Half a Mind Is a Terrible Thin

贡献者:海绵体宝宝 类别:英文 时间:2013-03-24 18:00:31 收藏数:46 评分:-0.5
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The idea that we must choose between science and humanities is false. In the heady progressive years
of the early 20th century, few things were more alluring than the promise of scientific knowledge.
In a world struggling with rapid industrialization, massive immigration, and chaotic urban growth,
science and technology seemed to offer solutions to almost every problem. Newly created state
colleges and universities devoted themselves almost entirely to scientific, technological, and
engineering fields. Many Americans came to believe that scientific certainty could solve not only
scientific problems, but could also reform politics, government, and business. Two world wars and
a Great Depression rocked the confidence of many people that scientific expertise alone could
create a prosperous and ordered world. In the aftermath of World War II, the academic world turned
with new enthusiasm to humanistic studies, which seemed to many scholars the best way to ensure
the survival of democracy and to resist tyranny. American scholars fanned out across much of the
world—with support from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright program, and the U.S. Information
Agency—to promote the teaching of literature and the arts in an effort to make the case for
democratic freedoms.
In the America of our own time, the great educational challenge has become an effort to strengthen
the teaching of what is now know as the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and
math). There is considerable and justified concern that the United States is falling behind much
of the rest of the developed world in these essential disciplines. India, China, Japan, and other
regions seem to be seizing technological leadership.
At the same time, perhaps inevitably, the humanities—while still popular in elite colleges and
universities—have experienced a significant decline. Humanistic disciplines are seriously
underfunded, not just by the government and the foundations but by academic institutions themselves.
Humanists are usually among the lowest-paid faculty members at most institutions and are often
lightly regarded because they do not generate grant income and because they provide no obvious
credentials for most nonacademic careers.
There is no doubt that American education should be training more scientists and engineers and
should be teaching scientific literacy to everyone else. Much of the hand-wringing among politicians
about the state of American universities today is focused on the absence of "real world"
education—which to a large degree means preparation for professional and scientific careers.
But the idea that institutions or their students must decide between humanities and science is
false. Our society could not survive without scientific and technological knowledge. But we would be
equally impoverished without humanistic knowledge as well. Science and technology teach us what we
can do. Humanistic thinking can help us understand what we should do.
The humanities are not simply vehicles of aesthetic reward and intellectual inspiration, as valuable
as those purposes are. Science and technology aspire to clean, clear answers to problems (as elusive
as those answers might be). The humanities address ambiguity, doubt, and skepticism—essential
underpinnings in a complex and diverse society and a turbulent world.
It is not surprising that many of our greatest scientists are also deeply committed to humanistic
knowledge and values. Nor should it be surprising that many humanistic fields find scientific tools
essential to their work. At my own university, all undergraduates must take a rigorous humanities
core,but they are also required to develop scientific skills and literacy. Many liberal-arts
institutions have developed similar curricular goals. Among academics, scientists and humanists not
only coexist, but often collaborate. It is mostly in the politics of education that debates over the
relative value of these different disciplines take place. It is almost impossible to imagine our
society without thinking of the extraordinary achievements of scientists and engineers in building
our complicated world. But try to imagine our world as well without the remarkable works that have
defined our culture and values. We have always needed, and we still need, both.
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