“How Increasing Emphasis on the ‘Hard Sciences‘ has Led to the Marginalization of the Humanities, and Why It Should Not Have to Be That Way”

The study of the works of philosophers, both ancient and modern, has long been considered a foundational, indispensable component of a high-quality education. Indeed, throughout history the intellectual elite placed immense importance on the concept of a ‘Renaissance education,’ which encompassed a wide range of subjects including the study of music, foreign languages, literature, history, philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences, to name a few. Each of these subjects was seen as entirely vital to the holistic education of a ‘lady’ or ‘gentleman’ of yesteryear. As a result of relatively recent trends, however, we can see that ‘holistic’ no longer describes the most respected paradigm of higher education – instead, that word has been replaced with another: competitive. Students today face an ever-mounting pressure to secure good jobs in an increasingly weakened economy – they must follow the doctrine of ‘practicality above all else’ in order to survive. To the parents of frazzled high school seniors, the moral of this story is that it is more important now more than ever to send their children off to the top universities and to let them get educated – to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, or something technical to ensure their employment after graduation. The humanities, it seems, has fallen to the status as the major ‘left over’ for the kids who could not handle the pressure of a STEM curriculum. Why else, after all, would anyone want to study philosophy?

Traditionally, the work of philosophers was written in response to events shaping the social fabric of the day – and served as tools for their intended audience to further evaluate the situation at hand, and then to act in kind. Some works were aimed at the common people, as guidelines to live their lives by and prosper. An example of this form of philosophy comes from an ancient Chinese historian by the name of Sima Qian, who was writing during a time when his government was beginning to interfere with trade by artificially changing the allocation of wealth in the nation. In response to this Qian wrote a piece describing man’s inclination towards wealth as having a net positive effect for society at large, and went on to support his argument in favor of a laissez-faire economy by providing historical accounts of how wealthy men in the past obtained their riches, and then used their fortunes as tools to cultivate virtue and thereby benefit the societies they lived in. Other writers chose to focus on the structure of the government and social networks of the societies in which they were living, an example of this being Plato’s The Republic, in which the ancient Greek thinker described what he believed what qualities or social constructs could be incorporated in the constitution of a perfect city-state. Some other works were written with the intention of shaping political agenda, examples of this form being Leo Tolstoy’s Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer and Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. Both pieces are meant to be incendiary in nature, to ‘boil the blood of the people,’ as it were, to effect social change. From all of these examples, we can see that philosophy in addition to various other disciplines belonging to the humanities have been used as powerful tools to shape communities in the past. But can the work of contemporary philosophers hold the same kind of political clout as the products of their predecessors did? In a forty-minute speech given at a conference hosted by Google, world- renowned physicist Stephen Hawking effectively summed up the prevailing opinion of society at large when it pertains to the much-debated ‘death of the humanities’:

““...Almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics. ...Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. New theories lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it.” (Warman)”

Hawking’s opinion is one held by many who share the same belief that philosophy has ‘outlived its usefulness.’ The scientific interpretation of hard data, he claims, is what will eventually reveal to humanity the ‘true nature of the universe,’ and allow us to understand our place in the world. While it may be true that the accumulation of data allows for a more unbiased view of the world in and of itself, it is in the act of interpretation that gives data its meaning – and interpretation is far from a totally unbiased evaluation of facts. Science, in essence, is just another way of seeing and understanding the world – but that does not mean that it is the only way to see the world. Philosophy and the study of ethics in society is still very much alive and relevant to the human condition, just as it has been for millennia. What makes philosophy useful, is that it allows for extrapolation. That is to say, through philosophy we can see ‘the big picture beyond the big picture’ by interpreting the world based on knowledge garnered from the cumulative human experience. Reading the work of the ancient Chinese theorist Mozi often surprises readers to see its continued relevance as his theories pertain to topics like just warfare. ‘Good’ philosophy, in a sense, is timeless. That is not to say that we should confine ourselves solely to the studies of ancient thinkers – rather, we should use them as a tool to further ideas more pertinent to the modern day. And philosophy was not meant to work in abstract isolation – in fact, a synthesis of modern science and philosophical morals could prove to be a very effective way of understanding the natural world and human reaction to it. An example of how this is accomplished today would be to consider the ethical dilemmas of biomedical research. When determining whether or not it is just to harvest stem cells for research, for example, raw data can only tell you so much. In an article published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, authors Ana Sofia Carvalho and João Ramalho-Santos described how the immense controversy and philosophical backlash surrounding the destruction of human embryos necessary to conduct stem cell research in the early days of the field led scientists to search for alternative methods that avoided this outcome – which led to innovations that ended up improving the quality of procedures’ results (Carvalho and Ramalho-Santos). Moral interpretation has not lost importance over time, and it is in this murky subject matter with no clear right or wrong answer where philosophers really excel. The world still needs philosophy, no matter how much it does not want to reread Kant.

“Sources:”

Carvalho, Ana Sofia, and João Ramalho-Santos. "How Can Ethics Relate to Science? The Case of Stem Cell Research." European Journal of Human Genetics 21.6 (2013): 591-95. EBSCOhost. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.

Tolstoy, Leo. "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer." For Freedom, Theirs and Ours; an Anthology of Russian Writing. New York: Stein and Day, 1969. N. pag. Print.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Print.

Mozi. The Mozi: A Complete Translation. Trans. Ian Johnston. New York: Columbia UP, 2010. Print.

Plato, G. R. F. Ferrari, and Tom Griffith. The Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.

Sima, Qian, and Burton Watson. Records of the Grand Historian of China. New York: Columbia UP, 1961. Print.

Warman, Matt. "Stephen Hawking Tells Google ‘philosophy Is Dead’." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 17 May 2011. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.

This article was written by Hunter Jarvis. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Marxists.org