Well, the humanities in general tend to be viewed as "less scientific" compared to the traditional scientific domains (physics,chemistry,biology) but even in those domains you can see a progression from the inert towards the organic. So for me, the humanities just lie further along the continuum bounded by objectivity and subjectivity. Wilhelm Dilthey (repeatedly) attempted a comprehensive survey which was inclusive of the "human sciences". He just never seemed to finish. I believe he was known as "the man of first editions" or something to that effect, because he was constantly starting over....

I am asking this question because in the philosophy discussions of the present time there appears to be scientific enquiry on one hand, and the views expressed in the arts falling into another category. — Jack Cummins

Been done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

"The Two Cultures" is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow which were published in book form as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution the same year.[1][2] Its thesis was that science and the humanities which represented "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" had become split into "two cultures" and that this division was a major handicap to both in solving the world's problems.

Strictly speaking, I was not referring to the humanities when speaking of the arts, but art, literature and music. Of course, it is a whole spectrum with humanities and the social sciences. In this respect, I think that psychology is fighting its way to claim its places in the realm of hard sciences.

Having written my post, I kept seeing more 'scientific' posts popping up. Then, the one on liking music sprung up like again. The arts cannot be suppressed.

What I am really saying is that it sometimes appears that the sciences are seen as superior. Are the arts just relegated to the domain of pleasure. I am querying the scientists claim to a monopoly upon truth.

Are the perspectives of Shakespeare, Salvador Dali to be thrown into the bin of human culture, along with the creative thinkers going to be dismissed as inferior in the search for wisdom and truth?

Thanks for your link to wikipedia but I do think that wikipedia is only a basic discussion and I was hoping that this site is able to go a bit deeper in philosophical exploration.

Thanks for your link to wikipedia but I do think that wikipedia is only a basic discussion and I was hoping that this site is able to go a bit deeper in philosophical exploration. — Jack Cummins

Did you utterly fail to note the reference I gave you to C.P. Snow's famous essay?

I do appreciate that you gave a link to many references but what you did in giving me a link is exactly the way I described in the bad arguments thread today. Until now, you did not say that you recommend this essay but just provided a link like a search engine.

Right now, I am just using my phone and trying to reach out to other minds for philosophy discussion rather than just be given a load of references.

I am more interested in your view, informed by your reading, of the question of arts and science in the contribution towards understanding.

I do appreciate that you gave a link to many references but what you did in giving me a link is exactly the way I described in the bad arguments thread today. — Jack Cummins

You're the one who started the bad arguments thread? I was just about to nominate you for it. Go read the C.P. Snow article and learn something. I gave you an on-point, highly relevant and famous reference to your topic. It is in fact the single most famous essay on the topic. It was clear to me that you probably hadn't heard of it, so I pointed it out to you. I don't see why that bothered you, but whatever.

I can assure you that I was not the originator of the Bad Arguments thread at all.

I am not dismissing your reference and will bear try to read it at some point, when I have a library open to access a computer to do full research. I am a bit upset that you suggest that I am incapable of understanding it because I have not read it at present.

I cannot believe that discussion of my thread is entirely dependent on reading it, but if it is so important perhaps someone else will enlighten me of its exact significance, but in the meantime I will wait and see if anyone else is willing to discuss the topic of my thread.

Strictly speaking, I was not referring to the humanities when speaking of the arts, but art, literature and music. Of course, it is a whole spectrum with humanities and the social sciences. In this respect, I think that psychology is fighting its way to claim its places in the realm of hard sciences.

Having written my post, I kept seeing more 'scientific' posts popping up. Then, the one on liking music sprung up like again. The arts cannot be suppressed.

What I am really saying is that it sometimes appears that the sciences are seen as superior. Are the arts just relegated to the domain of pleasure. I am querying the scientists claim to a monopoly upon truth.

Are the perspectives of Shakespeare, Salvador Dali to be thrown into the bin of human culture, along with the creative thinkers going to be dismissed as inferior in the search for wisdom and truth? — Jack Cummins

Ah ok. My degree is in literature, so I certainly appreciate Shakespeare, and I am also a musician. I guess I didn't think of the fine arts as strictly comparable with sciences as their objective is purely creative. However they are undoubtedly cultural artefacts; in that sense, I guess all products of the human mind, including science, are comparable. I haven't read a lot of aesthetics, but Gadamer presents some interesting ideas about art in Search for a Method.

Gadamer presents some interesting ideas about art in Search for a Method. — Pantagruel

How dare you provide a reference that the OP might find interesting.

Here's the Wikipedia link to your reference. That should really send him over the edge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Method

Gadamer draws heavily on the ideas of Romantic hermeneuticists such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and the work of later hermeneuticists such as Wilhelm Dilthey. He rejects as unachievable the goal of objectivity, and instead suggests that meaning is created through intersubjective communication.

Reminds me a little of (my shallow knowledge of) Kierkegaard.

@Jack Cummins, there's nothing wrong with someone supplying you with an on-point reference to your topic, especially when they are trying to help you broaden your knowledge of a subject in which you expressed interest. If someone does that just say, "Thank you for the suggestion," and move on if you don't like Wikipedia. . You can't control what others say on an online forum and when you do, you provoke them to poke you back. In case you were wondering why. As far as wishing someone would give you a summary of Snow's thoughts, that's exactly what's on the Wikipedia page I showed you.

No, I do accept your references and it is funny really. That is because I have about 1000 books on my Kindle(including fiction). I also have so many paper books that before I moved earlier this year my books(and got rid of some) they were falling into my bed. So, I have so much reading material.

My main knowledge base is psychology and I have a strong interest in the arts, especially art therapy and creative writing. So, the question I raised came from an amateur interest rather than an academic literature background. So, I openly say that I created this thread out of interest in the arts and just get fed up when the sciences seem to claim superiority.

So, really I don't have any long lasting bad feelings towards Fishfry and if you knew me you would be aware that I do have a sense of humor when reading comments.

So, really I don't have any long lasting bad feelings towards Fishfry — Jack Cummins

If you did you wouldn't be alone here! At least you didn't call me a racist like some other guy did once.

I was honestly just trying to provide a classic reference to the subject you introduced. It's all good. Peace.

What I am really saying is that it sometimes appears that the sciences are seen as superior. Are the arts just relegated to the domain of pleasure. I am querying the scientists claim to a monopoly upon truth. — Jack Cummins

And in the culture wars, the "poets" proclaim their own superiority over science.

So for a start, we would expect some kind of dichotomy to emerge as a hallmark of an organised system. It is natural for there to be a dialectical division that then becomes what defines a consequent space of free possibilities.

It is not intrinsically bad that the arts and sciences might seem antithetically opposed. Some kind of split has to be the case so that neither possible limiting extreme gets neglected. We need to explore the limits so as to then exist securely in the various points in-between.

The question then becomes of synthesis. In what way are science and art both contributing to some shared system cause. What is the world they mean to define and construct by their formally complementary approaches?

So the set-up means neither has to be the "winner". Instead, each have to be carefully aligned as exact opposites ... so that they can then work together in common cause with their complementary contributions.

Where things get sticky is defining the goal of that system. Why has human society now divided itself in this particular fashion.

Is it indeed all about targeting "truth"? Or really, about targeting something much more pragmatic - like maintaining a social organisation that delivers on the human hierarchy of basic needs? Something like Maslow's pyramid of needs - the ascending steps of physiological need, safety needs, love and belonging needs, then social esteem and self-actualization.

So when it comes to truth, isn't that a rather unworldly ambition? A dispassionate abstraction? We might talk about it a lot, but it ain't what either science or art is really about. The actual outputs - in terms of technology and culture - are much more to do with the pragmatics of constructing our own dear human existence.

If you switch the goal to the production of Maslow's hierarchy, you can see how science and art are two parts of that one equation.

And then also the fly in the ointment starts to become clear perhaps. Since the scientific revolution became the industrial revolution, we have transformed our human world so that it is a fast-paced, fossil fuel powered, information-mediated, super-organism.

That could be a good thing. It could be a bad thing. The question is whether it is our proper goal, or whether we've just stumbled into this direction?

So we have our current institutions of science and art well aligned for the production of the modern world. They each play their equal part in complementary fashion.

Yet if there is then a philosophical question - a meta-question - then it must be about the final purpose the current balance of power serves. Who chose it? Are we happy to just let it emerge? What is the right meta-answer on that?

Thank you and peace to you. I had better go and make peace with my mum too. I am staying with her at the moment and she gets so fed up with me reading and writing on my phone all the time. So, I will certainly wait to explore links and references until I get back to my own place after lockdown ends.

Goodnight!

google the commentary about The Two Cultures by C P Snow. The talk was given in the 1960s but it’s still relevant and is to the point. More recently, an exchange triggered by an OP by Steve Pinker in the New Republic Science is not the Enemy of the Humanities and the reply by Gloria Origgi.

And maybe consider buying an iPad. //ps just noticed the references up thread to C P Snow. Excellent recommendation.

Thanks and yes an IPad may be an answer at some point, but I really I want to make art and write but it does seem everything has to be done online nowadays.

Perhaps my post should have been do we need bodies any more in this virtual world?

Now that I have a moment to elaborate further:

I see the primary axis as from abstract language to practical trades, and philosophy bridges those two things.

Off in the wings of that axis are two other axes: one of them is basically two forks off of language (one of which is the arts), and the other are the two inputs into the trades (one of which is the physical sciences). Philosophy sits also in the middle of each of those axes.

One fork off of language concerns the style, presentation, and delivery of the content of communicative acts in both verbal and non-verbal forms. That is the arts.

The other fork off language concerns the form and structure of communication. That is mathematics.

Philosophy uses tools from the core of each of those -- rhetoric from the arts, and logic from mathematics -- to do its job, which is creating and defending the foundations for those two inputs into the trades.

One of those two inputs is the investigation of reality: the physical sciences. The physical sciences can also be construed instrumentally as discovering the "natural tools" that are available to use, from which engineers can then create more purpose-built tools, for technologists to administrate the use of to do various jobs in the trades.

The other of the two inputs to the trades, which is sadly underdeveloped in our world today, is what I would call the "ethical sciences", which can be construed as the investigation of morality, or equivalently as discovering the "natural jobs" that need doing. That research could then, I think, well inform entrepreneurs, as a form of market research, to create more purpose-built jobs, for business people to administrate the doing of in the various trades.


Mathematics and the arts, though very distinct in the way elaborated upon above, also dovetail into each other in many ways. For every branch of the arts, there is some branch of mathematics that is applicable to its realization.

Geometry and other spatial branches of mathematics have obvious applicability to the visual arts.

The mathematics of cyclical functions, patterns that repeat over time, underlies harmonics, which has obvious applicability to the musical arts. In medieval education curricula, that study of mathematical harmonics was even taught under the label of simply "music", one of the four subjects of the quadrivium.

Alongside that in the quadrivium were arithmetic, the aforementioned geometry, and what they called "astronomy", which was really the study of the mathematics of dynamics, which does have its applications in literal astronomy of course, but also has obvious applications in performance arts like animation where it is necessary to realistically depict motion in space over time.


Likewise, as the most general and fundamental subfield of the ethical sciences plays the foundational role to them that physics plays to the physical sciences. That field's task would be to catalogue the needs or ends, and the abilities or means, of different moral agents and patients, like how physics catalogues the functions of different particles.

Building atop that field, the ethical analogue of chemistry would be to catalogue the aggregate effects of many such agents interacting, as much of the field of economics already does, in the same way that chemical processes are the aggregate interactions between many physical particles.

Atop that, the ethical analogue of biology would be to catalogue the types of organizations of such agents that arise, and the development and interaction of such organizations individually and en masse, like biology catalogues organisms.

Lastly, atop that, the ethical analogue of psychology would be to catalogue the educational and governmental apparatuses of such organizations, which are like the self-awareness and self-control, the mind and will so to speak, of such organizations.

Thank you for your replies and I see that you both see the arts and sciences as a two converging threads.

However, the main angle I was coming from was slightly different in the sense that I was concerned more specifically with the way in which philosophers debating issues of the twentieth century appear to favour the insights of the sciences over the arts. Even the writing of CP Snow, which I am being pointed towards by other posters was writing around about 1960. I am not saying that just because a paper is from a previous era that it is not relevant, but I was really framing my question around that of contemporary thinking and philosophical debates.

I realise that my question does overlap in some ways with the questions in the thread about science straying too far into philosophy. However, I developed this one with the intent of addressing the role of the arts because I am not just questioning whether science is being overrated. I am trying to look at the whole issue of the competing truths of the sciences and arts for the paradigm underlying the the bias of many philosophers.

I am trying to look at the whole issue of the competing truths of the sciences and arts for the paradigm underlying the the bias of many philosophers. — Jack Cummins

Isn't this really an established fact? I have pretty much always assumed what you are proposing is the defining dialectic of human culture. The schism between materialism and idealism is as old as time. I guess you could say that art is the paradigmatic product of the mind, so idealism in its most basic material presentation.

I tend to focus on discovering the underlying unity of these views. Here's an excerpt from the book I just started reading:

"...man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress in thought and experience refines upon and strengthens this net."
~Ernset Cassirer, An Essay on Man

Popper is also someone who tends to bridge the competing paradigms. His "third world" aligns with this "symbolic universe". In the symbol, the material and the mental are united.

I am definitely interested in the symbolic dimensions of philosophy, as I am influenced by the ideas of Carl Jung. Generally, I would say that I am speaking of the whole perspective of philosophy which is influenced by the arts and cultural analysis and how this is losing prominence, especially this site, although I am aware that this site may not reflect the world of philosophy as a whole as we are the amateurs.

The book which I am reading and reflecting upon is a compilation of essays, 'The Meaningless of Meaning: Writing about the theory wars from the London Review of Books(2020) and includes essays from a number of authors, and it looks at the whole tradition of literary philosophy and philosophy of a means of cultural analysis.

One of the authors within this book, Richard Rorty says, 'Russell and Wittgenstein and Heidegger are dead, and it looks as if there are no great philosophers left alive.' I think that his point is important because it appears that philosophy is becoming less of an art form and is gradually becoming one which is going in a bias almost completely towards the hard sciences.

I am not suggesting that philosophy switches off the knowledge of the world of science but can incorporate these ideas with the the whole approach of philosophy as a search for meaning and as narrative writing. This whole tradition goes back to the traditions of Nietzsche, Foucault, Levi Strauss and Baudrillard. It can be about the questions of cultural values and mythic or symbolic truths.

:up:

If you enjoy the artistic merits of philosophy then you would really like Henri Bergson's writings I think. And John Dewey's.

I have read a bit of John Dewey and Henri Bergson. I downloaded Bergson's Creative Evolution onto my kindle and started reading it but now the book won't open.

Other writers I find to be great writers apart from the existentialist writers are Gregory Bateson for his 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind', Fritjof Capra and Ken Wilber. I could name many others but I might end up sounding like a Wikipedia bibliography list.

But I am in favour of philosophy as a discipline for self examination rather than pure objectivity of the scientific approach. This is captured in Ken Wilber's understanding, stemming from the idea of the witness,
'If I rest as the Witness, the formless I-I, it becomes obvious that, right now, I am not in my body, therefore I am not my body. I am the pure witness in which my body is now arising.'

Also, believing in the importance of philosophy as art I think that we need more philosophy novels to be written.

I read Fritjof Capra's 2014 synopsis of the scope of Systems Theory and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. You can list authors to me anytime. Thank you.

You know, speaking of the artistic merits of philosophy, I think it was a seminal system's theorist, von Bertalanffy, who said that what substantiates a metaphysical theory is...its elegance. I thought that was pretty deep.

I think we need elegant writing in the future of philosophy.

:up: