Last week's cover of the Chronicle
Review features a rambling essay by historian David A. Hollinger,
“The Rift: Can STEM and the humanities get along?” It focuses
on the alleged rift between the sciences and the humanities within
the academy. At some level I don't really care about the culture of
the academy, which is disconnected from the rest of society in many
ways. However, let me try to make sense of the article anyway.
First, Hollinger makes the case that
there is such a rift (based on anecdotal evidence: complaints he's
heard from colleagues), and that the wedge “threatens the ability
of all modern disciplines to provide—in the institutional context
of universities—the services for which they have been designed.”
I would argue, though not here, that there are many other reasons
that universities struggle to provide the services for which they
have been designed, at a reasonable cost, and the rift that Hollinger
speaks of has a negligible contribution. This is really a topic not
for a separate post, but for another blog entirely, so I will not
pursue it further here. (Please consult the Spellings Commission
Report on the Future of Higher Education if this interests you.)
Next, Hollinger dismisses the “Two
Cultures” conversation of C.P. Snow, because the current rift takes
place in a far more hostile political, social, and cultural setting
than 50 years ago. Hollinger points to the more recent culture wars,
but fails to mention the notorious Alan Sokal hoax, and the 'science
wars' of 1990s vintage. Hollinger states that the problem boils down
to the accusation that humanities courses and research are often
tainted by leftist ideological bias (or political correctness), and
that few have accused science courses of displaying such biases.
Hollinger counters that scientists and engineers are just as capable
of making “fools of themselves” in other ways. I have no dispute
with this point, as much space on this blog is devoted to the
problems of non-reproducible research in science and medicine. In
fact, the problems I write about are arguably much worse for society
than any relatively harmless indoctrination that takes place in
humanities classrooms for privileged middle class students.
Nonetheless, this does not excuse or make permissible such
indoctrination, if indeed it is taking place. The fact that both the
sciences and the humanities are capable of crummy work does not
explain why there is a rift between them. [Regarding indoctrination
in the classroom, see Fish (2008).]
Next, Hollinger discusses a report by
the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, which
apparently prompted him to write this piece. I have not read that
report, but his main complaint is that the report ignores the “deep
kinship between humanistic scholarship and natural science.”
Hollinger states that the humanities “are the great risk takers in
the tradition of the Enlightenment”. He provides the following two
arguments for this claim. First, the humanities have defended the
use of evidence and reason, which should give it common cause with
the sciences in a culture which is rapidly devaluing such tenets of
critical thinking. This is only partially true. Critical thinking
is certainly valued in some sectors of the humanities, but it is
flouted in others, as the Sokal hoax showed. (This blog shows that
science is guilty of the same.) If I had time I would present other
examples of bad reasoning found in the journal literature of literary
studies and other humanities fields, but I'm devoting this blog to
bad reasoning found in the sciences. Suffice it to say that I do not
think that conditions are better in the humanities than they are in
the sciences, but this is based on personal experience, and I haven't
made the effort to document it.
Second, Hollinger presents a single
example of risk taking by the humanities: the hiring of Harold Cruse
in the 1960s by the University of Michigan. Cruse did not complete
college, but he wrote a critically acclaimed book on African-American
intellectual history, and was hired as a full professor of history.
However, today's academy would not take such a risk, in either the
sciences or the humanities. The tenure system, as it now operates,
discourages risk taking and rewards conformism for those on the
tenure track. It also protects substandard work by those who achieve
tenure. There are certainly exceptions, but by and large the
incentives created by the tenure system have the opposite effect of
its intent to protect faculty who are doing unpopular research and questioning authority and vested interests.
Hollinger states that the humanities
exist in the borderlands between mere opinion and the
“methodologically narrower, largely quantitative, rigor-displaying
disciplines”, or between “scholarship and ideology.” Hence the
risk taking is higher there than in the sciences. Examples include
the studies of historically disadvantaged groups such as women's
studies, Latino studies, etc. This is probably the only point made
in the article that I remotely find merit in.
Hollinger mentions Texas Republicans
who want to remove a critical thinking component from public
education. He states that “Colleagues in the natural sciences
would do well to imagine what society would look like with a
significantly diminished place for the human sciences. Techies yes,
critics no.” Actually it doesn't require much imagination. The
Soviet Union was a superb example, and physicist Andrei Sakharov was
supremely accomplished as both a “techie” and a “critic”.
Finally, Hollinger complains about
salary inequity among various university departments. He shows that
he has a good understanding of the economic reasons for such
inequities: in fields where talented individuals have attractive
alternatives to working in a university, a university will have to
compete financially for that person's services. Nonetheless
Hollinger seems to feel affronted by this state of affairs. I think
he should take his own advice and enroll in a microeconomics course
on the other side of his campus. He also thinks universities are
degenerating into “sites where lots of independently interesting
valuable things happen” instead of coherent institutions, where
“being a professor was a calling in itself.” My reaction to this
is So What?
In summary, there is very little in the
essay that I can use. There is good stuff and bad stuff going on in
both the humanities and in the sciences. Does any of this explain
why there is a rift between them? I am a scientist by training and
by employment, but I read a lot of history (and occasional bits of
philosophy), listen to J.S. Bach, and look at the paintings of George
Tooker. Hollinger's article does not seem to be relevant to my
intellectual life. What about yours?
References
Stanley Fish, 2008: Save the World on
Your Own Time. Oxford University Press.
David A. Hollinger, 2013: The rift:
Can STEM and humanities get along? The Chronicle Review, Oct. 18,
2013 issue, pp. B6-B9.
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