This letter appeared in News-Journal on Dec 30, 2005 in the Community Voices category.
In recent weeks there have been two articles in the News-Journal concerning relationships between the humanities and science: "Hubris of the Humanities," 12-7, by Nicholas D. Kristof and "Strong union between ‘snooty’ liberal arts, science, "12-16, by Stephen Zeigler. Kristof, a New York Times columnist, tended to blame the "snootiness" of the humanities for U.S. science failures, while Zeigler, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, argued that the two disciplines tend to work together and seemed to suggest that the supposed conflict between the two has been contrived. Both positions may be oversimplifications and there are other important aspects of the relationship between the humanities and science to be considered. During twenty-seven years of a career in three universities ranging geographically from Florida to Hawaii, and several more years after retirement on the adjunct faculty of two other universities, I did not detect any serious conflict between the humanities and science. This is in support of Professor Zeigler’s contention. I must add, however, that I did not see any significant cooperation between the two discipline areas either. There have been a few movements or trends in recent years that have been harmful to science, one of which is within the humanities category.
Post-modern philosophical thought is an antithesis to science and reason. Among the views of its adherents are such ideas that all truth is relative and concepts of reality are mentally constructed by people, and thus there is no such thing as objective truth or reality. Further, the scientific methodology of reductionism (i.e. breaking phenomena into small units for purposes of study) is held to be abhorrent. This school of thought, which is within mainstream humanities, has been exerting influence in intellectual circles and is thus something of a threat to science. Consider the attack on reductionism. This methodology has yielded tremendous benefits both in terms of basic knowledge and practical application. For example, our present knowledge of ecological systems has come largely from putting bits of information together that come from reductionist methods.
Other attacks on science worth mentioning have come from New Age thinking (which is outside of mainstream humanities), spending reductions for basic or "pure" science, and the Bush administration’s generally antiscientific stance. The generally poor funding of basic research is really alarming. Historically, this has provided a major foundation for numerous practical developments in science and technology. These antiscience trends have already contributed to the lowering of U.S. prestige, power, and leadership. If continued, they will likely accelerate our downward movement globally.
Both Kristof and Zeigler commented on C.P. Snow’s famous essay "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." Snow believed that the gap and the conflict between science and the humanities are impediments to human progress. Even if Zeigler is right that Snow overstated the conflict element, the gap is something important to think about. To what extent are global problems at least partially due to the humanities not keeping pace with the developments of science and technology? The humanities content includes dealing with concepts of morality, ethics, and values; that is, striving for the "good life" and a "more perfect" world. Is this area of human development on a par with science and technology? Another element of the gap between the two disciplines noted by Snow is the ignorance in both camps. As he put it, lack of knowledge about the laws of thermodynamics is on an ignorance level comparable to lack of knowledge about Shakespearean plays. Perhaps the world needs more by way of traditional liberal arts type education. The kind of education that might produce scholars well versed in both cultural worlds.
