To explore another atypical example of production, consider David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. According to the Academy’s announcement, Julius won for identifying a sensor in human skin that responds to heat, and Patapoutian won for identifying sensors in the skin and internal organs that respond to mechanical stimuli. Because of their discoveries, we can comprehend our ability to perceive temperature and pressure. How do their discoveries illuminate Production? By reminding us that knowledge itself is produced.
Of course, Julius and Patapoutian did not produce the underlying reality of skin and internal organs and their natures; that reality existed independent of the scientists’ discoveries. Rather, what they produced is an understanding of that reality. And they wrote the papers that described their understanding. These two acts constitute their great achievement.
But their work also reminds us of another interesting facet of knowledge as production. That is, once knowledge is discovered and described, others can learn it too, learning being the process of successfully examining others’ evidence and arguments and thereby reaching the same conclusions. So learning is also an act of production; it is the series of mental and physical steps required to attain what others know. In this sense, knowledge is not only produced but reproduced ― every day by everyone who seeks to understand.
Thankfully, learning, though difficult, is easier than discovering, which is why we honor discoverers, but it is productive nonetheless and should engender pride.
These three acts ― discovering, describing, learning ― make possible everything we know and do. They are the productive acts underlying all productive acts. Making them the very source of human life.
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