by Paul A. Bové
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS - November 13th, 2014
LET ME BEGIN by explaining the aim of my title. I assume that two of
the most important and closely tied purposes of a research university
are the production and reproduction of knowledge, which goes hand in
hand with the training of a new generation of scholars, researchers, and
artists. We might say that these purposes rest on other more
fundamental values, or we might say that they rest upon the claim that
knowledge in and of itself is the highest value. Universities might
serve truth aspirations, or social and political institutions, or aim to
provide the practical wisdom needed to organize a sustainable
civilization — or all.
Often, universities (and when I say universities, I mean research
universities) seem to have only two objects of study: the natural world,
and the human — with the latter often placed within the natural world.
Chemistry studies carbon, for example, and enables invention, which
remakes nature — think plastics or graphene. Psychiatry studies what its
modern founder called the soul (psychē) — what
contemporary practitioners call “mental behaviors.” Art historians study
the technical details of visual objects and their creative processes,
sometimes hoping to explain the nature of beauty, the place of art in
human life processes, and/or the orders of culture. Of course, I could
mention many other fields of study and research, some of which would
intensify the divide between human and nature (e.g., quantum gravity)
while others would close the gap (e.g., nanotechnology in medicine.)
Things seem to have changed little since 1956, when C. P. Snow first
made his general point about the existence of two cultures, one
scientific and one humanistic. According to Snow, members of the science
tribe could not speak to members of the literary tribe, and they did
not share the same worldview. Snow’s claim was always overstated; and
newer sciences that merge the human and the hard sciences — such as
genetics and “digital humanities” — make it impossible to take what Snow
said too literally.
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