For example, the sociologist who asks about the average SAT scores of people from different races. The answer to such a question is useless. Consider the other relevant questions that could be asked: we could assess childhood malnutrition and childhood healthcare by race and how it influences brain development. We could examine the distribution of race in the best schools around the country. We could examine the the rates at which students of different races consume the services of private tutors. While the first question leaves you with a simple answer that SAT scores of Whites and Asians are higher than those of Blacks and Latinos, the answer to any of the subsequent questions demonstrates the racism inherent in our society - that certain groups of people are systematically denied access to the same goods and services of others.
In a society that is inherently unequally raced, asking a question about race that fails to take into account the factors that produce the answer is not merely idiotic, it is dangerous. It leads us into a minefield of half-truths (or non-truths) and assumptions out of which it is impossible to extricate ourselves. A society as complex as our own commands answers worthy of such complexity. To make certain that we ask the right questions to get these necessarily complex answers, there must be some safeguard to ensure that we do not ask the wrong questions. That safeguard is the humanities.
Much has been made over the past few decades of the benefits of interdisciplinarity. The great benefit of the liberal arts, of course, is that one learns across a multiplicity of disciplines. The combination of the enterprises of the different disciplines is, I believe the goal. Yet too often the definition of interdisciplinarity is too narrow, particularly when talk about broad interdisciplinarity (the sciences and the humanities, for example). Ted Toadvine has pointed out six such myths of broad interdisciplinary study in Volume 1 of Thinking Nature.
Toadvine's brief article merits a full reading, for his conclusions are prescient and insightful. He argues that great interdisciplinary work doesn't come from having a poet and chemist study electrons or having a physicist and a painter produce a painting. Rather, the best interdisciplinary work comes when the different disciplines work together to perform the tasks to which they are best suited. And the scientific task to which the humanities are best suited is to help scientists ask the right questions.
As Toadvine rightly points out, "If our typical way of framing environmental problems privileges the kinds of 'solutions' that empirical approaches will provide, it does so precisely by occluding other ways of framing the problems, say, in terms of justice or value or freedom or self-identity." The humanities, then, provide us with the opportunity to ask the meta-level questions, the questions about our questions. How do the questions we ask prevent us from getting comprehensive answers to the problems we perceive? Or better stated: what other questions should we be asking to ensure that we do not overlook essential pieces of information?
At present, the humanities are coming under ever more intense pressure to justify their continued existence (read: funding). No cellist is going to produce a cure for cancer, and no novelist is going to invent a cheaper form of space travel. But critical training in the humanities provides a check against the type of inane question-asking that continues to guide the curiosity of eugenicists* even in our own time.
*This is fairly reprehensible. The comments are particularly ugly.
Bloom- I think you should have qualified the sociologists remark with "but doesn't ask (insert other questions you mention)" However, since he or she is a sociologist, I assume he or she does ask those other questions. And I would argue that the SAT question matters a lot. It illustrates the severity the other problems you mention.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right about the qualifying and the sociologist. And I don't disagree with you about the SAT question (at least not on any grounds we're discussing here), but the question is useless by itself, which is, unfortunately, how it is oftentimes asked.
ReplyDeleteHey, I just discovered your blog. Pretty cool. Anyway, I heartily agree with your main point in this post, that the humanities help people ask the right questions. I would add that, in addition to helping people ask the right questions when it comes to science, social issues, etc., a liberal education (if done right) should also teach a person to ask the right questions of him- or herself, in day-to-day life. It should make you a wiser and better person than you were before. So, liberal education not only benefits society, but is an end in itself. The health of the mind is to be pursued for its own sake, just as the health of the body is pursued.
ReplyDeleteThat last bit I kind of stole from John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University." I highly recommend it, at least sections 5-9. (The first four sections are all about theology, so you probably won't be interested in that.) Also, I think I already told you about this book, but you should RUN, not walk, to the nearest bookstore or library and pick up a copy of Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind." It's basically one long argument for liberal education. It gives you a lot to think about in relation to "interdisciplinarity" and the way the disciplines relate to one another. It's no easy read, but I can almost guarantee you will love it. Plus, the author has almost the same name as you.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the liberal arts are an end in and of themselves, but that fact begs a second question. Are they not, then, an act of self-indulgence? If my goal for studying the liberal arts is to enhance the quality of my own mind, it is a selfish act unless I can use the amelioration of my mental faculties for the benefit of humankind.
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps you are referring to something slightly different, and knowing your knowledge of ancient philosophy I suspect you are. Aristotelian ethics. The living of a good life. For Aristotle, this is an essentially social task. The wonderful line "man is a political animal," is actually somewhat confusing in its English form because the Greek word (which I cannot remember) conveys the sense of sociality along with the idea of politics. The two are inescapably intertwined. So when we talk about living the good life - how to behave ethically - we are talking about social interaction. And if politics is inherently social, then sociality is inherently political. And the best way to become better is to study the liberal arts, for they endow us with the ability, as you rightly say, to ask these questions of ourselves.
Touché. I agree with all of the above. You're right in thinking that I wasn't thinking of liberal education as a merely self-indulgent luxury, like working out at the gym. It is self-indulgent, but it also has the good fortune of being able to benefit both you and those around you at the same time. Education is one of the few cases in which the benefit of one does not necessarily mean the loss of another. Like love, learning is something that is self-generative and spreads itself around; where there is more of it, it just compounds with itself to produce more of itself. It is only limited by our capacity to give it. The fact that you are well-educated should allow you to raise up those around you to your level, rather than putting yourself over them. And this requires social interaction, as you point out, not merely shutting yourself up in an ivory tower.
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