Week 1: Two Cultures

My name is Candace Kim and I am a sophomore pursuing a Business Economics major. I was always interested in the Arts, specifically Fashion Designing, because of its infinite outlets of self-expression, but my naïve dream of pursuing a career in this “unpromising” industry was quickly shut down. At UCLA, I initially chose to pursue Mathematics Economics (B.S.), of course to achieve my genuine passion for math, but I cannot say that I wasn’t influenced by the bias of the Sciences being the intellectual elite culture on the rise. Granted, I quickly realized I preferred having flexibility in my lifestyle, reverting back to my original passion of the Arts but with a compromise: a Bachelor of Arts in Business Economics.

Professor Vesna lectured that Art and Science as being two separate disciplines is a relatively new idea, but personally, it seems this estrangement has unwittingly begun from early urbanization enterprises and now a deeply engrained psychology of humanity. In many Asian countries, the disjuncture between the “Two Cultures” is clearly paralleled with the economic disparity between the rich and the poor—a fundamental point brought up by Charles Percy Snow. For centuries, Art was an ilk of luxury that only rich children could afford to indulge in, whereas Science was more a common dream of the poor children who frequently experienced family illnesses that were left untreated due to the inability to pay for medical expenses.

[Lecture about C.P Snow's debate on Two Culture]

Interestingly, as brought up by David Bohm in On Creativity, scientists constantly seek to discover something new and unknown, something that has “a certain fundamental kind of significance…[exhibiting] unity in a broad range of phenomena” (D. Bohm, 138). In similar aspects, artists continually strive to create works of art, a sort of wholeness that constitutes “a kind of harmony that is meant to feel beautiful” (138). There is nothing then that differentiates scientists from artists. So why are they categorized in different disciplines? Why are the works produced, seemingly, so different?

[The human brain as depicted by the difference in Art and Science in how the brain is used. The right hemisphere, used for Arts-based thinking, suggests what divergent thinking is capable of: multiple options, a variety--creativity. This is very different from the left hemisphere, used for Sciences-based thinking, suggesting an understanding for why the works produced in these two disciplines are seemingly very different.] 

I dare to say the root of this predicament lies in our education system. As asserted by the Royal Society of Arts, our education seems to be built on 2 pillars: Economics and Intellectual. Curriculum is modeled on the interests of industrialization and thus causes chaos as it forces people to reject divergent thinking. Instead of allowing children to think on their feet and to come up with their own creative solution, we force them to act on economic imperatives, instill in them the misconstrued belief that there exits only one correct answer to life’s complexities, and teach students in “batches,” as if mirroring the production line of a factory (RSA Changing Education Paradigm, video). Unfortunately, we are taught to maintain all reflections of “self” and “Ego” as perfect. Hence, we are eternally bounded by this restriction and brainwashed into fearing mistakes, so we rather opt to mediate on the mediocre.

[Animation segment from RSA Animate]

Lastly, in Brockman’s interview, Brockman delivers that he spent the last half-century trying to merge art and science to create a “Third Culture”. But is this really plausible? Especially when literary intellectuals aren’t communicating with scientists? Moreover, should Thomas Samuel Kuhn’s theory on “paradigm shifts” (as catalysts of the two cultures’ separation) hold true, the emergence of a reconciling “Third Culture” is a mere matter of hope riding on zero substantial likelihood. So what should we expect, or can we even expect anything at all?

Works Cited

Bohm, David, and Lee Nichol. On Creativity. Vol. 1. London: Routledge, 1998. 137-149. Print.

Snow, Charles Percy. “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.“ The Rede Lecture. Cambridge University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lecture.

Brockman, John. “John Brockman: Matchmaking with Science and Art.” Interview. Wired Magazine Mar. 2011: n. pag. Print.

Changing Education Paradigms. By Ken Robinson, Sir. Youtube. Royal Society of Arts – RSA Animate, 14 Oct. 2010. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?y=zDZFcDGpL4U>.

Robinson, Sir Ken. Changing Education Paradigms. Digital image. RSA Animate. Royal Society of Arts, n.d. Web. <http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-changing-paradigms>.

Barbican Art & Science on the Brain. Digital Image. Hoxton Radio. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.hoxtonradio.com/barbican-art-science-on-the-brain/>.

Lecture on Science and Literature. Digital image. RBKC. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/leisureandlibraries/events/celebrationofscience/photographs.aspx>.