I was involved last Thursday in a rich
and intriguing conversation in a Humanities Theory Seminar. The objective of
the seminar series is "to imagine what a 'theory' course in the humanities
might look like." I hadn't participated in earlier meetings in the series,
but was attracted by the announced take off point for this particular sesssion,
a recently published book in the history of science titled Objectivity. I was
interested in finding out how my own recent thinking about
"objectivity" and "subjectivity" related to that of
humanists. More generally, I was intrigued by the chance to see to what degree
humanists share my interest in finding common ground between the humanities and
the sciences (cf Two Cultures or One? and Education: Between Two Cultures).
Objectivity uses scientific atlases as
an observational foundation for arguing that science has used and continues to
use a variety of normative/epistemological standards, with new ones emerging
from concerns about older ones without necessarily replacing them. The point is
made by calling attention to an older "true to nature" form of
illustration (that actually ignored variablity in the interests of showing generality)
which in turn, along with technological advances, provoked a mechanical or
photographic ideal that was felt by some to be more "objective." More
recently, the latter has been challenged by proponents of illustrations
reflecting professional expertise, and still more recently by an interest in
illustration that involves and to a significant degree celebrates the
subjective judgements of the illustrator.
There are a number of intriguing
features of this portrayal, among them a picture of science as to a significant
degree mirroring biological evolution, with existing forms of inquiry
reflecting recognition of shortcomings of prior forms ("getting it less
wrong") but also with persistance of earlier forms to the extent they
correspond to the needs of particular specific contexts. I'm interested too in
the documented pendulum swings with regard to acknowledging the existence and
significance of variability.
On a more general level, the book is
intriguing, of course, because of the challenge it provides to the notion of
"objectivity" as a fixed and eternal feature of science. And, still
more generally, the challenge it offers to a contemporary ideal of "objectivity"
in the sense of an illustration that is totally devoid of any influence related
to distinctive characteristics or perspectives of the illustrator (lacking any
"interpretive act"). Along these lines, it was interesting to me that
by and large humanists seem to regard challenges to the contemporary ideal of
objectivity as largely a problem for scientists, one not particularly of
concern for humanists. My own sense, of course, is that all inquiry, humanistic
as well as scientific, asserts some claim to one or another form of
"objectivity" and so the problem of how to justify such claims is as
much a problem for humanists as it is for scientists, and, for that matter, as
much a problem for non-academics as it is for academics.
Particularly interesting and
challenging to me was a sense that the observations from science that challenge
the ideal of a perspective free knowledge (the relativity of velocity, space,
and time from physics; the dependence of perception itself on particular,
largely unconscious, constructions, from neurobiology) seem to some humanists
to carry less weight than others that come from the humanities, such as
feminist "standpoint epistemology." The issue, I think, is not only
what one is more familiar with but something deeper. Rorty's "Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature" arguments, for example, seem, despite their
humanistic context, to be to many humanists less compelling than those of
feminist philosophy.
My sense is that both the scientific
observations and Rorty's arguments seem to many too remote from human existence
and so more or less irrelvant, whereas feminist philosophy draws its power
precisely from common human concerns, moral and otherwise, with which people
can more readily identify. If so, there is still in some parts of academia (and
in the world at large) a "two cultures" split, a sense that science
and the humanities involve parallel and non-overlapping inquiries into distinct
realms, one taking as a subject value and meaning laden humanity and the other "natural"
phenomena where one can put aside concerns of value and meaning.
While there is clear historical
precedent for such a split, my own feeling is that recent history provides
compelling reasons to move beyond it. Not only is there common ground in
recognition of the ubiquity of interpretative acts (and hence some measure of
subjectivity) in both the sciences and the humanities but the rise of
scientific inquiry into the nature of humanity itself, of the social and brain
sciences, makes it increasingly impossible to sustain the notion that
scientists must necessarily ignore value and meaning. There is, for example, no
way to adequately inquire into the brain and how it works (nor into economics
or history or any other of the "social sciences") if one presumes
that the enormous part of human experience involving value and meanings is
outside the realm of what is being inquired into.
Humans are of course different from
rocks, trees, and frogs and scientific inquiries into humanness must of course
acknowledge those differences and adjust its methods of inquiry appropriately.
And scientists certainly have things to learn from humanists in this regard (cf
Revisiting Science in Culture: Science as Story Telling and Story Revising and
Making the Unconscious Conscious and Vice Versa). Perhaps, though, humanists
have something to learn from scientists as well? While there certainly
differences between humans and non-human things there are important
commonalities as well. Humanness, with its concern for value and meaning, is not
actually a distinct and parallel realm but rather one that has evolved from and
so continues to reflect in important ways non-human things and an absence of
value and meaning (cf. From Complexity to Emergence and Beyond). Just as
scientific inquiry can be usefully be informed by the perspectives and
understandings of the sciences, so too could inquiry in the humanities be
usefully informed by that of the sciences (cf Education: Between Two Cultures).
Its encouraging to see my colleagues
in the humanities getting together to talk about the humanities as a whole, and
how to teach it. Perhaps there is in thinking about teaching a route to
refreshing our approaches to our own scholarship more generally? Perhaps there
should be a Sciences Theory Seminar as well? Maybe in fact there should be also
an Inquiry Theory Seminar, one that would explore the existing and potential
commonalities among all arenas of inquiry?
@2008 by Paul
Grobstein
