problems. Nor do I dispute the relative value of
such intellectual practices. But the mere fact
that we have the tools, methods, and skills to
be critical at every turn does not mean that we
must be critical at every turn. There are those
times and experiences when the answer, however correct, just does not feel adequate to the
question. To engage with mystery one must accept that certain cognitive events short circuit
one’s regular problem-solving mentality, but
not view this short circuit as itself pathological
. . . as a sickness of perception, reason, or faith.
It makes sense that physical, natural, and
social scientists ignore what I call mystery. The
sciences have diverse means for resolving the
other three perplexities, but they have no way
to deal with that which is nothing, except by
turning it into something; reducing it to a mat-
ter of data and the critical analysis of data. They
have no way to see mystery, no way to value
mystery, and no way to make it an element of
their professional practice.
This limitation does not hold true for the
humanities. The humanities is the only sphere
within the academy that has the potential to be
openly receptive to that which is unknown and
uncertain without the normative requirement
to transform it into the known and the certain.
If one is going to talk about the perplexities of
mystery in the strange, uncomfortable language
appropriate to those perplexities, that person is
going to be a humanist. If we understand our
role as humanists as being something beyond
solving problems, calculating dilemmas, or clarifying paradoxes, then I offer the category of
mystery as a category all our own.
Renew ith Sh’ma
SHMA.COM
Revisiting the “Two Cultures”
STEVEN PINKER
There is a widespread perception that the arts and humanities are in trouble. I have a collection of despondent articles with
titles such as “The Decline and Fall of
Literature,” “Have the Humanities Collapsed?”
and “The Humanities at Twilight.” Indeed, some
signs indicate that the health of the humanities
is not good, including a decline in enrollment,
faculty, and resources, and, most ominously, in
interest among high school students, as well as
a widely acknowledged sense of resignation
about the lack of progress in the humanities.
This malaise is a regrettable state of affairs
because the humanities are indispensable to
being an educated person in a democracy. First,
our lives are shaped by ideas; our system of law,
our government, our economy, our assumptions
about education, childrearing, and the relation
between the sexes all have a rationale that was
first fashioned by thinkers in what we call the
humanities. Second, the arts are touchstones for
our private and public discourse. Even within
the sciences, for example, one can’t talk about
biotechnology or genetic engineering without alluding to the novel Brave New World. Third, our
lives are affected by the contingencies of our
culture, and part of being a capable citizen of a
democracy is having a cosmopolitan appreciation of other times, places, and peoples.
So, given, on the one hand, the fact that the
humanities are indispensable to an informed cit-
izenry and, on the other, the fact that they seem
to be in trouble, what’s going wrong?
One diagnosis is that the malaise of the humanities comes in part from its separation from
the sciences — the famous “two cultures” of C.
P. Snow — which led to an insularity from new
ideas and discoveries from our most exciting sciences. The sciences, for the last several centuries, have been characterized by a
phenomenon that was given the lovely word
“consilience” by E.O. Wilson, although I think
the ideas were best expressed earlier by the
founders of evolutionary psychology, John
Tooby and Leda Cosmides. The history of modern science has been a history of unification of
supposedly incommensurable metaphysical
realms. Perhaps Newton’s greatest accomplishment was to subvert the ancient doctrine that
there was a fundamental division in the universe between the supralunary sphere of the
moon — supposedly governed by pristine eternal laws — and the grubby, chaotic earth below.
Newton, of course, showed that the same force
that brings the apple down to the earth also
keeps the moon in orbit around it.
It used to be believed that there is a fundamental division between the formative past,
when the planet was shaped and created, and
the static present, until Charles Lyle showed
that forces that we see around us such as erosion, climate, volcanoes, and earthquakes, if
Steven Pinker is a Harvard
College professor and the
Johnstone Family Professor in
the Department of Psychology
at Harvard University. Until
2003, he taught in the
Department of Brain and
Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He
conducts research on language
and cognition, and is the
author of seven books,
including The Language
Instinct, How the Mind Works,
Words and Rules, The Blank
Slate, and most recently, The
Stuff of Thought: Language as
a Window into Human Nature.
This essay is adapted from a
speech he delivered at the
American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
