Many believe that critical and reflective capacity, along with an openness to contingency, otherness, and debate, stem from an internal, well-intentioned energy of open-minded people. What often goes unnoticed is that the capacity for reflection and dialogue is not merely internal but an external phenomenon, present in the world itself, produced only within a space of resistances, encounters and even frustrations, such as the academic and scientific sphere. It prevents my cogito and my convenient epistemic schemes from getting out of control, in a dangerous transcendentalist delirium, and taking over the world and the circumstances themselves. The aim of this essay is precisely to understand this aesthetic dimension of science, this ontological characteristic that crosses its contours, taking as a starting point the concepts of ‘importance’ in Alfred Whitehead and ‘matters of concern’ in Bruno Latour.
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