The Great Schism

Perhaps it was our nefariously increasing specialization, and the
development of the degree of Ph.D. Perhaps it was just because we amassed
too damn much knowledge. Perhaps it was a decline in education, perhaps to
make it easier to democratize and not leave anybody out. Whatever the
causes, The Great Schism -- that odious thing that forced upon us a new
distinction -- seems to me to be lying somewhere near the heart of all of
this recent controversy on the list.

I wish this weren't so radical or controversial:

All of the sciences are humanities.

It is regrettable that our scientists have never read Virgil or a tragedy of
Euripides. It is regrettable that our poets and English teachers do not
know that a square constructed on the hypotenuse of a right triangle is
equal to the squares on the other two sides, how many laws are ascribed to
Newton, that a diminished fifth or augmented forth -- a tritone -- is the
diabola in musica, or the first thing about Darwin or Einstein.

It is regrettable that SCHOLARS do not realize that mathematics can be
pursued for beauty and humanity. That physics bears the same nobility as
literature, and that both are connected fundamentally to philosophy. That
it is in fact quite reasonable for books of math and astronomy to sit on my
music shelf.

It would probably be best for us if we not only nurture in ourselves things
from both side of the crevasse, but if we try to see that there's not very
much substance to the distinction in the first place. Academia is afflicted
with the Two Cultures because academia has foisted them onto itself. We're
all pursuing the same thing, and in fundamentally similar ways.

The fellow who wrote the article treats some people like aliens, and people
like him are being treated like aliens here. But it seems to me that both
groups are self-alienating, and thus, to a profoundly detrimental extent,
self-defeating. It seems to me that in the pursuit of knowing, in the
pursuit of being most fully human and most fully free, it is my duty to be a
student of poets and mathematicians alike.

It is no longer possible for one man to possess himself the sum total of all
human knowledge. It might be impossible for me to be competent at
conversing in every field of human pursuit, to possess a functional
familiarity with every area of general human interest. But I'll be damned
if I don't try.

Ever a Liberal Artist,

Robbie
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Received on Thu Oct 24 01:47:20 2002