The Humanities versus the “Hard” Sciences: Let the Battle Begin

Here’s a great quote from Michael Roth’s recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

[The philosopher Robert] Pippin argues, on the contrary, that "the practical autonomy of the normative is the proper terrain of the humanities," and he has an easy task of showing how the pseudoscientific evolutionary "explanation" of our moral choices is a pretty flimsy "just-so" story.

Do I smell blood? Is a battle between the high priests of knowledge in process? Whose sacrifice of method will be acceptable to the Most High, that of Cain, or that of Abel? Take that, Pharyngula! You have been put on notice. The hard sciences have sucked out all the air in the room for themselves. I’m not referring to money alone. It’s time to push back. 

Comments

[Ranger]

Come on John, do you really think PZ Myers could understand this quote? I'm highly doubtful.

[Ranger]

I enjoyed this gem in the comments from "laoshi" (which is Chinese 老师 for 'teacher'):

"Roth is right. In the age of Obama, critical thinking is no longer needed."

[JohnFH]

LOL, Ranger.

I could rant away on this topic and maybe I should. My problem is that I love the hard sciences and the humanities and have friends and acquaintances who are top researchers in both.

For example, what's it like to be a climatologist right now? If you are excellent at what you do, you have money galore to work with. All you have to do is to have a research project which seeks to understand an aspect of climate better, and relate it somehow to scary apocalyptic scenarios we are familiar with. Whether you buy those scenarios or not is irrelevant; they are your bread and butter, so you keep your doubts to yourself.

There is also a ton of money for anything that has a conceivable application in the health care delivery system (one of the best funded sectors of the economy, about to get even greater gobs of cash injected into its veins).

But in the Humanities, there are cutbacks everywhere, even though, at least in my field (ancient Near Eastern Studies, the ancient Mediterranean), the amount of basic raw research that cannot be done for lack of resources is huge.

No one seems to care whether people learn to read or write anymore, or whether we are literate in any basic sense of the word. Gone are the days when the corporate sector hired people with philosophy and English degrees, people who could think and knew how to write. In the interim, the alumni associations have been successful in getting those who got an MBA somewhere along the line to endow the business schools, so now they hire from them. I don't see the advantage. Undergraduate business degrees should be banned. MBAs should be required for middle management and above, but after five years experience, or in connection with the first five years of experience.

[Ranger]

Well, I only partially meant that as an insult against PZ. I think his paradigm truly limits him from fully understanding plenty of things, and a discussion such as this is a perfect example. Usually, when the majority of your posts concerning the non "hard" sciences are nothing more than heightened rhetoric (full of ad hominem and derision), it means that at least on one level you don't understand the conversation at hand.

On the one hand, Myers doesn't understand the conversation because he looks at things from the outside and can never imagine stepping outside of his paradigm into another. It's black and white. There is no transcendent Creator of all who has made people in His image and therefore given all access to knowledge. No, it's just the elite meatbags and the ignorant meatbags, and in one hundred years none of it matters.

Personally, I have no problem with him having a biased paradigm as I too have a paradigm that distorts and clarifies the way I see things...we all do. I sort of agree with Foucault (which is rare) that there are types of knowledge that are only available to certain classes and orientations toward the world. I think Foucault would say that there are types of knowledge that are only accesible to a poor Dalit, and these types of knowledge are just as valuable as those of the secular leftists. I don't agree that they are all equally valuable, but I do think his general idea isn't far from Augustine's contention that certain types of knowledge are only accessible from particular orientations, such as love, and conversely certain types of knowledge are cut off to me from an orientation of hate...I'm pretty sure Luther would agree as well...after all, reason is a whore. We're all stuck in a paradigm, but its our response to this paradigm that's much more telling about our general orientation to the world.

A mindset of exploration (something that makes someone a good scientist after all), seeks to respect the paradigm, dig inside it to understand it, find what it has to offer and only then critique it in light of one's personal paradigm. The movements from Ptolemy to Galileo to Newton to Einstein to Vilenken and Linde relied on this explorative attitude toward differing views. The very thing that has turned Myers from a third tier biology professor into a celebrity (among some groups of people) isn't his attitude of exploration or his science, but instead his rhetoric and the fact that he actively opposes the very attitude of exploration and knowledge that leads to scientific progress. Myers looks at other paradigms not through a hermeneutic of love interested in understanding and intellectual growth, but simply to find fodder for his minions to look down upon in a triumphant manner since they are the victors of history who have been blessed with knowledge and "pure reason."

Thus, this pseudo-celebrity appeals to teenagers rebelling against their parents, college students living on campus (and thus out of touch with reality) and those who never leave the enclosed spaces of the world (laboratory, library, internet, etc.). You can't fully understand persons when all you know of them is text in a comment thread. Of course, his blog offers the most appeal to those who have left their previous religion and now seek comfort and support in a community that agrees with them.

[JohnFH]

I grew up reading the columns of Stephen Jay Gould in Natural History. Before, during, and after a teenage conversion to Christ. Gould taught me how to think about biology and faith but without condescension or triumphalism. It was a school of humility. I have been in love with the biological sciences ever since.

It is a crying shame, and I mean that in all seriousness, that teenagers and college students are more likely today to be reading the thin gruel of PZ Myers.

Wanted: Scientists who can write well, atheists and theists alike, with a Psalm 8-like grasp of reality and a healthy moral imagination. Apply to Bloggingheadquarters.com. Estimated compensation package in US dollars: $0. Estimated educational impact: off the charts.

[scott gray]

john--

i've tried to find the pippin reference in the literature that roth is refering to, but can't find it. do you know what roth reference is being cited in roth's article?

scott

[JohnFH]

I can't find it either, Scott. Academics should cite their sources, shouldn't they? But it sounds like something Pippin would say.

Pippin says something similar in his The Persistence of Subjectivity, on p. 115, where he talks about the core Kantian claim, which he identifies as "the autonomy of the normative domain." That is, an ethics can only be based on a complex of interlocking moral judgments, each of which remands to the other.

An ethics cannot be founded on the basis of an appeal to neurochemical processes, for example.

It makes a lot more sense to found an ethics on a theology. But that is my position, not that of Pippin.

[Chavoux Luyt]

OK, I'm writing as a "hard scientist" (specifically biological sciences) and I have come to realize that as you move away from non-living physical objects (Physics, Chemistry) to living, dynamic systems, the "hard" of "hard science" tend to become softer. This is simply because the number of variables (possible causes) and their interactions become too complex to adequately test with simple empirical experiments. My biggest problem with some "hard scientists" and their superiority to "humanities", is that they don't realize how "soft" (= uncertain) their own science and conclusions have become. The problem is not so much a defective science / methodology as that the methodology of hard science gives answers that become increasingly uncertain. And some scientists are unwilling to acknowledge this. But the answers given will be uncertain, no matter what methodology is used. I don't think the "humanities" will be able to give an better answers (if better is defined as "with more certainty"), but might give answers that deal better with this uncertainty.

[JohnFH]

Excellent points, Chavoux.

The humanities at their best are detail- and data-oriented, but interpretation of same is usually not testable in the same way as it is when hard scientists do hard science. Interpretation takes place on the basis of Gestalt perceptions. Many articles in the humanities seem to be little more than opportunities for scholars to reiterate their favorite metanarrative.

Biologists like Dawkins and meteorologists like Hansen are soft scientists disguised as hard ones. That's a problem.