From: Reuben Hersh
Date: 4.10.02

Your essay is eloquent, even inspiring. I hope it stirs some interesting controversy.

As a part-time member of the old-fashioned humanists (a habitual reader of the New York Review of Books!) I can imagine some responses....

"Your optimistic scientists seem, by your account, to live entirely on the cognitive plane. Perhaps even with some workaholic tendencies. Optimism is the only emotion you report.

May one wonder if they live in a particular place—perhaps, many of them, in the U.S.A.?

Do they breathe air? drink water? consume nourishment?

Have some of them aged parents? How do they relate to such parents, how are such parents cared for?

Have they youngish children, or grand children? How do those children or grand children see their present and future in this world they must live in?

Have they spouses? ex-spouses? emotional relationships with fellow human beings?

These questions are perhaps not as irrelevant as you may want to call them. If readers of the New York Review (for instance) have more of an inclination to read about politics, literature, history, even art and music, than about science, technology and computing, perhaps this has to do with their being human in a more inclusive sense than you seem to contemplate.

If the situation of such readers (including me) includes some of the issues I have hinted at, perhaps you will admit some counter-balance to the breath taking optimism you offer.

Are we governed more wisely than 100 or even 5,000 years ago?

Is the frequency of genocide decreasing, say per decade?

Is freedom of thought and inquiry becoming safer and more respected?

Are standards of taste in music, art, or entertainment being raised, maintained or debased?

Are our prisons, hospitals, old-age homes becoming more numerous and horrifying, or the opposite?

Is the standard of truth, honesty, responsibility in public life and in commerce rising or falling?

Do the wondrous advances you expect in molecular biology, cosmology, and of course computers, give any strong hope of saving our political, moral or cultural life?"

Such, I imagine, might be some responses to your essay.

REUBEN HERSH is professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico and author of What is Mathematics, Really? [more....]

---

Back to THE NEW HUMANISTS

THE NEW HUMANISTS: The Reality Club

---