In the Humboldt Lab of Humboldt University at the Humboldt Forum, there are, of course, real Humboldt lab staff — equipped with pipettes, Bunsen burners, and lab coats. I am one such lab worker, wearing safety goggles and carrying a clipboard. Together with the entire team, I find myself caught in a dilemma. After all, the Humboldt Lab is meant to explore and present science itself using the tools of science.

Yet this approach risks bias, self-referential feedback loops, or vanity. How is a neutral observation of science possible without falling into the traps of our own professional blind spots?

Just as it is impossible to look at one’s own face in a mirror with one’s eyes closed, or to listen to one’s own snoring while asleep, science cannot scientifically examine itself without excluding the principles of its own perception. Science is not neutral toward itself, and it cannot observe its blind spots, because they are its blind spots — things it is, by definition, unaware of. For the accuracy of the following non-factual report on the origins of the #Logoskop, I could not guarantee correctness then, nor can I today.

Out of necessity, we lab technicians at the Humboldt Lab initially began constructing apparatuses that refracted our view of science like a beam of light through a prism. The results were miserable. We then began “discipline hopping,” in which each scientist investigated a field outside their own expertise. The social sciences explored algebraic approaches to solving the Nagata problem concerning the degree of a plane curve with given points and multiplicities. Mathematics investigated the Categorical Imperative. The results were embarrassing.

In the end, we saw no way out except to turn to art. For if science is the queen, then art must be her court jester. We placed a human being on a piece of land — a poet on an island, to be precise. The poet was called X. As the island, we chose Hiddensee.

To this day, we know very little about the poet. Only a few verses he wrote have survived. X wandered erratically across the island, jotting down tangled fragments: “Blades of grass are ladders for beetles; the earth is a home for later.” He understood the island’s name as an imperative: “Hiddensee — see the hidden!” echoed in his mind. He listened to the ringing of the island church bells and noted: “Church bells are heavy metal.” He lay down on the Baltic shore, looked up at the sky, and wrote: “When I lie on my back, the whole world is my backpack.”

X was confused. Now that he had begun to see what was hidden, his view of the visible remained blurred. It would be an art, X thought, to see the visible and the hidden at the same time. As he gazed at the sky, he became aware of the data streams, messages, and images shooting through the air and through himself by radio frequency. The small cumulus cloud there, slightly above the barbed-wire fence post, reminded him of the icon of his data cloud app.

“Enough Hiddensee!” we said, removed the poet from the Baltic Sea, and relocated him to another island — Berlin’s Museum Island. We placed the poet directly inside our Humboldt Forum there. On the first floor, we positioned him among display cases and video projections. X wandered back and forth among the museum exhibits. After Nature was the title of our exhibition.

“Wooden zebras are pianos! Humans are speaking animals!” cried X. “Rain is liquid snow! A ‘B’ is a pregnant ‘P’!” Some museum visitors turned toward him — some indignant, some astonished. When X stood in front of the porcelain replicas of historic apple varieties, he positioned himself beside the display case and proclaimed loudly for all visitors to hear: “An apple is a deformed pear! Trees are plant-based sun umbrellas!” Then X moved to a display case exhibiting a microscope. “Knowledge is convinced belief! We see with our voices and hear with our eyes!” A crowd formed spontaneously. The museum visitors applauded.

Our staff at the Humboldt Lab had succeeded. This was exactly the kind of whimsical perspective on science we needed for our work. A poet who sees — or fabulizes — the hidden. Or a poetess. An X who spins an Ariadne’s thread to guide us through the labyrinth of scientific observation. This was what the Humboldt Lab had been missing for self-reflection. A new discipline of academic teaching was created: the scientific observation of scientific observation using the unscientific means of word art.

Do you have questions? Then come and see it for yourself:

Every month, changing slam poets shake the very foundations of research during a lyrical walk-through. Welcome to #Logoskop!