Thu 24 Jan 2008
Summary
Kronman describes science through the research ideal, then draws a comparison to technology. He argues we use technology to increase out power and defy fate, but that it ultimately obscures understanding of the world. Social science is likewise dominated by the research ideal, with Economics leading the charge.
However, the humanities have no such guide, and Kronman paints that field as lost and weak, especially since the field’s instructors have PhDs from large research universities. This, he says, has led to the rise of fundamentalism, which currently has no counter in the world. Kronman hopes that Secular Humanism will enjoy a resurgence in humanities departments, again providing instruction in the meaning of life.
Commentary
I agree with Kronman on the strength of the sciences. That field now has clear methods of both discovering and disseminating new discoveries of the natural world. Technology has likewise grown into and around our lives like a parasite - I was born before the internet really came into being, yet I cannot imagine it’s non-existence. Yet to me, technology is more of an interface, especially the laptop I write this post on.
Technology does have a function in defying fate - we have prosthetics, and Stephen Hawking can still communicate with an artificial voice. But I think Kronman ignores the role of technology in facilitating our fates - we can form new communities and if we discover our purpose in living, technology can help us achieve that purpose. While it marches toward the “Death of God,” it also spreads sermons via podcast.
While reading the section on the social sciences, I was struck by how much progress we make in that field in improving advertising. Some of the best progress in any field is driven by the money available.
It’s also true that the humanities have lost some self definition. I took Religion 101 this past semester, and instead of studying the words of Mohammad, we took to Freud. The class was still useful, but in the field of social science.
I agree that Fundamentalism does not have a clear opponent in science (though it does in Richard Dawkins), because each side if fighting a different battle. Faith is specifically without logic, while Science is built around a logical progression of knowledge. I also refer you to the latest book from Jim Wallis, The Great Awakening, where he describes a shift taking place among evangelicals to go beyond a battle with science, something he spoke on during a visit to Williams this fall.
Not having taken a course in Philosophy yet, I can’t render any verdict on Kronman’s hopes for Secular Humanism, except to say that they make sense within the context of the book. Kronman’s political correctness, which I call Relativism, has fatal flaws, which cannot be clearly defined, though they can be identified. I once spent a solid weekend playing a computer game during high school, and came away with a definite emptiness from not having human contact. I felt an inherit wrongness in Swift’s “A modest proposal.” We need real people and relationships in our lives. Technology cannot replace that which truly makes us human, though it can (and will) come close.
Only by personally exploring what makes us human will we be able to resist the temptation to believe the first person selling answers.
Questions
1. What other vehicles can be used to explore the meaning of life?
2. Does education in hard science prepare us for the real world, or does it simply push us up the mountain of scientific knowledge without regard for real-life applicability?
3. Will technology become a primary social system, instead of the secondary system it is now?
4. The internet has a segregating effect - it is easy to surround ourselves with ideas and people similar. How can technology encourage diversity of thought, if it can at all?
5. We have set some moral limits on science (i. e. Cloning). Should there be similar limits in new technology?
6. Do you like Kronman’s hope for the future of the humanities?
January 24th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I will try your question 6:
Yes and no. I believe that, by and large, students should be allowed to study whatever academic topics they want to study, as long as those topics are taught in a rigorous and series fashion. Kronman implies that the Yale Directed Studies program is very popular, enrolling 10% (?) of Yale students and turning away another 10%. I would think that such courses would be similarly popular among Williams students. If so, the College should offer it. (I think that the only plausible home for these sorts of courses are elite schools.)
How might Williams start such a program? It would be hard to dive right in to something as big as directed studies, since it seems like students take a total of 6 classes in a single year. Instead, I would propose starting with just 2 paired courses taught over the year, sort of like ARTH 101/102. The hard part, obviously, is shrinking the material down to fit. How would others do that?
Where would this class be located? One obvious answer is as a tutorial. Any professor in DIV I or II could get permission to teach such a class (although I guess it might be the first year-long tutorial at Williams).
Or, more ambitiously, one could try this as a replacement for First Year Residential Seminar.
FRS has been around for more than 20 years. How is it doing? How many students apply? It seems like this year there is only a single fall course (RELG 101), no different from the same class in the catalog. Didn’t FRS uses to have classes both semesters, and try to do something not found elsewhere in the catalog?
Anyway, if I were Kronman and I wanted to bring this program to Williams. I would start by volunteering to teach it at FRS. With luck, it would be as popular as Directed Studies at Yale. Then, after a year or two, I would try to recruit some other professors to teach other sections. After all, the argument would go, we have 100 students (20% of the class) who want this experience. Shouldn’t we give it to them?
And, note, that I would recruit the very best teachers at Williams to teach this class. Knowing that the students who apply for FRS are some of the smartest and most motivated, I could be pretty sure that both teachers and students would sing the praises of the course, would claim that it provides the perfect compliment to the entry system. Indeed, I would try to recruit JAs to be the TAs for the course, to sit in with the freshmen and join in the conversation.
After 5-10 years of that, I would try to make the program universal, make it a requirement for all first years in all entries.
I, personally, am not sure that I would like to see a new requirement, but, if I were a Kronmanphile on the Williams faculty today, this is the master plan that I would use.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Nice job, Will. I just finished that chapter last night, so it is fresh in my mind. You summarized it clearly and concisely. It is also incredibly valuable and refreshing, to get an objective “tech” perspective from someone your age.
I am going to address question #1. What other vehicles can be used to explore the meaning of life?
Why not an entirely different kind of humanities class? Keep the western version for those that are interested…maybe condense a version of it to add to this new one. But why not a new program, one that includes what I would like to call “faith-driven” philosophy as well. There is a much more diverse group of great thinkers to draw from, when this category is included; some of which are the founders of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and of course, Christianity.
What better way of creating an atmosphere conducive to questions about life, than when you are openly embracing the beliefs underlying the cultural backgrounds of what is now, a very diverse classroom? What better possibility of accepting the ideas of others, when your own are also included in the conversation? And what better way to promote a more expansive understanding of the world at large?
And as far as personal growth, and preparation for life? I know, from my own experience, I was more able to achieve some clarity, and resolve questions stemming from my own upbringing, when I began to bump up against other belief systems. I could embrace what I needed from my own background, and yet find support for ideas that challenged the ones I inherited.
The students involved could even have a hand in developing the choice of thinkers. All of this, would however, take a bit of “scholarly research”.
And so, it goes…with no “end” after all.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Amen. I’ll combine your questions to steer back to what troubles me with humanities. And I offer this as an English major and Lane Faison disciple and I apply the lessons of King Lear, Richard II, The Tempest and Matisse and Cezanne and Jenny Holzer every day whether on Wall Street or in a classroom.
Humanists ask lousy questions. That’s why the humanists have no framework and are “lost and weak” in the research ideal. This came to me one day as a Research I university CFO. At a telescope on Mauna Kea, I asked an astrophysicist what he was working on. “The equation state of the universe.” I thing that means “Where is the universe going and when will it get there.” The next day, English faculty were complaining that the oceanographers always had as many computers as they needed and the English Department had none. The oceanographers were trying to solve global warming, and computers were part of the plan. The English faculty are just asking for computers. If you ask a $50,000 question you’ll be lucky to get a $25,000 grant.
Again and again and again, I find that hard scientists 25 years into their careers are working on questions that didn’t exist when they were undergraduates. Humanists, and even historians, are working on a question that would have been a familiar 301-course-level midterm exam questions.
Humanists have to start showing up at the meetings for the big questions. Not to offer close textual readings of a poem, but to bring their perspectives to the debate. It’s a great failure, as far as I can see, that humanists lack a plan for, say, hunger or world peace or clean water. Back to your questions on the future of humanities. I think people will also create the books and plays and paintings and music that humanities professionals study. The departments in the Academy need to wake up or shut down.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:16 am
In the beginning there was the WORD. And the word was made FLESH. Superstition prevailed. Science did not exist outside of Astrology. Men lived within a world populated by Gods & Demons, Heaven & Hell, Reward & Punishment, Innocence and Guilt, and Love and Suffering. The advent of gunpowder and the printing press was to the middle ages what the microchip and the internet are today.
We have internalized a great deal of the world outside of ourselves. Religions and their conehead representatives have attempted to prevent this within every culture and their respective religious cults.
Peace, tolerance and diversity are not new. They first appeared under King Asoka when he began to “dharmatize” his empire. These buzz words are powerful in that they are the opposite of what they claim upon their subjects. Peace means that their shall be no resistance; tolerance that we all are equal; and diversity, where open borders allow free trade to cannibalize resources and labor. This mantra is the cornerstone of every attempt to introduce internationalist propaganda in order to overwhelm our common sense.
Science is the daughter of philosophy, as are all the disciplines. Technology like guns do not injure or disable. People do. Freedom is important, but not at the expense of individualist societies. Internationalist tendencies are the direct result of the pathology of groups whose social dynamics cannot prevail successfully within nativist cultures.
Science and the humanities enable societies to minimize risk by overcoming higher states of disorder. There is no point in any discussion with regards a return to nature. We are NATURE. We are the VOICE OF THE EARTH. Our survival is paramount in that without US, there will be no planet where homo sapiens exist. We have observed this through the demise of the colonies of the Incas and the Aztecs and other outposts of lesser significance.
Humanities are important when they lend themselves to reinforce the memory of who we each are as a race and a people. Any other interest to the quest for meaning in life is worthless. One either uses intelligence to enable life or you use intelligence to disable, by bringing death, disease and destruction upon our societies.
January 26th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
David Broadband - entirely agree with your last para (above)!
I chimed in a few days ago … Life is the Meaning. Be smart, see and understand stuff, try to do good things.
Or, as Garrison Keillor sums up - “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch…”