Following
a recent campus email sharing a blog post by Jack Miles entitled Why
Are We Losing in the Middle East? Too Much STEM, Not Enough Humanities, there were two semi-defensive email
responses, but no genuine debate or face-to-face conversation. The author of the opinion piece, speaking
about America's response to Islamist terrorism since 9/11, noted that
American leaders might have avoided a
series of horrific mistakes if they had relied a bit more on the humanities and
a bit less on the STEM.
I
must admit that this post offended me.
But mostly, I was disappointed that there wasn’t time for dialog.
I
have sensed a growing tension between the humanities and the sciences on campus
for some time. I suspect that this is
due, at least in part, to all the attention and money directed at the sciences
(renovations to Collier Hall of Science, the new Health Science programs, the
launch of planning for a new Health Science academic building, perceived
inequities in the SOAR* endowment distribution of research support, etc.). Couple this with Congressional attacks on
funding for the Arts and the dropping of these disciplines in K-12 public
schools, I can understand the growing sense of frustration. It is part of the reason that we are having
the CAT-LinC* workshop entitled Reshaping
the LinC Curriculum-Revitalizing the Liberal Arts; one of the discussion
questions in the workshop announcement makes this clear:
How might the current LinC
curriculum help to alleviate concerns regarding the current push to add
profession-oriented programs to our curriculum?
If the current LinC curriculum cannot achieve this goal, how might that
curriculum need to be re-shaped to alleviate those concerns?
Implicit
in this question (to me, at least) is a concern that profession-oriented
programs cannot embody a liberal education.
Furthermore, since most of these new academic programs have direct ties
to the natural and physical sciences, it seems that some on campus view the
liberal arts as separate from the sciences, rather than the liberal arts being
inclusive of them, as was the case historically for the Artes Liberales.
Personally,
I like the definition of a liberal education in the 21st century provided by
the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)
Liberal Education: An
approach to college learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to
deal with complexity, diversity, and change. This approach emphasizes broad
knowledge of the wider world (e.g., science, culture, and society) as well as
in-depth achievement in a specific field of interest. It helps students develop
a sense of social responsibility; strong intellectual and practical skills that
span all major fields of study, such as communication, analytical, and
problem-solving skills; and the demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and
skills in real-world settings.
Note the inclusion of science and an expectation
that the broad knowledge and skills gained during a student’s education
actually get applied. The essential
learning outcomes of AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP)
project includes “Knowledge of Human
Cultures and the Physical and Natural World through [the] study in the
sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages,
and the arts.” In other words, it isn’t liberal arts and the sciences, but rather a true
integration that characterizes liberal education today.
A
few years ago, Joyce Hinnefeld (a colleague from the English Department) and I
proposed and organized the first Arts and Lectures series on the Intersections between Art, Science, and
Nature for which we brought in speakers whose work exemplified the bridging
of disciplines. We concluded another
such successful series this year. Along
the way, I have been exploring such bridges in my own teaching and scholarship
and have found that historically, there were many
connections between the arts and sciences, especially in the “fields” of
natural history and medicine. But over
time, the collaborations faded and once symbiotic disciplines have, for the
most part, gone their separate ways.
The Romantic period of the first half
of the 19th century has been characterized as an intellectual
movement that integrated the arts and humanities and that was heavily
influenced by science and nature. The
period also coincided with the Industrial Revolution, and thus, this has been
described as an era of discovery of both the beauty and the terror of
science. Mary Shelley wrote of her concerns of human
manipulation of nature in Frankenstein (1818). In his 1829 Sonnet - To Science, Edgar Allen Poe says that science is the enemy
of the poet because it takes away the mysteries of the world. He was concerned
about the influx of modern science and social science of the times and how it
potentially undermined spiritual beliefs.
The world had entered a period where science was no longer simply trying
to understand and describe nature, but was now aiming to improve upon it. And with 21st century
technological advances in genetic engineering, biomedicine, and even
conservation (for instance, the new efforts in de-extinction and re-wilding),
the attempts to improve upon nature continue.
Towards
the late 1800’s and through the turn of the century, scientists were
discovering things at a record pace, unraveling nature’s secrets at the both
the scale of the atom and the universe. As
they solved these mysteries, some of the world’ most prominent of scientists of
all time remained ever cognizant of the beauty of what they were studying. Albert Einstein once said
The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science.
Another
nuclear physicist, Marie Curie, noted that
“I am among those who think that
science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a
technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress
him like a fairy tale.
Perhaps
ironically, both of these individuals were uncovering the fundamental mysteries
of atoms and energy that would be used to create the most destructive weapon of
mass destruction that has ever been used by humans. But it was also scientists like Linus Pauling
(a Nobel Laureate winner of both the Chemistry and Peace prizes) who in 1958,
presented to the United Nations a petition signed by 9,235 scientists from around
the world protesting further nuclear testing and published the book entitled No More War! And
today, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has a major
initiative and journal on Science Diplomacy aimed at building bridges for
peace.
There
have been several points in history where scientists have realized the social
and ethical implications of their research, and consequently brought their
concerns to the attention of the public as well as worked to establish ethical
boundaries for the applications of the new knowledge. The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA in
1975 is an important example. Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring, heralded as a great literary piece, was also a
critical social commentary and strong warning about the use of synthetic
pesticides (a product of science during World War II). Not surprisingly, some in the scientific
community did not welcome the book’s publication, but it led to the creation of
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and some of the first pieces of
environmental legislation. The former
director of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies and a renown climate
scientist on the faculty of Columbia University, James Hansen, has become a leading climate
change activist and authored a book entitled Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About
the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. There
are many more examples.
Yet the fears
expressed by Shelley and Poe around two centuries ago have magnified with each
technological advance. In 1959, Charles
Percy Snow (or CP Snow) – a scientist and author -- delivered a lecture in the
UK Senate House entitled The Two Cultures and subsequently published a book
elaborating on his ideas entitled The Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution. The thesis of both was that “the
intellectual life of the whole of western society” was split into two cultures
– namely the sciences and the humanities – and that this division was a major
hindrance to solving the world’s problems. In 2008, The Times Literary
Supplement included the book in its list of the 100 books that most
influenced Western public discourse since the Second World War. One particular excerpt, despite being written
about 56 years ago, seems so relevant to the discussions and divisiveness on
campus now:
The separation between the two
cultures has been getting deeper under our eyes; there is now precious little
communication between them, little but different kinds of incomprehension and
dislike.
Neither culture knows the virtues of
the other; often it seems they deliberately do not want to know. The resentment,
which the traditional culture feels for the scientific, is shaded with fear;
from the other side, the resentment is not shaded so much as brimming with
irritation.
Stefan Collini writing
in The Guardian in August in 2013
observed that
Snow had presented the contrast
between the scientific and literary cultures as being in part about different
responses to the industrial and technological revolutions.
This contrast was also described
by Peter Dizikes writing in the New York Times in 2009
on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Snow’s lecture:
Scientists, he asserts, have “the
future in their bones,” while “the traditional culture responds by wishing the
future did not exist.”
I hear this idea
reflected often: scientists have a tendency to think that science and
technology can fix all of the world’s problems. In contrast, many in the humanities believe
that technology has caused many of those problems.
In
one additional 2009 essay written by Lawrence Krauss,
it was noted that
Snow argued that practitioners in
both areas [the humanities or "cultures" and the sciences] should
build bridges, to further the progress of human knowledge and to benefit
society.
Krauss goes on to say
that Snow did not rail against religion, or any of the humanities, but rather
against ignorance.
Until we are willing to accept the world the way it is, without
miracles that all empirical evidence argues against, without myths that distort
our comprehension of nature, we are unlikely to bridge the divide between
science and culture and, more important, we are unlikely to be fully ready to
address the urgent technical challenges facing humanity.
Reading the reflections
of others about C.P. Snow and the “two cultures” has only strengthened my
belief that we need to find ways to reconnect these disciplines, to find ways
to cross the vocabulary differences and ideological divides, to have dialog in
order to better understand each other and address the critical issues of our
time. The STEM
disciplines are integral to a liberal education and facets of the humanities must be woven into how we teach in
STEM disciplines. Given the role that
science and technology must play in addressing the global challenges of the 21st
century (climate change, food and water security, emerging diseases, and
biosecurity are just a few examples) and the growing public distrust or denial
of science (think climate change, GMOs, and vaccines), it is critically
important for all students to be
cognizant of the role that they may play – individually and collectively – in
these future debates and solutions. How
do we get students to not only think across disciplinary boundaries, but to
also gain experience in debating and developing policy, translating technical
information to policymakers and the public, and to think about science, not
just as something hard or scary, but perhaps as a means of diplomacy? And how do ensure that future scientists
continue to be aware of the moral and societal implications of their
discoveries? These are the curricular discussions
about liberal education at Moravian College that I think we should be having.
~~~
I
leave you with two other random thoughts on why we need to once again integrate the
disciplines in a liberal education:
In a study published last year from Michigan State University, researchers found a positive link between childhood participation in arts – especially music – to patents generated and businesses launched as
adults. They studied a group of college graduates who majored in science, technology, engineering or mathematics – theSTEM disciplines – and found that exposure to the arts as children increased the chances of ownership of patents or new businesses by over eight times compared to the general public. Furthermore, in their surveys, “80% of STEM professionals report that arts and crafts deliver skills necessary for innovative work in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics.”
What science-bashers fail to appreciate is that
scientists, in their unflagging attraction to the unknown, love what they don't
know. It guides and motivates their work; it keeps them up late at night;
and it makes that work poetic.
— Alison Hawthorne
Deming Writing the Sacred into the Real
In much
of the poet Alison Hawthorne Deming’s work, she argues that the farther we
remove ourselves from wild settings, the farther we are removed from our
spiritual center. She believes the arts allow us to fall again “into harmony
with place and each other.” We live in a world that is out of balance
(environmentally, and socio-economically).
Artists sense this emotionally.
Scientists know this through data, but need to find ways to express this
that doesn’t turn the public off through fear or distrust. Working together, humanists and scientists
can find those words and the rebalancing that we need in our personal and
collective lives.
*SOAR = Student Opportunities for Academic Research (an endowment for undergraduate research)
CAT = Center for the Advancement of Teaching
LinC = Learning in Common, the general education program at Moravian College
