In The Abacus and the Rose, Jacob Bronowski devises a dialogue between three individuals, each representing a dimension of society: Potts, a scientist, assumes the scientific position and argues on its behalf; Harping is a literature professor symbolizing an artistic and anti-scientific position; Sir Edwards represents the Establishment; that is, the apogee of institutional power. Bronowski sets up Potts and Harping as two sides to a popular(ized) difference of opinion whereby science and the humanities (including theology, the fine arts, literature, philosophy) are enterprises which goals, aims, and pursuits are different. Sir Edwards stands as the mediator of these dueling positions, a seemingly dispassionate judge between rival positions.
Harping’s position is that literature, and the arts in general, is definitively creative and seeks to express the essence, the condition and the spirit, of humanity. From Harping’s viewpoint, writer’s such as Shakespeare proverbially penetrate the human spirit and, through the creative genius, reveal their ineffable reality in a way that observation alone cannot. At the heart of literature or painting or sculpture is a subjectivity which engages and challenges the reader or viewer, who in turn engages
and challenges the given work of art. Art, then, is an ongoing dialogue between creator and absorber by which the foundation of human experience becomes susceptible to revelation; the artist, through her creativity manifested as her art, shows us who we are through our own interpretation of that art. Harping makes a decisive distinction between art as a definitively creative pursuit and science as a fundamentally descriptive one; that is, science describes the mechanics of nature alone.
Potts takes us on a spirited account to demonstrate that science is as much a creative, continually transforming and transformative exercise as all other forms of modes of inquiry. Potts rejects Harping’s assumption that science is solely a matter of describing facts; and that scientists do no more than gather pre-established facts and perhaps add to the corpus of those scientific facts without imprinting upon them anything of the individual scientist. Bronowski draws on a comparison between Rembrandt and Rutherford to bring out Potts’ notion: both made something—in Rutherford’s case, a model of the atom—and their creation was original. Rutherford’s way of perceiving nature was unique to him, as was Rembrandt’s way of perceiving a landscape or person. Both began with the same observable reality; both then transformed that reality through their individual talents, their creativity and vision, to produce something illuminatingly new.
The important parallel Potts/Bronowski makes is that both scientific and non- scientific knowledge-gathering or knowledge-making ways necessitate the interpretative input of the scientist, painter, writer, theologian, and so forth. Furthermore, both invoke the methods or simply ways of pursuing their respective
search; that is, with apparent reality. Also, and contrary to Harping’s position, both scientist and writer or painter must discover for themselves the truth or underlying sense of those teachings which preceded them. After labelling Sir Edward (i.e, establishment power) as a “philistine,” one who abhors, fears, or appropriates change in view us sustaining or augmenting his power, Potts-Bronowski concludes that artistic achievement and technological operate in tandem and, more to the point, not coincidentally.
Personalization:
Recently drawing has become of use to me because I currently suffer from panic disorder. I use drawing as a way to focus my brain on something other than the symptoms of my attacks. When I’m in the process of sketching a figure or landscape: my goal is generally imitative, an attempt to visually transcribe the image captured by my vision, but in sketching I must judge what to include and exclude, much like a scientist must make choices about what data is relevant or irrelevant in deciding her next operation. I am also trying to illustrate a vision that may retain its distinctiveness as original conceived, or it may mutate over the course of time or by some inspiration and admixture of my movement and the landscape or figure before me; while sketching, I may lay a stroke that does not fit the vision I have in mind; so, I modify it. Scientists, too, must redesign their experiments, or introduce different variables, to speak to their vision of nature in the very specific way posited within a scientific worldview. In the end, when my sketch is complete, I will have created something original, though it may fall under the category “landscape painting.” In the same way, a scientist who undertakes the processes of observation, experimentation,
and reiteration, and subsequently builds a machine or medicine from this volleying between vision and observable reality, creates something original, just like my illustrations.
Summary #2 (The Distinction and Limitation of Science):
The main feature that sets science apart from other modes of inquiry, and makes it extraordinary, is that it is an empirical enterprise, reliant on data and evidence to evaluate the truth of its theories and discoveries. This single property of science is both its greatest asset and its greatest restraint.
The base of all modes of inquiry is the initiative to derive a meaning and an explanation of humanities existence pertaining to the physical world. Despite the parallels that can be drawn between science and other modes of inquiry, say, philosophy, the term science refers to a very specific way of knowledge-gathering and making that is defined by a set of parameters usually called the scientific method, an expression encompassing the practices of an activity in order for it to be understood as doing science. Similarly, the term “philosophy” refers to a body of knowledge developed through the rigorous application of “doing” philosophy; that is, by applying critical and logical reasoning (where they differ), a way of thinking that is internally consistent. Scientific methodology also demands critical thinking but has established procedures that make use of empirical material to demonstrate the value (or lack thereof) of its truth-claims. Distinguishing philosophical inquiry from its scientific counterpart is that the results or conclusions of the latter are tentatively
provable; more specifically, science defines proof according to its own methodology, but not unlike philosophical inquiry, never rests on the assumption that any given theory is immune to change, sometimes changes that are paradigmatic in their consequences.
The scientific method follows a series of steps: observations are made, data is gathered, hypothesis are drawn, and experiments are conducted. The hypothesis is then either supported through reiteration of the experiment/s and their results, and their “fitting” the hypothesis; or the conclusion drawn from the experiments does not support the hypothesis, in which case the hypothesis is adjusted to make sense of the data and tested anew with the experiments (conversely, experiments may be adjusted not to fit the hypothesis but because of faults to their integrity, such as failing to define terms and measure what they purport to measure). Science is thus a vast enterprise of trial-and-error that draws heavily on inductive reasoning—collecting data and deriving a hypothesis. The key to science, its legitimacy as the preeminent form of knowledge-accumulation, is its predictive power, made possible through experimentation and evident through the manifestation of changes in the world via technologies. Science is privileged in society because it can change things in the physical world, manipulate natural processes, ideally and often to our benefit; many times, not.
Regardless of how creative and authentic the techniques may be, science is limited by data. Thus, despite its amazing capabilities and benefits, science should not be the only method of inquiry that we rely on because it is restricted by empirical data. For example, science cannot answer the question whether something is morally
right or morally wrong. Positions based on morality stem from various combinations of religious, philosophical, and cultural belief systems that cannot be scientifically measured. We cannot accumulate data, at least date that is unequivocally accurate, on topics like morality so, these topics are outside sciences territory.
Integration:
Due to its limitations, there is a massive realm of our lives that science is unable to explain. Religion, art, science, and culture must coexist due to the multifaceted questions presented by humanity. We cannot merely address illness spiritually and completely disregard the scientific approach. We cannot merely address human connection philosophically and not scientifically. And, as mentioned previously, we certainly cannot address morality empirically and not religiously, culturally, and scientifically.
Perhaps more to the point, the arts/humanities, including religion, are not incompatible with science. Bronowski argues that science is not essentially descriptive but interpretative; and in the way Potts presents this thesis, it is a reasonable statement to make. Nonetheless, the way science uses description to communicate scientific interpretations is inseparable from the idea that science demonstrates how the world physically operates. Whether newer interpretations will arise to provide a different picture of how the world operates (and they almost surely will) is moot: science trucks in processes; this is the point Harping ultimately emphasized. We may say that the how is the why: how the world operates is its own legitimacy, its own reason; one need go no further. Yet this considerable point does
not appear to satisfy most people; we seem almost reflexively to understanding our Harpings even as we marvel at the clarity of our Potts; for there is something tremendously reassuring in the power to accurately predict.
But in my tentative analysis, religion and science, or fill-in-the-non-scientific and science are not incompatible. If we accept that science provides us with an understanding of physical processes, this does not preclude a deeper meaning to those processes than science can by virtue of its own well-defined parameters admit. We may know how nature operates—to a point—but still need other means of knowledge-gathering to help us understand why it operates, at any node, at all. A deep-seated desire for humans to know the reason for their presence in this beautiful and mystifying observable reality persists regardless of our scientific ingenuity and technological savvy. Simultaneously, there is no reason to approach science as an anathema to non-scientific inquiry or beliefs. Science, it seems to me, is one of multiple avenues upon which we drive to reach or continue searching for the same place, that is, one of meaning. The same impulse that motivates the scientist motives the writer or theologian. We simply want to know. Conclusively, every mode of inquiry is essential and necessary.
Thoughtful Puzzle:
Humans are so curious. We have this everlastingly annoying need to know everything and because of this, science, more specifically, technology, is necessary. But what if these technological advances are stemming us too far away from natural
inquiry? Two lines that really made an impression on my in The Abacus and the Rose are: “humanity has perished already under the big wheel of scientific progress.” And “the machine [is] a form of spiritual death”.
So I guess my thoughtful puzzle is, what if our new found modes of inquiry are doing too much damage than good?Paste your essay in here…