ABSTRACT
This article engages with the staged quality, the insight-generating performativity of research. It is not performative philosophy as such that is the focus here, but an understanding of the exploration of nature as a performative practice. However, this understanding of natural science as a performative practice suggests an inspiring relationship with both performative philosophy and artistic research. The stage set of natural science allows for the notion that research in general takes place as a practice by way of the active aesthetic staging of explorers, objects and modes of understanding. It is this aesthetic-performative practice that turns the exploration of nature into an artistic practice. That is to say, artistic practice and the practice of research or exploration merge at the node of epistemic staging. This aesthetic-performative practice of natural science suggests that scientific research as a whole, as well as philosophy, can be considered in terms of a performative exploration of thinking.
