Is There Still a Role for the Arts and Humanities in a World Increasingly Dominiated by Science and Technology?

This essay was submitted in 2012 as part of The University of Birmingham's Essay Competition.

         

An intrinsic part of human nature is the need to define and be defined. Similarly embedded in us are our senses of pride and vanity, so there is little hesitation to label the last century as ‘the heroic age of physical science’. It is reasonable to want to embrace science and attach this epithet to ourselves because, in terms of efficacy, the expansion of science has had a far more positive influence on humanity in the last hundred years than what its predecessor of social instruction, religion, had in millennia. The comfortable and longer lives that we live can be attributed to the developments within science, and so there is a logical compulsion to be grateful towards it. However the upward trend of science’s authority in society has led to the assumption that art’s role is receding.

            The dichotomy between art and science is accepted without question and is being enhanced by institutions rather than appeased. C.P. Snow postulated that the segregation of science and the humanities is ingrained in our minds from a young age by an education system which nurtures the idea of specialisation towards one or the other. Today, fifty years after Snow cautioned us of the damaging consequences that the bifurcation of knowledge could have, not only have the arts and sciences become foreign to one another in the eyes of a nation, but science has gained the endorsement of the state whilst the arts have been reduced to a mere frivolity. A catalogue of events has ushered science into a central position of society with the welcoming arm of government, whilst the arts are pushed out in the same swift movement. Funding to the arts and humanities in universities has been phased out, whilst the proposed English Baccalaureate detered schools, and by proxy their pupils, from pursuing an education in the arts. At the same time, maths and science have retained their funding, and had their status as an essential component of the future solidified by the amalgamation of science and universities under the same ministerial position. Only through vigorous campaigning were these changes put on the shelf; however it is a clear indication of the arts’ valuation.

            However the belief that science and the arts are diametrically opposed is a fallacy. They share a core principal which is too often overlooked; they both search for truth. We, humans, need to define and ourselves be defined, and both artist and scientist seek to do this. Arguably the difference in these two cultures is nothing more than a variation in medium. The plays of Samuel Beckett share the same inquisitiveness towards the existence of man as the research at CERN, the art of André Breton can offer insight into the human psyche just as the work of Freud can, the words of Friedrich Nietzsche have shaped our world just as much as the work of Charles Darwin. We yearn ‘to know’, but this need for certainty which unites art and science also separates it. Art expresses a subjective truth, whilst science states an objective truth.

            Science’s objective truth has more perceptible applications in the world, and thus can be valued quantifiably with greater ease than art can, specifically its monetary value. This is why art is seen as secondary to science, and why in times of austerity it becomes expendable. But just because art’s value is subject to the individual does not mean to say that it is worthless, nor has value only to those who are literate in the arts. Art is an expression; of a person, of a country, of a culture. It can connect complete strangers with one another. It can connect those who are living to those who are dead. Libraries and museums are not repositories of objects, but a wealth of human experiences, all of which we can expose ourselves to, and for a brief moment imagine what life was like for somebody else who existed on this planet. This is the value which one can place on subjective truth, and which can help define us all. Through art we can define ourselves as individuals. Whilst this value isn’t as easily transferred as money, through education it is possible.

              The dominance of science in our time means art has to adapt, because if we are a scientific culture then we accept it and represent this in art, to know who we are. Carl Sagan said, ‘We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.’ It is through science that we are able to know this, and it is through art that we are able to appreciate this.