Two cultures, or none?
Just a quick rehash of an old post by way of a follow-up to Sunday’s blog about Emotion and Creativity which touched on the negative stereotypes sometimes used to characterize scientists.
Anti-science attitudes are far from unusual among the Arts & Humanities fraternity, even in the supposedly enlightened environment of a University, which I think is a real shame. After all, you’ll have to work very hard to find a scientist who would be prepared to stand up in front of audience and proudly announce “I hate art”. Many of my scientific colleagues have deep passions for the performing arts (especially music and drama) as well as being very well read across a wide range of subjects. Many also hold strong (and often idiosyncratic) political opinions and are involved in a huge range of activities outside science.
In short, scientists don’t just sit in their labs and offices making dangerous chemicals or torturing small animals. We live in the real world and have as much contact with wider society as anyone else. Imagination, creativity and free thinking can be found in scientists, just as they can in the arts. Scientists both contribute to and participate in our society’s cultural heritage. Scientists are human beings. Culture belongs to us too.
Some time ago there was an article in the Times Higher with the title “Life depends on science but the arts make it worth living“. I agree with a lot of what is written in the piece, in fact, although it does seem also to contain numerous examples of non sequitur and I think it’s both poorly argued and highly exaggerated. The arts are undoubtedly among the things that make life worth living, but there are others, such as “ordinary” human relationships and the “simple” enjoyment of the natural world, which academics of all persuasions all too frequently neglect.
One of the most prominent examples of non sequitur in the Times Higher article is that we have music, literature, poetry and the rest but how much of this is actually done in universities? The article compares Einstein with Beethoven. Albert went to University in Zurich. Beethoven didn’t go to a university. There’s a big difference between making art and writing about it. One of the big cultural differences between art and science is that we don’t have science critics, although we do have people who popularize it and also people who try to explain it to the general public. Much of the impenetrable cultural analysis that emerges from academia concerning the arts seems to have the opposite aim. Does any university have a Professor of the Public Understanding of Art?
You probably think I’m going to go off on a rant about the famous Two Cultures thesis advanced by C.P. Snow, but I’m not. I think Snow’s analysis is only marginally relevant. I do think that there are “two cultures”, but these are not “science” and “the arts”. One is a creative, thinking culture that encompasses arts, the humanities and science. The other is its antithesis, a “culture” that sees the sole function of education as being to train people to take their place on the never-ending treadmill of production and consumption.
The way we are heading, it’s not “two cultures” that we should be worried about. It’s no culture at all.
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In the Dark 
February 14, 2013 at 2:29 pm
I wholeheartedly agree that the title of that THES article is foolish. Electricity does a huge amount to make life worth living, for instance, and the author might try living without it for a month.
Personally I’d lump the debasement of the humanities subjects since the 1960s in with the anti-culture of which you speak. And consumption has become a bad word today but it does mean that you can go out and buy all these things that help to make life materially better like clothes washing machines, spectacles, personal computers, jazz and classical CDs, etc.
February 14, 2013 at 2:32 pm
Yes, but I’d say there are other things that make life worth living than those that money can buy….
February 14, 2013 at 2:47 pm
Agreed.
February 14, 2013 at 2:58 pm
People in Universities do make music – I know because I once made the mistake of going to a lunchtime concert organised by the music department and they put in one of their researchers compositions in the program. Of course they thought it was amazing and pushing boundaries and etc – to me it was just rehashing modern classical music from 80 years ago and sounded much like any music I had heard from that genre.
As you say most (possibly all) amazing pieces of music were not written by people at Universities….but it appears its not true they don’t try to make new music at Universities. I don’t think its worth it though, really new musical directions do not seem to come from them, but from people who make music outside their sphere of influence – pick your favourite genre from the last 30 years and I really doubt people in university music departments had much to do with its evolution. I suspect part of the answer is e.g. Led Zeppelin who were very talented musicians could make vast amounts of money simply playing their music to people, where as no-one is going to pay me to do science research except a University realistically. So why would they want to work at a University even if one would have them?
February 14, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Yes, there are writers, artists and musicians working in universities but they constitute a minority of faculty in arts and humanities departments.
February 14, 2013 at 7:36 pm
[…] “… Anti-science attitudes are far from unusual among the Arts & Humanities fraternity, even in the supposedly enlightened environment of a University, which I think is a real shame …” (more) […]
February 14, 2013 at 8:11 pm
Wonderful topic !
February 15, 2013 at 9:49 am
My university discontinued its usenet feed long long ago. Are there useful public servers out there somewhere?
February 15, 2013 at 2:59 pm
I think Scientists really shouldn’t try to create things. I went to an exhibition launch for a new mammal, they’d sort of hidden it in a programme of existing mammals, but it was just a rehash of a placental one and wasn’t very good, and the fur was really ropey. Plus it was infertile. Same thing with the star some scientist created. They said it shined, but it didn’t really. The next night I looked for in in the sky but it wasn’t visible. Guess the fusion just didn’t take or it failed or something. They’re just not as good at it like the professionals who do this all the time are. I think they should stick to sometimes complicated explanatory work about what’s already there so we understand our world, like they do in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
February 15, 2013 at 4:53 pm
The most important things scientists create are ideas..
February 16, 2013 at 8:04 am
Rush, Hemispheres
To be more precise, Cygnus X-1 Book II, Part V – The Sphere: A Kind of Dream
[No internet source required. As a teenager I learnt to play the entire first side of Hemispheres on guitar by listening to it over and over again. As a result the lyrics have been rather firmly ’embedded’.]
I claim the 500 points with my head held high (and with Red Star proudly high in hand). Neil Peart’s dalliances with Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’ are something I’m rather less keen about…
February 18, 2013 at 12:47 pm
@Phillip Helbig, Feb. 18 2013, 09:15
I am sure that Peter won’t mind if we hijack this comments thread with mutual appreciation of Rush. After all, he’s a big jazz fan so would readily appreciate the suspended 4ths, 7/8 time signatures, and progressive sensibilities. (Geddy Lee’s vocals might be another matter entirely…)
Saw them on the R30 tour in Birmingham and London. I also saw them last year four times because they played Moving Pictures in its entirety. I must admit, however, that I can’t match your dedication – I wasn’t severely ill at the time!
All the best,
Philip
February 19, 2013 at 3:59 pm
I’m a huge fan of everything Rush did up until Power Windows. I bought Signals when I was 14 and the lyrics (particularly to Subdivisions!) really ‘resonated’ with me. I still listen to it a couple of times a week. Grace Under Pressure similarly kept me sane during my days attending an all-boys Catholic school in rural Ireland in the early eighties (*shudder*).
From Power Windows on, my interest declined – but I still bought the albums and went to the gigs. (I was a very happy PhD student when I found out that the wonderful Primus was the support act for the Roll The Bones tour). Nonetheless, Clockwork Angels is probably the best thing they’ve done in 20 years…
I’m not sure about the “head over heart” aspect of Rush’s music. Sure, it certainly involves virtuoso playing and technical riffs but Lifeson’s solo in La Villa Strangiato, for example, is a masterclass in dynamics. It’s packed with emotion and builds perfectly.
Philip
P.S. To return to an earlier thread:: We can subtract 1 off Brian Cox’s Pegg number to bring it down to 4. Gary Moore and Darren Wharton played together on Thin Lizzy’s swan song album, Life. (Moore was a guest for “Emerald” and Wharton was the keyboardist on the final tour).
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Sorry, Peter. Normal service now resumed…