I look at the relations among the current mainstream disciplines, and their mutual relations and differences, and I then project slightly forward into the future, say 50 years or so, and imagine how they might look then.

On many views, physics holds the foundation place in the structure of knowledge. It is closely related to the absolutism and rationality of mathematics, and it also grounds our consensus view of reality. Chemistry is mostly applied physics, with a few structural constraints thrown in, that are visible in the periodic table. But organic chemistry is different, by virtue of two things: on the one hand, the chemicals play a role in the alchemy of life – a process for which we have no fundamental understanding. Life arises, but that is a novelty of an unparalleled sort. Identity irrespective of materiality. Exchange all the atoms, but keep the processes, and you retain identity. On the other hand, the exchanges and processes in which the molecules partake are geometrically extended in three dimensions. The 3-D shape of the molecule determines its fit to another element, say as neurotransmitter to receptor, or body to antibody.

With life comes sentience, or at least the minimal organizational complexity necessary to justify ascription of a subjective point of view. With that, we get the domain of lived experience, for which we have no science, but the piss-poor mess that is psychology.

Now project 50 odd years into the future. There is no one foundational discipline. Physics remains, as the best way of uncovering interesting and useful properties of the inanimate world. But it has a counterpart in mind science, that carefully constructs a shared narrative of the relation between the “physical” description of the world and the lived worlds of individual experience. Each facet of this janus-like ground has a blind spot. For physics, it remains the singularity at time zero (note: the big bang is poorly named, because it does not refer to an event, but to a hole in the theory, where we are necessarily mute). For the science of the mind, it becomes the elaboration of a shared story about life, and meaning. This facet also has a blind spot, and that is the relation of the process of life to the material substratum. As now. In short, that is not just a difficult question, it is the life-science blind spot, on par with the big bang in physical theory.

It is good for each facet to have a blind spot, or a ground zero that can be aimed for, but never attained. This serves to focus vision, and to ensure that the questions asked in each facet in fact converge upon mutually supporting descriptions.

Instead of uncovering the one true truth, the business of knowledge will move towards answering the only question that matters: what is that we are, that we should see such things?