Research Methods: Historical & Evolutionary Contexts

This is a continuation in our series, Research in an Age of Distrust. See our last two blogs for an introduction to this series, outlining our mission for transparency and trust-based research, and an overview of our approach to academic research.

As stated in our previous blog, there are a few reasons that a research topic may not be particularly well-fit to the scientific method; this doesn’t mean that it isn’t effective. 

Sometimes, there are promising hypotheses based on well-understood mechanisms within the body and mind, but the hypotheses remain unproven. In this case, solutions may be caught in the middle: there’s a lot of reason to believe in a solution’s efficacy, but the cause-and-effect relationship simply has not been proven. In cases like these, a layered approach to research is key.

For a different perspective on a solution's efficacy and merit, we contextualize the solution and its analogues in the broader human story. Oftentimes, we see the same solutions arise over time, with different societies arriving at the same conclusions, such as the use of heat therapy in the form of saunas, hot springs, and bath-houses, or the sacred ratios and symmetries that are seen as universal pinnacles of architecture. Sure, there may not be a great number of clean experiments concluding principles of architecture and design, but when the same principles arise over millennia, we believe they deserve attention.

Similarly, there are some aspects of human behavior that simply evolved before our modern lives that shouldn’t be ignored. While most people have transitioned to living in the “built world” rather than truly being people of wilderness, our brains really haven’t changed since we transitioned to living our modern societal lives. To put it in different terms, our bodies and brains are woefully outdated and ill-fit to our current living conditions, as we’re naturally adapted to be hunter-gatherers.

This is especially important given that only 50 of the 11 million bits of information we process per second are conscious, meaning a vast majority of the impressions we form are based on the unconscious processing that’s evolved over millions of years. 

So, even if it seems like you’re making decisions that are grounded in logic, there is a lot of hunter-gatherer in you calling the shots via emotions and unconscious urges. For a real life example, check out Richard Taylor’s research on the physiological impact of fractals. Odds are that you’ve never consciously noticed fractal patterns, nor do they serve you in surviving today’s world. Yet, these relics of neurology are contributing to your stress, arousal, and comfort levels on a moment-to-moment basis.

For this reason, we believe it’s imperative to not only consider the evidence of today, but also the stories and traditions of yesterday as we craft spaces that feel good. Since life isn’t a clean lab experiment and people are wildly complex, we view these layers of research as necessary pieces to move us towards a more human-centric built world.