[Fis] Science and humanities

Dear Pedro,
Dear All,

There are many aspects pinpointed in your excellent last posting; however,
as we have almost concluded our session, I would like to remark just one
which is far away from my concern in measuring sustainability:

"Implicitly, I was recognizing that, for good or for bad, science is not
alone and does not cover the whole spectrum of human life and human
knowledge[...] The many (and factually incommensurable) dimensions of the
social body: cultural, political, moral, religious, nationalistic, racial,
esthetic, hedonistic, etc., steer our global trajectory in very strange
ways--irrational ones quite often." (Pedro, posting of Friday Dec. 19)

I agree with you: science does not cover the whole spectrum of human
knowledge. This may look very striking for us, scientists. And there are
many prominent scientists that would not accept at all this statement. For
some of them their position is almost the opposite: they consider
humanities as a kind of luxury stuff which is not relevant at all for the
"real" knowledge and development of societies.
In the book "Science and Poetry" published by Routledge (Francis & Taylor
Group) in 2001, Mary Midgley deals with this problem in a very elegant,
intelligent and sharp way (the generalized reductionism and social atomism).

Given that we have some FIS colleagues from Humanities fields and/or very
close to them, perhaps it would be interesting that in future we devote a
FIS session to the discussion on "Science and Humanities".

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Luis

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Received on Mon Dec 22 12:30:51 2003