenomena, without relegating them to secondary status. And at bottom, phenomena are given in an often unacknowledged subjectivity underlying the inter-subjective objectivity of science. During the following discussion between the participants and the panel members, two topics took center stage. The first one was the notion of relativism, a specter that tends to force scientists to the safety of a purely objective world view.