Keeping the humanities out of science may be bad for science

In higher education these days, science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields are booming, and society regards the technical preparation they provide as an essential part of what growing economies need: scientific innovation. Meanwhile, the humanities struggle for survival. But it is important to consider how the reduction of cultural experiences in higher education may be counterproductive to scientific advancement.

Science and the humanities have been disconnected by the structure of contemporary universities – and this is an aberration.

Throughout history, STEM innovations have been intertwined with humanities practice: Galileo’s science writing had literary forms (he moonlighted as a literary critic); Charles Darwin had a ‘poetic fancy’ and looked to Renaissance art for inspiration; Leonardo da Vinci played and composed music, and designed instruments; Sigmund Freud used music and poetry to explore the unconscious, and Albert Einstein once said: “I see my life in terms of music.”

Many contemporary scientists agree: humanities perspectives enhance scientific methods. The sensibilities honed in fields like philosophy, history, literature, languages, ethics, music, art and cultural theory provide crucial contextualisation for STEM discoveries and technological advancements, enabling scholars to consider the deep contextual layers that shape scientific inquiry across its varied applications.

Resource-sharing

However, when sharing resources between science and humanities comes up (for example, a STEM agency proposal for a medical humanities conference), these bridges retract. And there’s good reason for the hesitancy: scholars with humanities backgrounds are ineligible to serve as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI in almost all STEM agency competitions in the United Kingdom, European Union and the United States (the same is true, vice versa, in humanities funding).

When sums are in the hundreds of thousands or millions, the aims, objectives, mission, not to mention the potential topics of study and the disciplinary expertise of collaborators, must be channelled precisely towards what the agencies are most likely to fund.

The eligibility gap confines what occurs in the funded research, limiting the ways science, medicine and technology develop.

But this shortcoming is also an opportunity: STEM funding agencies can be a catalyst to create a knowledge context in which science and the humanities are not independent but integral to one another.

What if humanists fit eligibility criteria in STEM proposals – or if a co-PI from the humanities were required for funding? How would the range of STEM questions evolve?

Recommendation: Humanists in STEM funding

The largest STEM agencies in the UK (the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the US (the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health) and the EU (the European Research Council) grant billions in pounds, euros and dollars across a broad spectrum of research initiatives, across many nations and education levels, but none require humanists, humanities perspectives or cultural applications as a part of their eligibility criteria.

That ‘best practice’ restricts the type of research the agencies can support.

One might expect a humanities perspective to enhance STEM research in significant ways: scientific fact-finding and physical quantification processes often lack metaphorical dimensions, which can limit their application.

Integrating humanities expertise would result in a broader focus on ethical consequences, aesthetic and cultural effects and attuned views on how physical data and research objectives exist in a cultural setting that reaches beyond a lab, research station, classroom or university campus.

Humanities perspectives would enhance the potential commercialisation of scientific inquiry through closer consideration of cultural applications, as well as broader showcasing of content to the general public.

By integrating multiple arenas of storytelling, and adding cultural insights, the humanities element would enhance the societal impact, while making complex scientific concepts more accessible (ie linked to public interests).

It would also guide the development of more user-centred innovations, ensuring that the scientific advances lead towards products with technological advances that resonate with human values and needs, ultimately enhancing market acceptance and success.

The combination of perspectives would also help researchers to anticipate any unintended consequences while developing more nuanced understandings of complex issues.

Science in the public domain

Such a blend of expertise would lead to more vigorous research designs, more responsible innovation and broader dissemination: to be sure, adding humanists to scientific endeavours would bring new voices, perspectives, storytelling methods, audiences and arenas of influence to STEM activity, improving how science exists in the public domain.

This approach would also act as a gesture towards integrating humanities perspectives and experiences more centrally in STEM education, which would develop linkages between culture, science, theory and practice, with a renewed focus on the role of scientists in society; it also promises to grow humanities opportunities and resources.

STEM and humanities disciplines contrast in subject matter – physical and quantitative versus metaphorical and cultural – but also in the knowledge experiences that they make possible.

An important but often overlooked dimension of scientific development throughout history involves the humanities: poetry, novels, satire, philosophy, sculpture, art and music have functioned as dimensions of science, as research instruments – and as extensions of the imagination.

These modes have the capacity to organise thought and knowledge and to ask questions that transcend scientific limits. They can contemplate the boundaries of the physical world in ways that empirical approaches cannot (and may never perceive). And they can tell the story of science in illuminating and relatable ways.

The STEM academy and the STEM funding agencies would benefit from combining these forms of research and knowledge into one conceptual unit, just as the giants of scientific development have done for centuries.

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is a professor of humanities at University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez and the founding director of Mellon Foundation’s Instituto Nuevos Horizontes and the director of STEM to STEAM project, which is part of the Teagle Foundation’s Cornerstone Programme.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.