Saturday, October 19, 2013

Why can't science and the humanities get along?

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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