This past week of presentations has really hit home for me the idea that incorporating art (in the form of a play such as Sherlock and Dr. No-it-all!) or music (in the form of a beautiful Nucleosome song!) or art (in the form of a protein sculpture) can really enhance scientific understanding and can make science more fun and imaginative.
On that note, it has gotten me thinking about a series of articles I read last summer, which perhaps after this semester, I might have more insight about.
This past summer, Steven Pinker (a supporter of the role of the sciences in society) and Leon Wieseltier (someone who has argued that science should not be applied to the humanities) engaged in a debate online via the NewRepublic. Some see both the sciences and humanities having equal potential to influence our world in a healthy way. Some see the sciences as encroaching on all things sacred in our lives, including the arts. For example, Wieseltier might say that the most recent focus on neuroscience (and applying it to the understanding of human love, memory, stress, music appreciation etc,) reduces the complexity of life to scientific measures.
I have included a passage below written by Pinker (who argues for the benefits of applying natural sciences to the social sciences):
“Why should either discipline stay inside Wieseltier’s sterile rooms? Does morality have nothing to do with the facts of human well-being, or with the source of human moral intuitions? Does political theory have nothing to learn from a better understanding of people’s inclinations to cooperate, aggress, hoard, share, work, empathize, or submit to authority? Is art really independent of language, perception, memory, emotion? If not, and if scientists have made discoveries about these faculties which go beyond received wisdom, why isn’t it for them to say that these ideas belong in any sophisticated discussion of these topics?”
When I read these articles this past summer, I whole-heartedly accepted Wieseltier’s beliefs that there are certain areas of human experience that are sacred and beyond the reach of what science can illuminate. I still understand his perspective that science can’t explain why certain musical compositions have powerful effects on our emotions. However, after participating in this blog this semester, I can now say that even with subjects such as love, science has a role to play. And yet, we are complex, irrational beings, and the emotions I experience when listening to Brahms or Beethoven ultimately cannot be reduced to science, though I know a popular field now is Biological Musicology-looking at how music draws out certain emotions, biologically.
So in sum, we need the biological perspective and we need the social science/behavioral perspective. We need the Sciences and we need the humanities. The more I read about both perspectives, the more I find value in each perspective for its own merits, perhaps because I am have become accustomed to a scientific way of thinking (looking for concrete scientific support in data, and annotating these figures!!) and yet I think we are amazingly complex beings, and our creations are extensions of our thinking and emotions which can not be reduced to science.