Deliberation on the science-humanities relationship has never been more important.

Unintelligibility: The Starting Point for Discussing the Science-Humanities Relationship

by Edward R. Dougherty

Paradoxically, to speak intelligibly about the matters that concern them, contemporary intellectuals must appreciate the unintelligibility of the world in which those matters take place.

In The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern, Hannah Arendt writes: " The trouble, in other words, is not that the modern physical universe cannot be visualized, for this is a matter of course under the assumption that Nature does not reveal itself to the human senses; the uneasiness begins when Nature turns out to be inconceivable, that is, unthinkable in terms of pure reasoning as well."

The intricate relationship between natural science and the humanities is as old as philosophy itself. One need only think of Plato’s allegory of the cave, which illustrates that metaphysics can attain the truth, whereas knowledge grounded in observation is doomed to be a mere shadow of the truth.

It is not a question of which discipline, science or philosophy, appeals to reason. Both do. In some sense, philosophy trusts more in reason than science, since science only trusts reason bolstered by empirical observation. Given the dominant position of science, in conjunction with the events of the twentieth century, in which the universe appears ever more mysterious and the power of reason has been shrunk far more than by Kant’s critique, examination of the science-humanities relationship has never been more important.

A series of articles by Steven Pinker, Leon Wieseltier, and (here at Public Discourse) John Crosby reveals a deep divide in perspective regarding this relationship. It appears that Pinker has initiated the current debate out of frustration with what he sees as resentment of “the intrusion of science into the territories of the humanities.” Wieseltier and Crosby take him to task for not sufficiently recognizing the limitations of science, in particular the inability of science to make propositions concerning the meaning of human existence. They critique Pinker from the side of the humanities.

In doing so, they accept Pinker’s premise that science “is distinguished by an explicit commitment to two ideals,” the first being “that the world is intelligible” and the second being that “the acquisition of knowledge is hard.” Wieseltier recoils at the notion that these ideals belong to science. “Intelligibility and difficulty, the exclusive teachings of science?” he asks. “This is either ignorant or tendentious.” The battle is on—a battle based on a false premise.

The World Is Not Intelligible ........

The Human Problem ............

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Read more: www.thepublicdiscourse.com