The Epistemology of Impact

In academia, impact can mean different things to different people, or different things to the same person at different stages of their career.

For a PhD student, impact could mean having a collection of papers with good citations, aligning to a story so that they lead to a successful thesis.

For a post-doc, this could mean novel research that would lead to successful fellowship and grant bids.

For a career academic, this could mean being a recognized expert in a specialized domain, contributing consistently to new knowledge, fostering collaborations, and perhaps informing policy in the process.

For a grant agency or funding body, impact may loosely align itself with the notion of an RoI, in the sense that the funded science should lead to development of new methodologies, modalities, technologies, that bolster the research and innovation ecosystem.

For the larger establishment, it may very well transcend to science contributing to growth of the nation’s economy (the mechanics of which I will not be able to get into, as I am not an expert).

The means are different, and the ends are too. However, I can argue that the outcomes that lead to the ends are very similar. In this sense, I opine that impact is solely determined by the capability of the science proffered to change the status quo. This could be in the way of thinking about the subject, a change in the methodology, a discovery that challenges entrenched knowledge of the discipline, or perhaps completely overthrows it.

The question then is, how does one make such impactful discoveries and contributions?

Schoen’s paper ‘The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology’ was required reading when I was beginning to train as a teacher almost a decade ago, and it has remained a constant source of inspiration for me since. The paper makes an informed case for having institutional frameworks in place that recognize new knowledge arising from ‘knowledge and reflection-in-action’, with its foundations based on action and inquiry-based research. The arguments and the examples presented in the paper remarkably remain relevant still, especially in its references to MIT’s Project Athena.

It is a thoughtful read in totality, but it is Schoen’s deliberation on the dilemma of relevance vs. rigor that is particularly relevant to our question about impactful discoveries above. I reproduce this verbatim below –

“In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the use of research-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowlands, problems are messy and confusing and incapable of technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or to society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner is confronted with a choice. Shall he remain on the high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to his standards of rigor, or shall he descend to the swamp of important problems where he cannot be rigorous in any way he knows how to describe?”

The “problems of the swamp” are indeed the most pressing problems of humanity– food security, income inequality, educational poverty, equal access healthcare, climate change being a few examples. These are the problems that would benefit most from intervention, and where even minor advances can have significant impact across disciplines, and on spheres of influence.

As Karl Popper puts it,

“We are not students of some subject matter, but students of problems. And problems may cut right across the borders of any subject matter or discipline”.

Swampy problems need to be viewed in their humongosity, with all their complexities and uncertainties. The linkages between different parts of the problem and their cross interactions need to be called into examination, which cannot be done without a collaborative effort between experts from diverse disciplines. This in turn calls for new skills on part of the discipline experts, to be able converse in a common language, and to ensure that their findings transcend the boundaries of their respective disciplines.

The world of today is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and unsurprisingly so are its pressing problems. They will require multidimensional intervention, calling for multidisciplinary expertise, and large-scale action. As Schoen puts it, we may not even know now how to describe the problems, let alone its solutions. But to even arrive at a roadmap to such solutions requires experts to know what is happening beyond their disciplines, how to carry over powerful concepts from other disciplines into their own, and most importantly, how to talk to and understand each other.

This, I argue, is where we need to start for doing impactful science.

The Epistemology of Impact © 2026 by Srikanth Sugavanam is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0