An Open Letter to Emerging PhD Scholars: Childlike Wonder, Scientific Power
An Open Letter to Emerging PhD Scholars: Childlike Wonder, Scientific Power
Science is not a fortress. It's a fire.
While preparing for the new semester, I've come to cherish a ritual of reflection. I encountered a quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci suggesting that scientific research achieves legitimacy only through mathematical proof. As an early-career researcher who identifies primarily as a qualitative scholar still finding her methodological footing, I felt something visceral: a sense of erasure. I've been trained to recognise science in everything. In what happens and what doesn't happen, in what can be quantified and what defies measurement. And I suspect I'm not alone. For many emerging African researchers like myself, science often feels like a distant citadel, fortified by impenetrable jargon, guarded by institutional gatekeepers, and built upon paradigms imported from elsewhere.
Yet Einstein's insight that "the whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking" offers a radical reframing. Science is not a fortress designed to keep us out. It's a fire sparked by curiosity, fanned by humility, and sustained by community.
Reclaiming the Roots of Scientific Inquiry
Science begins with the same questions our grandmothers asked while planting yams - why does the rain come late this season? Why do some seeds thrive while others wither? It employs the same logic that our artisans use when experimenting with dye combinations, as well as the systematic observation that our traditional herbalists apply when selecting medicinal leaves based on symptoms, seasons, and individual constitutions. These are not "primitive practices" awaiting elevation through the Global North’s scientific validation. They represent refined everyday thinking that is rooted in meticulous observation, iterative experimentation, and adaptive learning. They are science, full stop.
Dismantling the Myth of Mathematical Purity
There exists a seductive and insidious myth: that "real science" must be mathematical. That without equations, regression analyses, or quantifiable models, your work is somehow soft, your insights merely anecdotal, your methods inherently suspect.
Let me be direct: this myth is colonial in both origin and function.
It systematically erases the legitimacy of qualitative inquiry, oral knowledge transmission systems, historical sciences, African indigenous epistemologies, and contextual reasoning. Based on candid conversations with colleagues and my own experiences navigating academic spaces, many scholars, consciously or not, position mathematical science as more rigorous, more advanced, more ‘real’ than other forms of inquiry. I want to be clear, mathematics absolutely sharpens precision. Statistical models reveal patterns invisible to the naked eye. Quantification enables comparison, prediction, and replication at scale. Mathematics is a powerful tool in the scientific toolkit.
But it is not the soul of science.
The soul of science is curiosity disciplined by method. Whether you're developing machine learning algorithms or conducting oral history interviews in a rural district, you are engaged in scientific work if your inquiry is systematic, your evidence is grounded in rigorous data collection, and your conclusions remain open to critique and revision.
Humility as Epistemic Strength
Einstein described science as having a "childlike" quality, not to diminish its importance, but to honour its fundamental openness to wonder. Children are relentlessly curious. They ask "why?" without embarrassment. They question assumptions adults take for granted. They embrace not-knowing as an invitation rather than a threat.
In African research contexts, this intellectual humility is not merely valuable but rather essential for epistemic survival. Our realities are profoundly layered: colonial legacies that persist in institutional structures and knowledge hierarchies; indigenous wisdom systems that predate and often contradict Global North frameworks; rapid digital transformations that skip developmental stages assumed in Northern theories; policy contradictions that reflect competing visions of development, sovereignty, and progress. No single theoretical framework can adequately capture this complexity. And that's not a problem to solve, it's a reality to embrace.
To be "childlike" in our scholarship is to ask bold questions without apology, to listen deeply to what communities are telling us, and to revise our understandings repeatedly as new evidence emerges. It means admitting that our models are necessarily partial, our data inevitably imperfect, our truths perpetually evolving.
This humility is not academic weakness. It is an epistemic strength. The intellectual courage to remain open, adaptive, and accountable.
An Invitation to Emerging Scholars
If you're an early-career researcher navigating African academic landscapes, Einstein's insight invites several radical shifts in how we approach our work:
Trust Your Context as Laboratory
Your lived reality is not a methodological limitation requiring apology or justification. It is a laboratory offering insights that scholars working in other contexts simply cannot access. The questions emerging from your community, your history, your present conditions, these are not "local" in any diminished sense. They are entry points into understanding global phenomena through grounded, contextualised analysis.
Refine Your Everyday Thinking
Transform community questions into research questions. Let local puzzles guide inquiry that speaks to global conversations. The grandmother asking why the rain patterns have shifted is engaging in climate science. The market woman tracking price fluctuations across seasons is doing economic analysis. Our task as researchers is to refine this everyday thinking through systematic methodology, not to replace it with imported frameworks that may not fit.
Challenge Imported Hierarchies
Do not allow Global North academic metrics to define your scholarly worth. Your work matters profoundly, even if it never appears in Nature or Science. Impact is not measured solely by journal rankings determined by editorial boards in London, New York, or Amsterdam. Impact happens when your research shifts policy, transforms community practice, challenges unjust systems, or creates knowledge that centres African realities and priorities.
Publish strategically in high-impact venues when it serves your goals, but never internalise the lie that only those publications "count."
Stay Childlike
Be rigorous in your methods, transparent in your analysis, and honest about your limitations. But also remain playful, curious, and open to surprise. Some of the most important discoveries emerge when we allow ourselves to be puzzled by patterns that don't fit our expectations, when we follow curiosity down unexpected paths, and when we let wonder guide us alongside discipline.
Science as Liberation
Science is not merely a tool for discovery or a credential for career advancement. It is contested terrain where power, possibility, and liberation intersect. As African researchers, we have both the right and the responsibility to shape scientific inquiry in ways that honour our histories, serve our communities, and imagine futures not constrained by others' limited visions of what Africa is or could become.
This means:
- Developing theories grounded in African realities rather than adapting Global North theories with African "case studies"
- Creating methodologies that respect oral traditions, relational knowledge, and collective ways of knowing
- Asking research questions that matter to African communities, not just to international funding priorities
- Building institutional cultures that value epistemic diversity rather than enforcing methodological monocultures
- Mentoring the next generation into scholarly confidence rather than intellectual insecurity
A Closing Provocation
The fire of scientific inquiry does not belong to any single tradition, methodology, or geography. It belongs to everyone willing to observe, think systematically, and remain humble before the complexity of reality. So go ahead, emerging scholar. Refine your everyday thinking. Stay childlike in your wonder. Ask the questions that keep you awake at night. Trust that your context offers insights the world needs. Challenge the hierarchies that diminish your work. Build science that is not just precious in some abstract sense, but precious ‘to us’, rooted in our realities, accountable to our communities, and expansive enough to imagine African futures we haven't yet dared to dream.
The fire is yours to tend. Let it burn bright.
Your truly
Dr Gee
This letter is part of an ongoing conversation about decolonising knowledge production in African higher education. I welcome your thoughts, pushback, and stories. Reach me at theresearchbarbie@gmail.com or gifty.e-ketemepi@upsamail.edu.gh. I will publish your response if you permit.
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