Week 1 – August 3, 2009; On the Threshold of Integrated Sciences

The first session of the course entitled “Natural and Human Sciences: Arguing about the Two Cultures” began with a prolonged introductory remark by our course instructor. It was essentially a preparatory groundwork for placing the contemporary problematic context in which the natural and human sciences operate. Tracing the history of western thought, he made an attempt to situate the separation of the natural and human sciences (Naturwissenchaften and Geistwissenchaften). Subsequent elaboration on the separation was to shed light on the interpretative character of the human sciences and the explanatory character of the natural sciences on which the disciplinary separation is based. He then demonstrated how this philosophical separation at large governs the methodological orientations of all coherent traditions of investigations within the entrenched bounds of natural and human sciences.

Having characterised the separation as an inherited disposition of the Sciences from nineteenth century debates (the natural sciences concern the study of material and biotic world, and the human sciences concern the study of the world of humans), the discussion swiftly began to problematise the separation; and in the process laid out the project of the integrated science initiative.

In the following hours a series of concerns were articulated by students.

One of the major concerns raised was about the implications of taking extreme positions for the separation of the sciences. The question was in response to certain standardised practises of physical sciences. It was: are there certain things that can be (or should be) objectively quantified? This question opened up a discussion on the invention of thermometer as a device that can quantitatively express a quality.

Two scholarly writings by natural scientists were discussed subsequently. They are: Raghavendra Gadagkar’s “The Evolution of a Biologist in an Interdisciplinary Environment” in Jahre Wissenchaftskolleg zu Berlin 1981-2006; and Gerald M Edelman’s “Forms of Knowledge: The Divorce Between Science and the Humanities”& “Repairing the Rift” in Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge.

Gadagkar’s essay incited another round of discussion on the differences between natural scientists and social scientists in the modes of presenting the results of their investigations. Social scientists, he observes, increasingly tend to quote their predecessors. The question that followed was: why do social scientists have to look for crutches of authority? This led to a broader approximation about the methodology of social sciences that they inevitably require references to previous authors; even if it is for the pursuit of building up a critique. However, a question as to whether the “quote/unquote” difference was historically there before the birth of human sciences was left open to further investigation. Following this, our attention was dragged to the project of integration and expressed the doubt that the difference in orientation maybe due to the disciplinary mooring or something peculiar to the way a particular author works. This view was well acknowledged and concluded that it was in fact the disciplinary moorings that develop two different cultures of natural scientists and social scientists.
On the contrary, another caution was expressed saying that it is quite problematic to assume that the dichotomy between natural sciences and social sciences is intact. If at all any difference, it is the object of study (for example in economics it is the object economy that the discipline tries to grapple with) that determines the difference. Referring to Buddhism another important question was also raised whether there were other ways of knowing which had not been documented.