“Approachi Significans” began as a response to a gap in my undergraduate education. I earned a BS in neuroscience, which imparted factual descriptions of how our brains work. For many of the more groundbreaking facts, we learned the designs of the experiments from which those facts were derived.

I found myself wondering about the active minds at work rather than the if/then mechanics of experimental variables and controls. Under what mental conditions were the hypotheses for all of these experiments conceived? What were these researchers looking at when the ideas came flooding? Did the ideas flood? Or did they trickle? What were they doing? What else was pressing their minds? And why isn’t this part of the process emphasized, recorded, and championed alongside the experimental procedure?

All images ©Luke Shaw