Scientific Concepts and Cultural Change

There are many difficulties of communication between the sub-groups within our culture―for example, between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. But there are also ways in which they are becoming increasingly united, and most of this essay will be an effort to trace a few common themes and viewpoints derived from science which I see as increasingly pervading our culture as a whole.

Perhaps one of the most important is the common allegiance of scholarship to the ideal of objective research, to the possibility of arriving by successive approximations at an objective description of reality. Whether it be concerned with the structure of a distant galaxy or the sources of the art of the nineteenth century poet, there exists a common respect for evidence and a willingness to follow evidence wherever it leads regardless of the preconceptions or desires of the scholar. This is, of course, only an ideal; but failure to conform to this ideal, if detected, damns a scholar whether he be a scientist or a humanist. In a sense the whole apparatus of academic scholarship is an attempt to bring scientific method into the pursuit of knowledge through progressive refinements in the uncovering and use of evidence.

To read full text, please see PDF below (login may be required).