The endless horizon of acarology: an assessment of the rhetoric of "science as the endless frontier"

Abstract

Scientific activity never constitutes a finished body of knowledge; on the contrary, each new answer constantly expands the field of knowledge by giving rise to deeper and more comprehensive questions. In this respect, science is a universe of research that expands as it progresses and whose boundaries can never be fully defined. In this article, the rhetoric of "science is an infinite frontier" is examined through the field of acarology. In the text, the microscopic nature of mites, their complex relationships within the ecosystem, and their biodiversity, are combined with concepts from the philosophy of science, and it is argued that acarology constitutes both a metaphorical and practical "infinite frontier" field in modern science. Thus, acarology is positioned as a good example of the unending horizon of science, revealing how epistemic openness and disciplinary plurality continuously redefine the boundaries of biological knowledges.

Keywords

• Acari
• organism-centered science
• independent science
• scientific pluralism
• epistemic limits
• disciplinary boundaries
• knowledge expansion
• uncertainty generation

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