Monday, October 4, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Position Paper: Natural and Human Sciences in India; Roadmap for Integration
The ISE initiative has been trying to make sense of the separation of the Natural Sciences and Human Sciences. It has been critically reviewing efforts to bridge the same. Based on a study of the problem of separation and the solutions that have been put to practice as integration efforts, here is our position paper and possible ways of integration.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: The Integrated Science Education (ISE) initiative of the Higher Education Cell, CSCS began work in 2008 on ‘science education’ in India with the understanding that one of the problems haunting higher education in our country is the strict separation between the study of natural and human worlds leading to two cubicalized domains of knowledge – the natural and human sciences – which are in turn internally “dominated by striations of expertise with deep chasms in between” (Report of ‘The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education’, 2009, popularly known as the Yashpal Committee Report). We were confronted with an education system afflicted to this day, by separate and near-opposed methodologies for natural and human sciences, methodologies that are not even in dialogue – a system imparting narrow and limited training in the respective methodologies that allow for only certain kinds of knowledge to emerge, knowledge that is inadequate to face the exigencies of a rapidly changing world, a world in which reality is not strictly compartmentalised into material, biotic and human realms, but in which the realms are continually coming closer and developing overlaps. In this scenario, the ISE initiative felt that one now needed an integrated explanation-interpretation of such reality; why one would need an integrated explanation-interpretation as against a cubicalized/divided/segregated one would of course have to be argued for; one would have to argue for the necessity for and benefits of such integration in the context of science teaching institutes.
In the past two years, through review of previous attempts at integration, interviews of leading natural and human science scholars, desk review of existing literature on integration, critical assessment of courses attempting integration the ISE initiative is now in a position to suggest a model for such integration. In the process of arriving at this model we have closely looked at the multiple ideas of integration and the many arguments put forward in favour of integration so as to now put forward our idea of and our argument for integration. However, since today many science teaching institutes have started imparting an interdisciplinary and integrated training in the natural sciences to students, the ISE initiative felt that training in human sciences also needed to be integrated with natural science training; the human sciences could not just be add-on/optional courses; they would have to have convergence and synergy with natural science questions and would have to be relevant and useful to science students.
NATIONAL PRIORITIES: National priorities set up by the Yashpal Committee Report for inclusive and holistic science education (connecting with social and human issues in the ‘real world outside’ and integrating questions of the risk-ethics of scientific practice/technological changes) as against cubicalized knowledge were found to be in tune with our concern for integration. The report identified the following as problems of science education in India:
(1) The Idea of Integration: The first area of the research has concerned itself with what ‘integration’ itself means. Attempts at integration are not new to science education in India (although the use of the term ‘integration’ is new). In the space of science-technology education in India, economic, political and cultural questions have come up from time to time. On the other hand, Indian science and technology has not managed to remain altogether immune to nationalist and developmentalist questions; at times, it has had to engage with questions of the ethics of scientific practice; it has also participated in the fostering in of a scientific mindset among the Indian populace. Research conducted by us through
a) revisiting crucial texts on science,
b) study of science education reports,
c) feedback obtained through interviews from key figures in the natural and human sciences, and
d) stock-taking of existing HSS and integrated course in IITs and science teaching institutions
revealed that we were working with multiple meanings of integration; the project therefore had to come up with its distinctive understanding of integration. This is important because the research took off from the framing argument that we could not just add on existing humanities and social sciences to science teaching institutions; also the conceptual space marked under ‘humanities and social sciences’ have gone through fundamental changes in the last few decades; which is why the question which version of the humanities and social sciences is to be introduced is a question worth pursuing. Further, one needs to keep in mind where the humanities and social science concerns, questions and methods were being brought in which is why we need to integrate rather than add on and because we need to integrate, we should be clear about what we mean by integration.
The question under consideration is which form of integration are we to attempt at the science teaching institutions? We can think of two possible forms of integration:
(i) The soft programme of being open-ended and bringing disciplines to dialogue without overtly challenging one another; and
(ii) The strong programme where two disciplines come face to face and interrupt each other in such a way that a third (what we call an integrated method) will be born.
(2) The Necessity of Integration: The second area of research consisted of an investigation into the reasons behind or necessity of the integration of natural and human sciences. Why should we integrate human and natural sciences? Is there some purpose to integration beyond being merely ethical and progressive? What are the advantages of integration for the institution and to the student? It is not only to present the human dimension to natural science students and make the next generation of scientists more humanitarian. Awareness of the social and knowledge of social science, although deeply connected, are not the same. Social awareness does not necessarily translate into knowledge of the social. At times integration gets reduced to awareness of social and political issues among science students. However, what we are looking for is integration of natural and human sciences, their knowledge frames and their methodologies. The human sciences are not just about larger societal and cultural values but are distinct knowledge domains. Knowledge of such domains would give rise to socially relevant and responsible science research and education. Integration is thus not about the value education of science students but about opening windows and creating conditions for new kinds of science research and education.
Several arguments can be (and have been) put forward in favour of integration by leading natural and social science scholars:
(i) Since reality is complex and quasi-natural spanning brute materiality and intentionality, natural science alone is not enough to capture all of reality. We need a holistic/integrated view to widen the horizon of knowledge and add to natural science spaces, human science inputs.
(ii) The inherited divisions of fact/value, sensory-experience/lived-experience, objective/subjective, universalism/contextualism, explanation/interpretation has been a hindrance to knowledge production – we need to move beyond these binarisms.
(iii) A good scientist is one who can critically reflect on one’s own discipline (and its methodology) as also connect with other disciplines. We therefore need to train them in the historical moorings (through history of science), philosophical foundations (through philosophy of science) and sociological bearings (through sociology of science) of scientific knowledge.
(iv) Science education should have courses on Indian culture and the tradition of science and technology in India so as to make them relevant to the Indian context.
(v) Human science inputs are also needed in a largely techno-scientific and mechano-morphic milieu of dry rationality, laboratory exercise and experimental experience to produce responsible and accountable citizens attuned to larger societal/national issues and questions of value-ethics.
(vi) Scientists are also future planners and administrators which is why they need to be aware of developmental and globalization debates.
(vii) Scientists need to be aware of larger forces like global capital and funding that in turn shape scientific research and laboratory activities and science students need to be made aware of the economic and political context in which science and technology takes shape.
(viii) The consumers/users have a close relationship with scientific and technological changes; at times such changes subject humans to risks and scientists need to be aware of this; also one needs to take note of and represent the consumer/user’s perspective (like that of the peasant/patient) in science education.
(ix) Scientists need to be aware of the social risk of technological changes (like global warming and e-waste).
(x) Scientific and technological changes come with ethical questions (like cloning) and one needs to accommodate an awareness of these issues in science education.
(xi) The next generation of scientists need to be more humanitarian (one needs to make them aware of the dark side of nuclear weapons).
(xii) One needs to interrupt natural science education with knowledge of human science methodologies; such interruption could give rise to new perspectives/methodologies.
Based on a critical reflection on all of the above we have arrived at our own justification for integration. We argue that integration means bringing into dialogue natural and human science knowledges/methodologies; such integration is to produce ‘new and relevant’ knowledge; it is to produce knowledge of a ‘third’ kind – knowledge that is neither exclusively natural nor human science knowledge.
(3) The Process of integration: The third area of research was an investigation into how to make such integration possible at science teaching institutes. What were the earlier experiments? How should the research-curriculum continuum be designed to ensure that the hitherto separate sciences are getting integrated? What are the institutional changes that will be required for integration? The connection between research and teaching and curriculum design based on relevance to UG science education is extremely crucial; introducing HSS courses with no connection to science education itself will have little relevance to the students obligated to take them. While on one hand faculty recruitment and infrastructure development is essential for the success of integration, the interest and feedback from the students would be another important determining factor. Here the development of the researchers’ collective on integrated themes is also vital – because such collectives would be the future harbingers of the integrated approach at science teaching institutes; such collectives would develop curriculum on integrated themes and also generate research interest in students on such themes. Raina et al of the Department of Education, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in a study commissioned by the Higher Education Cell, CSCS (‘A Study in the Social-epistemology of “Science and Society” Education at Indian Universities and Technical Institutes’, 2009) have stated that the problem of science education and science curricula in India is ‘bad pedagogy’ (rather than just disciplinary segmentation once inherited and now inherent in the education system); they have also suggested that research and teaching will have to be connected and complementary; just like teaching a course on particle physics in a science institute without carrying out research on physics is not recommended, teaching a course on human science concerns in the same science institute without carrying out human science research is also not recommended; also, without integration of research questions/problems students are bound to miss out on the value such a human science course can provide to science education.
INTEGRATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: There have been several attempts in India (and abroad) to address the above mentioned concerns/problems. One therefore needs to take stock of earlier attempts and then mark clearly the continuities and the differences the model being suggested by the ISE initiative has with the earlier attempts/models. We have already taken a close look at three earlier models. These are:
1. HSS in IITS as ‘innocuous insiders’: The first, prevalent in India, in particular the IITs, was the model of setting up Humanities and Social Science (HSS) departments in science/technology institutions. Nonetheless, a critical analysis of the model showed that these HSS units were not integrated into science institutions; as ‘innocuous insiders’ HSS units have merely been ‘service’ departments of science/technology institutions who give to science students, at worst, an awareness of social issues and at best, a dose of social science information. While HSS units were not able to give science-technology students a thorough knowledge of human science methodology; they did not incubate the production of ‘new’ knowledge based on the dialogue/integration of natural and human/social sciences. Students of technology could not relate to the courses that were offered in HSS units. The relevance quotient of such courses in the milieu of the teaching of technology was low. The lone student who took such courses seriously and moved to foundational questions (like what is science/technology in light of the history and philosophy of science) soon found himself/herself orphaned or marginalized in the context of the general trend of the institution primarily, because there was no institutional support/room for the housing of such interface questions – questions located at the interface of natural and human science.
2. Critiques of science as ‘critical outsiders’: The second was the model of the ‘critique of science’ in existing HSS departments in universities. Here history, philosophy and sociology departments in universities playing the role of ‘critical outsiders’ examined the knowledge of science without engaging with the practice of science. While science education and research requires being critical and self-reflective, this critique of science coming from the outside is in itself problematic for it does not make possible the germination of new knowledge in the sciences; it instead produces resistance to such critiques among natural science students.
3. Interdisciplinarity (as an add-on): The third was the model of interdisciplinarity; interdisciplinarity as against cubicalization has been posed as a strategy to deal with the problem of the separation of natural and human sciences. However, Raina et al (Department of Education, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) in a study commissioned by the Higher Education Cell, CSCS in 2009, ‘A Study in the Social-epistemology of “Science and Society” Education at Indian Universities and Technical Institutes’ have suggested that the formula for developing successful interdisciplinary fields has not challenged the underlying epistemologies and methodologies of the constitutive disciplines. At times interdisciplinarity becomes an add-on of secure disciplines. When the boundaries and frameworks of respective disciplines are not porous; it becomes a marriage of convenience between disciplines.
Given the above three, we propose ‘integration’ as another solution to the problem of separation-insulation. Integration calls for shared attention on objects of enquiry; this leads to both conflict and collaboration between disciplines; it leads to an assertion of the distinctness of a methodology (the privileged perspective it produces) as also dialogue between methodologies; it leads to a critical reflection on respective disciplines/methodologies as also an understanding of other/alien/contra disciplines/methodologies; it leads to an opening up and displacement of the hitherto separated/cubicalized/secure domains of knowledge. In the process an integrated third (methodology/perspective) is produced – a third transcending the two of natural/human science – a third haunted by both ‘stable horizons of sharing’ and ‘momentary eruptions of contradiction’. This integrated third is the ground and condition for ‘new objects of enquiry’ and ‘new problems’ – in a nutshell, ‘new science’.
Thus through integration, we hope to challenge “underlying epistemologies and methodologies of the constitutive disciplines” and develop in the process a third kind of methodology that will not be restricted to what has come to be known as natural science and human science methodologies. We would thus like to mark our contention with the interdisciplinarity model, since integrated science education is premised on the perception that integrated ways of dealing with the complex problems of reality would need to be found. And this cannot take the form of the model prevalent in the IITs or the interdisciplinarity model.
Taking off from the above insights, we are therefore proposing a dual model for science teaching institutes. Through the soft programme of integrated science education we would like to offer students courses in history and philosophy of science-technology or on the science-technology-society interface. This would be to orient students towards contemporary concerns with the way science is being done in India today. However, we are also suggesting a strong programme for institutes which are concerned solely with science education and research and cannot parallel the open-ended university model that offers its students a choice from a menu of a wide variety of courses. The strong programme will focus on those areas where natural and human worlds need to meet and pilot integrated themes of research and teaching around these areas. The integrated themes we are planning to develop at present are Cognition and Environment.
Integrated science education is one attempt at striking at the root of the problem besetting science education in India today. It is a novel way to address the issue at hand and it will be put to test, in order to match the high expectations placed upon it. To gauge the effectiveness of this model, we propose to conduct baseline studies using an Impact Assessment framework. The success or failure of this enterprise will be evaluated over three years; we would like to demonstrate whether through the method of integrated themes, we are able to attend to the lacunae observed in science education at present.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: The Integrated Science Education (ISE) initiative of the Higher Education Cell, CSCS began work in 2008 on ‘science education’ in India with the understanding that one of the problems haunting higher education in our country is the strict separation between the study of natural and human worlds leading to two cubicalized domains of knowledge – the natural and human sciences – which are in turn internally “dominated by striations of expertise with deep chasms in between” (Report of ‘The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education’, 2009, popularly known as the Yashpal Committee Report). We were confronted with an education system afflicted to this day, by separate and near-opposed methodologies for natural and human sciences, methodologies that are not even in dialogue – a system imparting narrow and limited training in the respective methodologies that allow for only certain kinds of knowledge to emerge, knowledge that is inadequate to face the exigencies of a rapidly changing world, a world in which reality is not strictly compartmentalised into material, biotic and human realms, but in which the realms are continually coming closer and developing overlaps. In this scenario, the ISE initiative felt that one now needed an integrated explanation-interpretation of such reality; why one would need an integrated explanation-interpretation as against a cubicalized/divided/segregated one would of course have to be argued for; one would have to argue for the necessity for and benefits of such integration in the context of science teaching institutes.
In the past two years, through review of previous attempts at integration, interviews of leading natural and human science scholars, desk review of existing literature on integration, critical assessment of courses attempting integration the ISE initiative is now in a position to suggest a model for such integration. In the process of arriving at this model we have closely looked at the multiple ideas of integration and the many arguments put forward in favour of integration so as to now put forward our idea of and our argument for integration. However, since today many science teaching institutes have started imparting an interdisciplinary and integrated training in the natural sciences to students, the ISE initiative felt that training in human sciences also needed to be integrated with natural science training; the human sciences could not just be add-on/optional courses; they would have to have convergence and synergy with natural science questions and would have to be relevant and useful to science students.
NATIONAL PRIORITIES: National priorities set up by the Yashpal Committee Report for inclusive and holistic science education (connecting with social and human issues in the ‘real world outside’ and integrating questions of the risk-ethics of scientific practice/technological changes) as against cubicalized knowledge were found to be in tune with our concern for integration. The report identified the following as problems of science education in India:
“Standing for more than specific factual knowledge, a scientific outlook calls for an analytical and questioning attitude and the continuous exercise of reason. All this requires us to go beyond specialized knowledge and competence. This universal approach to knowledge demands that boundaries of disciplines be porous and scholars be constantly on guard against the tendency towards ‘cubicalization’ of knowledge. … The Indian system of higher education has also kept itself aloof from the local knowledge base of the worker, the artisan and the peasant. It has kept itself at a distance from the real world outside. Within the system, there are distances between disciplines. Within a single campus, disciplines often grow in complete ignorance even of each other’s presence.However, the ISE initiative felt that one needed to take forward such national priorities in two related directions:
To overcome this, it would be necessary that [science teaching institutions] adopt a curricular approach which treats knowledge in a holistic manner and creates exciting opportunities for different kinds of interfaces between the disciplines, which is unthinkable today in most of the [institutions] of higher learning. It is also important that [science teaching institutions] relate to the world outside and the walls of disciplines are porous enough to let other voices be heard. It would thus be necessary that [science] education is seen in its totality and subject areas not be designed in isolation”. (Report of ‘The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education’, 2009)
one, the concern for awareness of social and human issues among natural science students needed to be supplemented by knowledge of social and human sciences – thus integration would have to be between sciences – natural and humanFINDINGS OF THE ISE INITIATIVE: The work of the initiative consisted of research in three areas – respectively focused on what have been the problems of natural science education in India, why we need to integrate natural and human sciences in our pedagogic efforts, and how one can go about integrating them in science education institutions (like IISc, IISERs and IITs). The findings of our research in these areas are summarized here:
andtwo, ‘what needed to be done’ as set up by the report needed to be converted to an actual implementation roadmap which is what we intend to execute at IISc, IISERs, IITs and other science teaching institutes.
(1) The Idea of Integration: The first area of the research has concerned itself with what ‘integration’ itself means. Attempts at integration are not new to science education in India (although the use of the term ‘integration’ is new). In the space of science-technology education in India, economic, political and cultural questions have come up from time to time. On the other hand, Indian science and technology has not managed to remain altogether immune to nationalist and developmentalist questions; at times, it has had to engage with questions of the ethics of scientific practice; it has also participated in the fostering in of a scientific mindset among the Indian populace. Research conducted by us through
a) revisiting crucial texts on science,
b) study of science education reports,
c) feedback obtained through interviews from key figures in the natural and human sciences, and
d) stock-taking of existing HSS and integrated course in IITs and science teaching institutions
revealed that we were working with multiple meanings of integration; the project therefore had to come up with its distinctive understanding of integration. This is important because the research took off from the framing argument that we could not just add on existing humanities and social sciences to science teaching institutions; also the conceptual space marked under ‘humanities and social sciences’ have gone through fundamental changes in the last few decades; which is why the question which version of the humanities and social sciences is to be introduced is a question worth pursuing. Further, one needs to keep in mind where the humanities and social science concerns, questions and methods were being brought in which is why we need to integrate rather than add on and because we need to integrate, we should be clear about what we mean by integration.
The question under consideration is which form of integration are we to attempt at the science teaching institutions? We can think of two possible forms of integration:
(i) The soft programme of being open-ended and bringing disciplines to dialogue without overtly challenging one another; and
(ii) The strong programme where two disciplines come face to face and interrupt each other in such a way that a third (what we call an integrated method) will be born.
(2) The Necessity of Integration: The second area of research consisted of an investigation into the reasons behind or necessity of the integration of natural and human sciences. Why should we integrate human and natural sciences? Is there some purpose to integration beyond being merely ethical and progressive? What are the advantages of integration for the institution and to the student? It is not only to present the human dimension to natural science students and make the next generation of scientists more humanitarian. Awareness of the social and knowledge of social science, although deeply connected, are not the same. Social awareness does not necessarily translate into knowledge of the social. At times integration gets reduced to awareness of social and political issues among science students. However, what we are looking for is integration of natural and human sciences, their knowledge frames and their methodologies. The human sciences are not just about larger societal and cultural values but are distinct knowledge domains. Knowledge of such domains would give rise to socially relevant and responsible science research and education. Integration is thus not about the value education of science students but about opening windows and creating conditions for new kinds of science research and education.
Several arguments can be (and have been) put forward in favour of integration by leading natural and social science scholars:
(i) Since reality is complex and quasi-natural spanning brute materiality and intentionality, natural science alone is not enough to capture all of reality. We need a holistic/integrated view to widen the horizon of knowledge and add to natural science spaces, human science inputs.
(ii) The inherited divisions of fact/value, sensory-experience/lived-experience, objective/subjective, universalism/contextualism, explanation/interpretation has been a hindrance to knowledge production – we need to move beyond these binarisms.
(iii) A good scientist is one who can critically reflect on one’s own discipline (and its methodology) as also connect with other disciplines. We therefore need to train them in the historical moorings (through history of science), philosophical foundations (through philosophy of science) and sociological bearings (through sociology of science) of scientific knowledge.
(iv) Science education should have courses on Indian culture and the tradition of science and technology in India so as to make them relevant to the Indian context.
(v) Human science inputs are also needed in a largely techno-scientific and mechano-morphic milieu of dry rationality, laboratory exercise and experimental experience to produce responsible and accountable citizens attuned to larger societal/national issues and questions of value-ethics.
(vi) Scientists are also future planners and administrators which is why they need to be aware of developmental and globalization debates.
(vii) Scientists need to be aware of larger forces like global capital and funding that in turn shape scientific research and laboratory activities and science students need to be made aware of the economic and political context in which science and technology takes shape.
(viii) The consumers/users have a close relationship with scientific and technological changes; at times such changes subject humans to risks and scientists need to be aware of this; also one needs to take note of and represent the consumer/user’s perspective (like that of the peasant/patient) in science education.
(ix) Scientists need to be aware of the social risk of technological changes (like global warming and e-waste).
(x) Scientific and technological changes come with ethical questions (like cloning) and one needs to accommodate an awareness of these issues in science education.
(xi) The next generation of scientists need to be more humanitarian (one needs to make them aware of the dark side of nuclear weapons).
(xii) One needs to interrupt natural science education with knowledge of human science methodologies; such interruption could give rise to new perspectives/methodologies.
Based on a critical reflection on all of the above we have arrived at our own justification for integration. We argue that integration means bringing into dialogue natural and human science knowledges/methodologies; such integration is to produce ‘new and relevant’ knowledge; it is to produce knowledge of a ‘third’ kind – knowledge that is neither exclusively natural nor human science knowledge.
(3) The Process of integration: The third area of research was an investigation into how to make such integration possible at science teaching institutes. What were the earlier experiments? How should the research-curriculum continuum be designed to ensure that the hitherto separate sciences are getting integrated? What are the institutional changes that will be required for integration? The connection between research and teaching and curriculum design based on relevance to UG science education is extremely crucial; introducing HSS courses with no connection to science education itself will have little relevance to the students obligated to take them. While on one hand faculty recruitment and infrastructure development is essential for the success of integration, the interest and feedback from the students would be another important determining factor. Here the development of the researchers’ collective on integrated themes is also vital – because such collectives would be the future harbingers of the integrated approach at science teaching institutes; such collectives would develop curriculum on integrated themes and also generate research interest in students on such themes. Raina et al of the Department of Education, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in a study commissioned by the Higher Education Cell, CSCS (‘A Study in the Social-epistemology of “Science and Society” Education at Indian Universities and Technical Institutes’, 2009) have stated that the problem of science education and science curricula in India is ‘bad pedagogy’ (rather than just disciplinary segmentation once inherited and now inherent in the education system); they have also suggested that research and teaching will have to be connected and complementary; just like teaching a course on particle physics in a science institute without carrying out research on physics is not recommended, teaching a course on human science concerns in the same science institute without carrying out human science research is also not recommended; also, without integration of research questions/problems students are bound to miss out on the value such a human science course can provide to science education.
INTEGRATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: There have been several attempts in India (and abroad) to address the above mentioned concerns/problems. One therefore needs to take stock of earlier attempts and then mark clearly the continuities and the differences the model being suggested by the ISE initiative has with the earlier attempts/models. We have already taken a close look at three earlier models. These are:
1. HSS in IITS as ‘innocuous insiders’: The first, prevalent in India, in particular the IITs, was the model of setting up Humanities and Social Science (HSS) departments in science/technology institutions. Nonetheless, a critical analysis of the model showed that these HSS units were not integrated into science institutions; as ‘innocuous insiders’ HSS units have merely been ‘service’ departments of science/technology institutions who give to science students, at worst, an awareness of social issues and at best, a dose of social science information. While HSS units were not able to give science-technology students a thorough knowledge of human science methodology; they did not incubate the production of ‘new’ knowledge based on the dialogue/integration of natural and human/social sciences. Students of technology could not relate to the courses that were offered in HSS units. The relevance quotient of such courses in the milieu of the teaching of technology was low. The lone student who took such courses seriously and moved to foundational questions (like what is science/technology in light of the history and philosophy of science) soon found himself/herself orphaned or marginalized in the context of the general trend of the institution primarily, because there was no institutional support/room for the housing of such interface questions – questions located at the interface of natural and human science.
2. Critiques of science as ‘critical outsiders’: The second was the model of the ‘critique of science’ in existing HSS departments in universities. Here history, philosophy and sociology departments in universities playing the role of ‘critical outsiders’ examined the knowledge of science without engaging with the practice of science. While science education and research requires being critical and self-reflective, this critique of science coming from the outside is in itself problematic for it does not make possible the germination of new knowledge in the sciences; it instead produces resistance to such critiques among natural science students.
3. Interdisciplinarity (as an add-on): The third was the model of interdisciplinarity; interdisciplinarity as against cubicalization has been posed as a strategy to deal with the problem of the separation of natural and human sciences. However, Raina et al (Department of Education, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) in a study commissioned by the Higher Education Cell, CSCS in 2009, ‘A Study in the Social-epistemology of “Science and Society” Education at Indian Universities and Technical Institutes’ have suggested that the formula for developing successful interdisciplinary fields has not challenged the underlying epistemologies and methodologies of the constitutive disciplines. At times interdisciplinarity becomes an add-on of secure disciplines. When the boundaries and frameworks of respective disciplines are not porous; it becomes a marriage of convenience between disciplines.
Given the above three, we propose ‘integration’ as another solution to the problem of separation-insulation. Integration calls for shared attention on objects of enquiry; this leads to both conflict and collaboration between disciplines; it leads to an assertion of the distinctness of a methodology (the privileged perspective it produces) as also dialogue between methodologies; it leads to a critical reflection on respective disciplines/methodologies as also an understanding of other/alien/contra disciplines/methodologies; it leads to an opening up and displacement of the hitherto separated/cubicalized/secure domains of knowledge. In the process an integrated third (methodology/perspective) is produced – a third transcending the two of natural/human science – a third haunted by both ‘stable horizons of sharing’ and ‘momentary eruptions of contradiction’. This integrated third is the ground and condition for ‘new objects of enquiry’ and ‘new problems’ – in a nutshell, ‘new science’.
Thus through integration, we hope to challenge “underlying epistemologies and methodologies of the constitutive disciplines” and develop in the process a third kind of methodology that will not be restricted to what has come to be known as natural science and human science methodologies. We would thus like to mark our contention with the interdisciplinarity model, since integrated science education is premised on the perception that integrated ways of dealing with the complex problems of reality would need to be found. And this cannot take the form of the model prevalent in the IITs or the interdisciplinarity model.
Taking off from the above insights, we are therefore proposing a dual model for science teaching institutes. Through the soft programme of integrated science education we would like to offer students courses in history and philosophy of science-technology or on the science-technology-society interface. This would be to orient students towards contemporary concerns with the way science is being done in India today. However, we are also suggesting a strong programme for institutes which are concerned solely with science education and research and cannot parallel the open-ended university model that offers its students a choice from a menu of a wide variety of courses. The strong programme will focus on those areas where natural and human worlds need to meet and pilot integrated themes of research and teaching around these areas. The integrated themes we are planning to develop at present are Cognition and Environment.
Integrated science education is one attempt at striking at the root of the problem besetting science education in India today. It is a novel way to address the issue at hand and it will be put to test, in order to match the high expectations placed upon it. To gauge the effectiveness of this model, we propose to conduct baseline studies using an Impact Assessment framework. The success or failure of this enterprise will be evaluated over three years; we would like to demonstrate whether through the method of integrated themes, we are able to attend to the lacunae observed in science education at present.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Interview with Dr Bruno Bachimont
Prof. Bruno Bachimont is Scientific advisor of the Department of Research and Innovation at the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (France’s legal deposit institution for all television and radio material) as well as Professor at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne where he teaches computer science, logics and philosophy. A graduate of the Ecole des Mines de Nancy, Prof. Bachimont received a PhD in Computer Science from the Paris 6 University in 1990 as well as a PhD in Philosophy from the Ecole Polytechnique in 1996.
We interviewed him on December 10, 2009 when he had come to India as part of Bonjour French Science by the French Embassy in India. Excerpts from the interview...
Anup Dhar: Ours is a social science institution, we have been working in some interface with law and science which is when IISER approached us. They wanted to set up the humanities-social science component at IISERs. They approached us and requested us to come up with a model for IISER.
We had a few questions. One is what is the Indian experience of thematic social science in science and technological institutes? We have had two sets of experiences – one: even I come from that tradition in the philosophy department; we become critiques of science or philosophy of science and we become final arbiters of science. On the other hand, is teaching social science in a pure science department, so science teaching goes on, technology teaching goes on, and it is in these departments that we teach Mughal history - sixteenth century Mughal history - and students don’t know why they are doing it so either the courses are not taken seriously or the students become critics.
We did a study of the Indian experience and these two were seen as the dominant approach to the problem so we suggested that let us think of another way, like not the two given ones, so to put it this way, the philosophy of science approach or the sociology of science approach is a sort of critical outsider to science, it does not engage with the science base but remains outside and here we found your work and your trajectory very interesting, that you have experience working with both.
We are thinking of a way out of this. Which HSS will we take to IISER? Because the HSS base itself has gone through serious questioning and we cannot take the old style history to IISERs! So too philosophy has gone through so many moves. I don’t know whether you got a sense of it, IISERs are new experiment in science teaching in India so one had to attend to the new experiment too. How one can attempt a bridging or the connecting rift that we have inherited in Indian higher education which has had this rift in a well entrenched way. Here one tentative suggestion we have been making off late is that can we develop integrated themes; themes that have human science, natural science questions and concerns. So rather than approach them from knowledge domains -not that they are irrelevant- or approach it from disciplines, can we identify a problem or a thematic specific which will require critical interdisciplinarity; inter-institutional approaches sometimes, its not simple multidisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity but this problem, the theme becomes the condition for the critical question we ask.
Bruno Bachimont:…. I felt exactly the same thing. I was misunderstood earlier (in other lectures in the India tour) for I was too close to technology and they asked me my idea what is philosophy and I had response ‘in my technology’. They are working apart from technological sciences and pure sciences when they make link between natural sciences, technological sciences and human and social sciences. So I was mismatching their expectation but yesterday I found people (at CCS) very open, very ready for collaboration. I said I am not social scientist off course but there are other ways to interdisciplinarity.
AD: let us go this way… What has been your experience as you have straggled two spaces - natural science and human science philosophy?
BB: I have personal experience and institutional experience. My personal experience is about my own research and this research is in cognitive technologies. So I have an object which can be considered from natural sciences or from humanities and social sciences and this object is complex enough to resist any resisting forces. With this kind of object, cognitive technologies we can confront human sciences and natural sciences and we can mix them in a constructive way.
But after that we have to face the question - how acceptable is it? You can prepare your research program by mixing ways of research from considerations from philosophy and considerations from technology and this mix can be done by using some specific areas of philosophy and technology… and using German philosophy phenomenology, because at some level these are perfectly readable by people. I think the key is to prepare in the very beginning a common research program, have interdisciplinarity because otherwise you have to juxtapose considerations about how is it to be is a concern of the engineer or the meaning of that is a concern of the social scientist. But they won’t speak to each other and that’s a bad way of thinking. Social scientists are convinced that natural scientists are stupid and natural scientists are convinced that social scientists are useless.
In my institutional experience… I have been working in a university of technology and this university is multidisciplinary so we have, for example, chemistry, mechanics, computer science and so on but we also have departments for humanities and social sciences and the research is only on technology. For example if we are working with democracy and for a new way for constructing a good democratic debate by using digital technology, we are also working on different people coming from different social sciences and human sciences but working together on these subjects as technological subjects, so there are all these different perspectives. The first difficulty is to make these people from social sciences work together. It’s not so easy to make anybody coming from academics to work with somebody coming from philosophy… Most difficult is psychology and philosophy; it’s explosive. This was the first task; the second task is to make them together cooperate with natural scientists and engineers.
And so we are considering two basic queries, the first query is about primitive sciences. (requiring several kinds of collaboration and domain expertise) And the second way is multiplicative. To use social sciences and concepts from social sciences in the technological sciences, the best example is the systemic thinking of science in biology; its another kind of thinking so they have to renew their way of understanding the biological systems, they want to imitate nature in order to reproduce some natural phenomenon in a technological device and so they are asking for new concepts. Multiple spaces are created for using concepts in biology but also, for example, in epistemology research studies. There is still a lot to be done but I have a feeling that researchers are more ready than before to collaborate.
AD: One interesting thing is that it sounds very close to the way we have been trying to think integrated themes, integrated objects of enquiry. It is heartening to know that, what we have attempted and sort of managed to do in India. So when you look at technology what are the things you look at?
BB: We have two main concerns. One is about resources. For example, resources coming from agriculture but we want to design something digital to replace these resources. You need to have a global understanding of the phenomena if you want to understand how your research will be useful for this purpose. The second kind of research is about transportation system. There are communicative problems; it’s a question of people, transportation of people, transportation of information, transportation of goods and also you have to have security and safety for goods, persons and information. So still here you need systemic approach in order to combine different questions and different problems in order to yield a technical solution. People are ready to see elsewhere for a solution, to see what can be useful for some problem because they perfectly know inside the discipline they may miss some concepts, they miss some information, some knowledge in order to solve the problem.
In many cases the common property is that you have the human being observed. So it’s not technology for itself, its technology alongside with society and the human being. And once you have the human being, you have interpretations and once you have interpretations, you have social sciences. Voila! And it’s of use for people coming from natural sciences because if you have to understand how human beings can write, how we perceive information, how we understand a context and so on you need some physiological understanding for capturing information for his behavior and so on. They are able to say I need some others, and the others are coming from outside, from psychology, cognitive science, from economics, philosophy and we may be successful together because our problem is rich enough and open enough in order for everybody to participate and win... The solutions don’t belong to anybody in particular but we reach the solution as a team of the researchers. Because the problem is very big, it’s a systemic problem, so the solution is too big for one person.
AD: For one person to attend to it…
BB: Absolutely. There is a thrust coming from institutions as working on more specific problems they are less ready to engage in collaborations than people working on systemic problems. But we have to consider technology with a very open understanding that technology is not a technical device which is an application of a scientific theory, but technology is a device for the human being, for society and is very complex in itself. It’s at the same time a technical construction, a technical application of some scientific knowledge but at the same time it’s also an interpretation device because this technical device will be used so there will be an interaction, so there will be also a consideration to understand how a technical device can work. And its economic value may be very different from the initial understanding we had at the beginning and it may change with time. So we need some specific consideration of these phenomena, and these phenomena do not belong to computer science, mechanics or chemistry. So we have two faces of this -we are trying to consider at the same time while dealing with technology. But if technology is seen as applied science, then there is no technology, there is no interdisciplinarity.
AD: Actually that is the problem we too are contending with, not to see technology as simply an application of science because then we miss out on what technology is; we do not engage with it.
BB: What is interesting for me is that devices coming from some scientific understanding, knowledge of the universe have very specific consequences on knowledge, on the way we use the device. So it is a black box; we have a black box after which the scientist will come to see how people can use this device but there is no interaction between design by engineers and use by people. I think we have to open the black box to see how the internal scientific setup of the device can interact with the interpretative behavior of the device.
For example if you are working in information technology, take digital writing. It is very hard to describe the associations between techniques we use to design new data bases or new interfaces or new documents, and the consequence it has on the way people write or person think and can interpret, understand the stuff which is on the screen and the database. There is interaction loop; when you transform the device you transform knowledge by acting on the interaction with the device and after that a new connection, a new device. This interaction between interpretation and design is very important when we consider technology.
AD: What about cognitive science?
BB: We are more interested in cognitive technologies rather than cognitive science. Cognitive science can be understood as tentative understanding of the human mind in order to simulate it, to replace it and so on and we are not willing to restrict ourselves. We are not interested in that because we want to understand how the human mind can work - through its brain, through its tools, processes and so on. So we consider that in short the human mind is not only located in the brain. The human mind is also composed of our body. A good part of cognitive science for us is useless because it is too much restricted by normal sciences, which are for my work a catastrophe
AD: Even for us.
BB: It’s epistemologically strange, and scientifically I am not convinced by the results. But by cognitive technology we want to understand what technology can do for man and can change human beings and human minds. For example if you are working with paper and a pen, you are not working exactly similar as with a screen or a keyboard. It’s not the case that one is better than the other but it’s different! We want to understand how it’s different, to what extent it is different and after that to have a better understanding of technology and a better understanding of human mind. So the focus is in the interaction. Then comes co-building of the self of the human being - human mind and the technical object. First is interaction and then verification and individuation of the self on one side and the object on the other side, so it’s very close to phenomenology and close to science. This concept is very fruitful because you can focus on what is important and what is important is interaction but not only the human mind in itself as neuro-science believes and not the object in itself.
AD: How do you bring in this concept?
BB: For example, we develop a device and this device enables an interaction between a person and what is before her. Her visual experience is transferred into tactile sensation and what is important here is that the focus is not only on the tactile stimulation but on the coupling between perceiver and the environment. So what is important is that I have a feeling of tactile stimulation that I replace with another tactile stimulation. This causes some imbalance in your environment and this imbalance will become the perceived object. The purpose is not to change vision into tactile information; our focus is on interaction and we are working on a new experiment where people have to discover each other through these kinds of stimulations.
So we have people working on computers, they are separated by rooms and they can exchange some tactile information through the network and so discover, encounter while exploring space an object. That object has the strange behavior that it can also sense stimulation so they discover that it’s not only an object but the hands of a person! Here is a phenomenon where two persons are encountering virtual spaces and there is a path to be discovered on the screen; the first player shows to the other one how to find the path on these routes of tactile information. It has been really effective. So we design the interactive space in order for people to enter in communication and discover each other through these types of experiments. So in this kind of research we should have some phenomenology, we should have some computer science and computer engineering and also psychology, psychology for setting experiments, measurement. It’s interdisciplinary research.
AD: To push you a little more how does phenomenology offer you some perspective?
BB: This kind of research began by seminars on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and we have lectures between us in order to explain to each other texts of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. The purpose of these lectures was to build an understanding of what is interaction, what is perception and what is a role of body, of the tool in perception. We were beginning the question about tools and the body and how we were able to use the tools. Then how to set up some experiments. It was not so strange to read some early experiments and we found this time also works of Paul Bakherita; what phenomenology has taught us in understanding Bakharita is that the focus is not on the device but the focus was on interaction through the device and so it’s the reason why we have used Bakharita. We haven’t only repeated him because we have enlarged the experiment to interaction and not only to basic essence.
AD: What has been your experience… what is the resistance from well-entrenched disciplinarians?
BB: Everybody was interested if a bit skeptical but within the group and within the team everybody was willing because we had a feeling that we were discovering something new in the way of thinking things and science. It’s always the same story - you should have interested persons who have ideas and with that you can do it.
AD: To widen the horizon, what is the, if I may put it this way, French experience of the inherited divide of the natural and human sciences? You are, in your institution, managing to bridge the divide… but if I say generally France, what will you say?
BB: I think it’s very similar to your experience. For example in the field of philosophy a good part of philosophy in France is only part of the story of philosophy and if you want to do something else, you are not considered a philosopher. And it is a problem for pure sciences. For example in mathematics, if you are working in applied mathematics it’s considered less significant than pure mathematics. I think its just we should eliminate…
AD: …the distinction between the pure and the applied. But people want to retain it!
BB: Yes and so it is not so easy to perform in the academic world interdisciplinary research. Institutions are doing science but not technology and so on; we are specific in France so we have lots of disciplines which are concerned by technology. We may be outside the academic field according to classical values and so on, but everybody is concerned by technology, and even if he doesn’t perform interdisciplinary research he knows that it exists and it is important. So there is an added value of doing interdisciplinary research. Many people are doing research, of course, but they are aware there exists another kind of research and this kind of research is good research.
We interviewed him on December 10, 2009 when he had come to India as part of Bonjour French Science by the French Embassy in India. Excerpts from the interview...
Anup Dhar: Ours is a social science institution, we have been working in some interface with law and science which is when IISER approached us. They wanted to set up the humanities-social science component at IISERs. They approached us and requested us to come up with a model for IISER.
We had a few questions. One is what is the Indian experience of thematic social science in science and technological institutes? We have had two sets of experiences – one: even I come from that tradition in the philosophy department; we become critiques of science or philosophy of science and we become final arbiters of science. On the other hand, is teaching social science in a pure science department, so science teaching goes on, technology teaching goes on, and it is in these departments that we teach Mughal history - sixteenth century Mughal history - and students don’t know why they are doing it so either the courses are not taken seriously or the students become critics.
We did a study of the Indian experience and these two were seen as the dominant approach to the problem so we suggested that let us think of another way, like not the two given ones, so to put it this way, the philosophy of science approach or the sociology of science approach is a sort of critical outsider to science, it does not engage with the science base but remains outside and here we found your work and your trajectory very interesting, that you have experience working with both.
We are thinking of a way out of this. Which HSS will we take to IISER? Because the HSS base itself has gone through serious questioning and we cannot take the old style history to IISERs! So too philosophy has gone through so many moves. I don’t know whether you got a sense of it, IISERs are new experiment in science teaching in India so one had to attend to the new experiment too. How one can attempt a bridging or the connecting rift that we have inherited in Indian higher education which has had this rift in a well entrenched way. Here one tentative suggestion we have been making off late is that can we develop integrated themes; themes that have human science, natural science questions and concerns. So rather than approach them from knowledge domains -not that they are irrelevant- or approach it from disciplines, can we identify a problem or a thematic specific which will require critical interdisciplinarity; inter-institutional approaches sometimes, its not simple multidisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity but this problem, the theme becomes the condition for the critical question we ask.
Bruno Bachimont:…. I felt exactly the same thing. I was misunderstood earlier (in other lectures in the India tour) for I was too close to technology and they asked me my idea what is philosophy and I had response ‘in my technology’. They are working apart from technological sciences and pure sciences when they make link between natural sciences, technological sciences and human and social sciences. So I was mismatching their expectation but yesterday I found people (at CCS) very open, very ready for collaboration. I said I am not social scientist off course but there are other ways to interdisciplinarity.
AD: let us go this way… What has been your experience as you have straggled two spaces - natural science and human science philosophy?
BB: I have personal experience and institutional experience. My personal experience is about my own research and this research is in cognitive technologies. So I have an object which can be considered from natural sciences or from humanities and social sciences and this object is complex enough to resist any resisting forces. With this kind of object, cognitive technologies we can confront human sciences and natural sciences and we can mix them in a constructive way.
But after that we have to face the question - how acceptable is it? You can prepare your research program by mixing ways of research from considerations from philosophy and considerations from technology and this mix can be done by using some specific areas of philosophy and technology… and using German philosophy phenomenology, because at some level these are perfectly readable by people. I think the key is to prepare in the very beginning a common research program, have interdisciplinarity because otherwise you have to juxtapose considerations about how is it to be is a concern of the engineer or the meaning of that is a concern of the social scientist. But they won’t speak to each other and that’s a bad way of thinking. Social scientists are convinced that natural scientists are stupid and natural scientists are convinced that social scientists are useless.
In my institutional experience… I have been working in a university of technology and this university is multidisciplinary so we have, for example, chemistry, mechanics, computer science and so on but we also have departments for humanities and social sciences and the research is only on technology. For example if we are working with democracy and for a new way for constructing a good democratic debate by using digital technology, we are also working on different people coming from different social sciences and human sciences but working together on these subjects as technological subjects, so there are all these different perspectives. The first difficulty is to make these people from social sciences work together. It’s not so easy to make anybody coming from academics to work with somebody coming from philosophy… Most difficult is psychology and philosophy; it’s explosive. This was the first task; the second task is to make them together cooperate with natural scientists and engineers.
And so we are considering two basic queries, the first query is about primitive sciences. (requiring several kinds of collaboration and domain expertise) And the second way is multiplicative. To use social sciences and concepts from social sciences in the technological sciences, the best example is the systemic thinking of science in biology; its another kind of thinking so they have to renew their way of understanding the biological systems, they want to imitate nature in order to reproduce some natural phenomenon in a technological device and so they are asking for new concepts. Multiple spaces are created for using concepts in biology but also, for example, in epistemology research studies. There is still a lot to be done but I have a feeling that researchers are more ready than before to collaborate.
AD: One interesting thing is that it sounds very close to the way we have been trying to think integrated themes, integrated objects of enquiry. It is heartening to know that, what we have attempted and sort of managed to do in India. So when you look at technology what are the things you look at?
BB: We have two main concerns. One is about resources. For example, resources coming from agriculture but we want to design something digital to replace these resources. You need to have a global understanding of the phenomena if you want to understand how your research will be useful for this purpose. The second kind of research is about transportation system. There are communicative problems; it’s a question of people, transportation of people, transportation of information, transportation of goods and also you have to have security and safety for goods, persons and information. So still here you need systemic approach in order to combine different questions and different problems in order to yield a technical solution. People are ready to see elsewhere for a solution, to see what can be useful for some problem because they perfectly know inside the discipline they may miss some concepts, they miss some information, some knowledge in order to solve the problem.
In many cases the common property is that you have the human being observed. So it’s not technology for itself, its technology alongside with society and the human being. And once you have the human being, you have interpretations and once you have interpretations, you have social sciences. Voila! And it’s of use for people coming from natural sciences because if you have to understand how human beings can write, how we perceive information, how we understand a context and so on you need some physiological understanding for capturing information for his behavior and so on. They are able to say I need some others, and the others are coming from outside, from psychology, cognitive science, from economics, philosophy and we may be successful together because our problem is rich enough and open enough in order for everybody to participate and win... The solutions don’t belong to anybody in particular but we reach the solution as a team of the researchers. Because the problem is very big, it’s a systemic problem, so the solution is too big for one person.
AD: For one person to attend to it…
BB: Absolutely. There is a thrust coming from institutions as working on more specific problems they are less ready to engage in collaborations than people working on systemic problems. But we have to consider technology with a very open understanding that technology is not a technical device which is an application of a scientific theory, but technology is a device for the human being, for society and is very complex in itself. It’s at the same time a technical construction, a technical application of some scientific knowledge but at the same time it’s also an interpretation device because this technical device will be used so there will be an interaction, so there will be also a consideration to understand how a technical device can work. And its economic value may be very different from the initial understanding we had at the beginning and it may change with time. So we need some specific consideration of these phenomena, and these phenomena do not belong to computer science, mechanics or chemistry. So we have two faces of this -we are trying to consider at the same time while dealing with technology. But if technology is seen as applied science, then there is no technology, there is no interdisciplinarity.
AD: Actually that is the problem we too are contending with, not to see technology as simply an application of science because then we miss out on what technology is; we do not engage with it.
BB: What is interesting for me is that devices coming from some scientific understanding, knowledge of the universe have very specific consequences on knowledge, on the way we use the device. So it is a black box; we have a black box after which the scientist will come to see how people can use this device but there is no interaction between design by engineers and use by people. I think we have to open the black box to see how the internal scientific setup of the device can interact with the interpretative behavior of the device.
For example if you are working in information technology, take digital writing. It is very hard to describe the associations between techniques we use to design new data bases or new interfaces or new documents, and the consequence it has on the way people write or person think and can interpret, understand the stuff which is on the screen and the database. There is interaction loop; when you transform the device you transform knowledge by acting on the interaction with the device and after that a new connection, a new device. This interaction between interpretation and design is very important when we consider technology.
AD: What about cognitive science?
BB: We are more interested in cognitive technologies rather than cognitive science. Cognitive science can be understood as tentative understanding of the human mind in order to simulate it, to replace it and so on and we are not willing to restrict ourselves. We are not interested in that because we want to understand how the human mind can work - through its brain, through its tools, processes and so on. So we consider that in short the human mind is not only located in the brain. The human mind is also composed of our body. A good part of cognitive science for us is useless because it is too much restricted by normal sciences, which are for my work a catastrophe
AD: Even for us.
BB: It’s epistemologically strange, and scientifically I am not convinced by the results. But by cognitive technology we want to understand what technology can do for man and can change human beings and human minds. For example if you are working with paper and a pen, you are not working exactly similar as with a screen or a keyboard. It’s not the case that one is better than the other but it’s different! We want to understand how it’s different, to what extent it is different and after that to have a better understanding of technology and a better understanding of human mind. So the focus is in the interaction. Then comes co-building of the self of the human being - human mind and the technical object. First is interaction and then verification and individuation of the self on one side and the object on the other side, so it’s very close to phenomenology and close to science. This concept is very fruitful because you can focus on what is important and what is important is interaction but not only the human mind in itself as neuro-science believes and not the object in itself.
AD: How do you bring in this concept?
BB: For example, we develop a device and this device enables an interaction between a person and what is before her. Her visual experience is transferred into tactile sensation and what is important here is that the focus is not only on the tactile stimulation but on the coupling between perceiver and the environment. So what is important is that I have a feeling of tactile stimulation that I replace with another tactile stimulation. This causes some imbalance in your environment and this imbalance will become the perceived object. The purpose is not to change vision into tactile information; our focus is on interaction and we are working on a new experiment where people have to discover each other through these kinds of stimulations.
So we have people working on computers, they are separated by rooms and they can exchange some tactile information through the network and so discover, encounter while exploring space an object. That object has the strange behavior that it can also sense stimulation so they discover that it’s not only an object but the hands of a person! Here is a phenomenon where two persons are encountering virtual spaces and there is a path to be discovered on the screen; the first player shows to the other one how to find the path on these routes of tactile information. It has been really effective. So we design the interactive space in order for people to enter in communication and discover each other through these types of experiments. So in this kind of research we should have some phenomenology, we should have some computer science and computer engineering and also psychology, psychology for setting experiments, measurement. It’s interdisciplinary research.
AD: To push you a little more how does phenomenology offer you some perspective?
BB: This kind of research began by seminars on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and we have lectures between us in order to explain to each other texts of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. The purpose of these lectures was to build an understanding of what is interaction, what is perception and what is a role of body, of the tool in perception. We were beginning the question about tools and the body and how we were able to use the tools. Then how to set up some experiments. It was not so strange to read some early experiments and we found this time also works of Paul Bakherita; what phenomenology has taught us in understanding Bakharita is that the focus is not on the device but the focus was on interaction through the device and so it’s the reason why we have used Bakharita. We haven’t only repeated him because we have enlarged the experiment to interaction and not only to basic essence.
AD: What has been your experience… what is the resistance from well-entrenched disciplinarians?
BB: Everybody was interested if a bit skeptical but within the group and within the team everybody was willing because we had a feeling that we were discovering something new in the way of thinking things and science. It’s always the same story - you should have interested persons who have ideas and with that you can do it.
AD: To widen the horizon, what is the, if I may put it this way, French experience of the inherited divide of the natural and human sciences? You are, in your institution, managing to bridge the divide… but if I say generally France, what will you say?
BB: I think it’s very similar to your experience. For example in the field of philosophy a good part of philosophy in France is only part of the story of philosophy and if you want to do something else, you are not considered a philosopher. And it is a problem for pure sciences. For example in mathematics, if you are working in applied mathematics it’s considered less significant than pure mathematics. I think its just we should eliminate…
AD: …the distinction between the pure and the applied. But people want to retain it!
BB: Yes and so it is not so easy to perform in the academic world interdisciplinary research. Institutions are doing science but not technology and so on; we are specific in France so we have lots of disciplines which are concerned by technology. We may be outside the academic field according to classical values and so on, but everybody is concerned by technology, and even if he doesn’t perform interdisciplinary research he knows that it exists and it is important. So there is an added value of doing interdisciplinary research. Many people are doing research, of course, but they are aware there exists another kind of research and this kind of research is good research.
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