From: Tor Nørretranders
Date: 4.23.02

There is any irony in all this: Yes, science is a very successful part of the culture indeed. It is so because it has always chosen to limit itself to the aspects of reality that are at the moment tractable. It does not deal with many aspects of life simply because the methods of science does not presently allow us to say anything scientifically meaningful about them. Just a few decades ago science arrogantly ignored many of the most obvious features of the real world: the shape of clouds, mountains, coastlines, etc. Only the advent of the computer and thereby fractal geometry allowed scientists to deal with the questions any 4-year old will ask about the natural shapes visible in daily life.

Science is the art of the soluble. Other issues and questions are then relegated to the humanities, to art, religion, journalism, folk psychology and common sense. Science simply leave most aspects of life outside its horizon‹until some new method, idea or technology allows it to take up the issue.

Within science, there is the same tradition. Physicists deal with very fundamental aspects of nature, but only insofar as they are tractable. When a field of knowledge seems ripe to physicists, they aggressively push aside the aboriginal inhabitants in the field and call them 'butterfly collectors' with no talent for the production of true scientific knowledge. Molecular biology was build this way, as the result of a very deliberate decision made by Warren Weaver at the Rockefeller Foundation in 1938: No more whimsical butterfly systematics, we want physical and chemical methods and theories introduced to the study of life.

This strategy was extremely fruitful and worthwhile. But my point is: It was successful only because the butterfly collectors had gathered an enormous amount of empirical knowledge of the living world. On their own, physicist would have been lost (and totally helpless when it came to the question of biodiversity).

Nowadays, many of the prescientific bodies of knowledge that are begging a more theoretical and scientific treatment are to be found in the areas of life that will become the future of the economy: Messages, communication, entertainment, perception, meaning, mind, identity, spirituality, cooperation, community, sharing. All these phenomena will be intensely important as the information technologies and biotechnologies conquer the world. The constant craving for new ideas will focus on those aspects of life, so different from the worlds of space travel and atom-smashing.

There can be no question whatsoever that the present knowledge of these aspects of life is in dire need of some more systematic approaches. But it is only so because science has mostly ignored them through all of its history. They have been left to the people from the humanities, arts, media, and to normal, real people.

When science now enters that scene‹it will be arrogant towards those humanists and other intellectuals who have been inhabitating the field for millennia. And rightly so. But science will also discover that it does need those aboriginal amateurs because they really do know the terrain.

So genocide is not a good idea, cooperation is. The mental imperialism built into the idea that scientists can substitute away those low-velocity humanists is perhaps not much wiser than traditional imperialism. We need a true and fair globalization of knowledge.

We have to learn a way in which we can say: "Aha! This area of knowledge is now ready for a rigorous scientific treatment. Please welcome us, the smart guys coming in with our computers, funny words and weird petri dishes. We have talent, we have funding, we can make explosives. In a few years, we will transform your land but do so in a way that will make everyone wiser and perhaps even richer. Be our guides and discussants. We need you, we will listen and pay respect."

Scientists need humanists. Humanists need scientists. Man needs both.

TOR NORRETRANDERS is a science writer, consultant, lecturer and organizer based in Copenhagen, Denmark and author of The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. [more....]