Two cultures revisited

One especially fascinating aspect of academic disputes is that they are marked by a ferocity that is inversely proportional to the scope and significance of the issue under contention. The higher the volume, the lower the stakes, and thus an outside observer is left with the forgivable impression that the ivory tower is a mere echo chamber of petty, pointless recrimination. Perhaps a more sober way to characterize this phenomenon is to say that academic discourse has become distinctly methodological. But methodology, if not exactly a technical term, has a distinct philosophical pedigree, firmly rooted in the tradition of modern science. The increased focus on method in the humanities thus serves to both obfuscate and concede the much more significant “culture war” between the humanities and the sciences.

Some readers will recall the reference to the British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow, who memorably lamented the cultural rift between “literary intellectuals” and scientists. But Snow’s complaint was chiefly directed at a supposed double standard in favor of the former. Why is it, Snow asked, that a scientific intellectual could never get away without having read Shakespeare, while literary types are not only routinely ignorant of the scientific equivalent (e.g. the second law of thermodynamics), but also somehow take a perverse pride in this fact?

Anyone remotely familiar with the state of academic literature today will be tempted to repeat Colonel Pickering’s admonishment to Professor Henry Higgins: “Come now, I think you picked a poor example.” Forget Shakespeare—one would be hard pressed to find a contemporary scientific article whose prose passes for readable English. But who needs English when equations and formulae suffice to deliver on Bacon and Descartes’ promise for “the relief of man’s estate” by prolonging life spans, enhancing health and broadening prospects for commodious living? Science wins wars, cures diseases and increases economic efficiency, and therefore maintains and deserves its supremacy over the humanities.

Whereas at one time (perhaps) a scientist had to feign familiarity with Shakespeare, we are now confronted with the far more embarrassing spectacle of “literary theorists” huffing and puffing inanities about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. As if to crown this ironic reversal, it is now possible to earn a PhD in literature without reading a single work of Shakespeare. In fact, reading as such seems to have been scrapped altogether, in favor of various pseudo-scientific methods of linguistic analysis or criticism. Such developments may go a long way toward explaining why, if scientific writing is unreadable, humanistic writing is increasingly unread.

How can the humanities possibly justify itself under these circumstances? Conveniently, means are never too far removed from ends. It should come as no surprise, then, that just as scientific jargon and methodology have gained purchase in the humanities, so too has the Baconian mission of relieving man’s estate. This aim is nonetheless characterized somewhat differently in the narrow and loaded concept of “social justice,” or the still more vapid metaphor of “empowerment;” quite fittingly, it is Bacon who first explicitly identified knowledge with power. The purpose of literary and historical studies is now to expose and overcome linguistic, institutional and cultural structures of oppression. These disciplines no longer find value in themselves, but are rather instrumentalized in the service of such broader social goals as equality and self-esteem, the neo-humanistic answer to “commodious living.”

Thus the humanities (and specifically literature) itself divides into two cultures: one views the purpose of literature as the creation of aesthetic environments in which to participate in the beautiful and the imaginary, and the other seeks to deconstruct such environments in order to expose the very concept of beauty as a tool of oppression. The one offers transcendence, the other liberation. But this must remain an incomplete and unsatisfactory kind of liberation, for the instrumentalization by which it is achieved liberates from anything that it can ultimately claim to liberate to. However desirable, a situation of complete social justice, just like one of indefinitely prolonged commodious living, cannot be a goal unto itself but merely the precondition for the realization of goals. In fact, such a situation would have no use for the function of the humanistic learning that helped to bring it about. The liberationist conception of the humanities, like science, seeks to destroy the preconditions of its own existence.

The only way for the humanities to regain its status with respect to science is to resolve its internal struggle. Ultimately this must involve not only a concession that both scientific and humanistic study have a role in addressing the very real socioeconomic disparities in the world, but also a recognition that there are still deeper forms of impoverishment than the merely monetary, and still sharper pangs of hunger for which the humanities alone are able to provide sustenance.

Darren Beattie is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in political science. His column runs every other Monday.