Science isn’t progress without change: the importance of the Arts and Humanities

To read Collini’s ‘What are universities for?’?is to envy the pen-per-son-or-daughter-ship of authors in the arts and humanities. We scientists are seldom as clever with words. Our care, as Collini suggests, is contributions through formulae, models, and experimentation. It is these that I will try to bring to this argument.

Collini’s book maps out in some detail the forces that act against the arts and humanities as academic disciplines. From conversations with colleagues and my recent experiences in the HE sector, Collini’s thesis has not been falsified in the interim; indeed, it may be that those forces are increasing. I agree with Collini that this is a bad thing.

Collini’s cites the government’s, and thus university administrations’, laser-like focus on financial metrics to make decisions to the exclusion of anything else. From first-hand experience, this holds, at least in my university. Financial metrics arose to placate the ‘taxpayer’ – a “morose, prickly creature [...] that fears the loss of its hoard”.

Financial metrics advantage the sciences over the arts and humanities as it’s easier to grasp that science creates the vehicles that drive those metrics up, at least in popular discourse.

For comedic value, Collini’s demonisation of the taxpayer is wonderful! It may, however, be counterproductive by deflecting our energies from the need for arguments as strong for the arts and humanities as for science into those needed for appreciating the comedy.

And I believe that arguments as strong as those for science can be made for the arts and humanities, even if they’re too large to squeeze into the small margin of this paper.

So that’s why there’s a full section for them below.

It may sound from the above that my wish is to place science in competition with the arts and humanities, but the arguments reveal a necessary complementary between the two. Er, three.

The essence of the argument is this: without science there can be no progress; without the art and humanities there can be no change; both progress and change are essential for economic growth.

Unlike tangos, problem tangles usually involve more than two poeple...        

Over the years, with my colleague Lucia Rapanotti, I’ve developed an approach called problem orientation – it’s the science?of problems. (Precisely what is meant by?science?is for another essay. For now, it's sufficient to say it's about knowledge and understanding.) Problem orientation provides models and methods that help solve complex problems.

At its core is the observation/axiom that someone who understands they have a problem will solve it, somehow. For problem orientation, this is the human condition. Sometimes the somehow is simple and solitary: that cryptic crossword puzzle isn't going to solve itself, now, is it?

Two individuals’ problems?tangle?when they overlap, creating a symbiotic pose/solve relationship. The tired worker and the travel agent have problems that tangle: the tired academic wants a holiday; the travel agent wants a cash flow. The solution is the sale of a holiday by the travel agent to the tired academic.

Unlike tangos, problem tangles usually involve more than two people but their nature is most easily seen when there are only two – tangled problem solving for two is the ‘win-win’ of simpler discourses – in our example, a holiday ‘win’ for the tired academic, a cash flow ‘win’ for the travel agent.

To make the tangle more complex we could mix in the airline’s problems, their shareholders’ and their staff for cash flow, investment vehicles, and a living wage, respectively. Even more tangles arise if we consider the problems of those that work at each holiday destination. And the complexity doesn’t stop there: we could add the problems of the owners of the shopping mall that hosts the travel agents, all the way up to those of the Treasury affording to govern.

Tangles can grow very quickly too: in the limit, problem tangles link us all together in problem solving?ecosystems, i.e., dynamically interacting systems of problem posers?and problem solvers. Their interactions create economies as resources are combined into solutions and cash intermediates their transfer. Problem orientation captures the flux of resources that flow between agents in these ecosystems and the feedback mechanisms that moderate the market of pose/solve interactions.

In this way, problem orientation constructs the present state of the world as the tangled solutions of already solved problems; the world's future state further entangles future solutions to future problems.

Thus, problem orientation defines ecologies of our constructed, artificial world. Sound plausible? Which brings us to ecosystem change.

Suddenly, the world is your oyster!
        

Imagine a world in which tired academics have no recourse to holidays abroad because holidays abroad don’t exist. Then, a clever entrepreneur who’s done the science puts 2 and 2 together for the genius idea of a lighter than air machine that can float from here to there, over land and sea, carrying hundreds of passengers in great luxury; Suddenly, The Whole World Is Your Oyster?.

But, some say, flying is against nature! If we were supposed to fly, we would have wings! Humans won’t be able to breath above the speed of 60 miles per hour! The atmosphere is too thin to support life up there, so everyone will die! They’ll crash into clouds! They’re unsafe! They don’t work! The world is flat and they will fly off the edge!

Scientists argue rationally against popular opinion; “the science is good, heavier than aircraft can fly because hydrogen is lighter than air! Believe us!” But nobody with an irrational fear?(or a negative agenda) was ever convinced by rational argument. Wanting to convince people to fly means addressing their fears (or exposing their negative agendas).

So, let’s write books of adventures people have with flying; let’s make art inspired by looking down from the sky; let’s make movies of people flying. Let’s marvel on the heroism of single-handed transatlantic flights. Let’s understand reticence; let’s inspire confidence. Let’s identify their heroes and heroines and understand their foibles.

And just as people are starting to relax, the Hindenburg goes up in flames and everyone is again scared. Scared for a century. Even before the business fledgling flies the business nest, the idea of commercial passenger flights is dead, as dead as a parrot.

The science is good. But progress is stymied because of “people’s”?fears, prejudices, frailties, culture, and/or negative agendas – nothing that science can treat.

Bitcoin needs radical cultural changes to be accepted and incorporated wisely.
        

Change in ecosystems is difficult as, by definition, disturbing their balance can destroy them. Don’t get me wrong, ecosystems themselves are not so difficult that ecosystem scientists can’t understand their whys and wherefores, but there’ a reason scientists do their best work in the lab. And their clever devices don’t socialise themselves.

Sure, simple devices need nothing more than a nudge to incorporate, but the big ideas – the social media, the smartphone and the smart-home, the Internet of Things, the AI and the ML, the Bitcoin, the digital ID – need radical cultural changes to be accepted?and?incorporated wisely. It was the same with the printing press. It was the same with motor cars and, yes, with the flying machines. In short, there’s no change without culture change and culture change is beyond science’s tools to curate.

David Hume wrote: “[History's] chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.” The arts, the humanities with their histories and their geographies, their creative writings and their super-sensitivities, provide the best tools we have for curating change[1]. Simply, it is the arts and humanities that provide the understanding of how to socialise the sciences’ clever devices. Without the arts and humanities, there is no culture change, no acceptance of the science and no progress. And without those tools, no matter how clever our scientists are, they are powerless to change the world.

The balance between sciences, the arts and the humanities isn’t equitable because, to paraphrase Collini, the relationship of science to economic metrics is easier to grasp. But pushing science alone isn’t sufficient. Because, although without science there can be no progress, without the arts and humanities there can be no change.

[1]??See, also?https://www.ukri.org/blog/why-are-the-arts-and-humanities-vital-to-tackling-climate-change/.