TITLE: There Is Only One Culture, But Two Languages
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 25, 2016 9:40 AM
DESC:
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BODY:
W.H. Auden, in A Certain World, on the idea of
The Two Cultures:
Of course, there is only one. Of course, the natural sciences
are just as "humane" as letters. There are, however, two
languages, the spoken verbal language of literature, and the
written sign language of mathematics, which is the language of
science. This puts the scientist at a great advantage, for,
since like all of us he has learned to read and write, he can
understand a poem or a novel, whereas there are very few men
of letters who can understand a scientific paper once they
come to the mathematical parts.
When I was a boy, we were taught the literary languages, like
Latin and Greek, extremely well, but mathematics atrociously
badly. Beginning with the multiplication table, we learned a
series of operations by rote which, if remembered correctly,
gave the "right" answer, but about any basic principles, like
the concept of number, we were told nothing. Typical of the
teaching methods then in vogue is the mnemonic which I had to
learn.
Minus times Minus equals Plus:
The reason for this we need not discuss.
Sadly, we still teach young people that it's okay if math and
science are too hard to master. They grow into adults who
feel a chasm between "arts and letters" and "math and science".
But as Auden notes rightly, there is no chasm; there is mostly
just another language to learn and appreciate.
(It may be some consolation to Auden that we've reached a point
where most scientists have to work to understand papers written
by scientists in other disciplines. They are written in highly
specialized languages.)
In my experience, it is more acceptable for a humanities person
to say "I'm not a science person" or "I don't like math" than
for a scientist to say something similar about literature, art,
or music. The latter person is thought, silently, to be a
Philistine; the former, an educated person with a specialty.
I've often wondered if this experience suffers from observation
bias or association bias. It may well. I certainly know artists
and writers who have mastered both languages and who remain
intensely curious about questions that span the supposed chasm
between their specialties and mine. I'm interested in those
questions, too.
Even with this asymmetry, the presumed chasm between cultures
creates low expectations for us scientists. Whenever my friends
in the humanities find out that I've read all of Kafka's novels
and short stories; that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
is my favorite play, or that I even have a favorite play; that I
really enjoyed the work of
choreographer Merce Cunningham;
that my office bookshelf includes the complete works of William
Shakespeare and a volume of William Blake's poetry -- I love the
romantics! -- most seem genuinely surprised. "You're a computer
scientist, right?" (Yes, I like Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and
Bradbury, too.)
Auden attributes his illiteracy in the language of mathematics
and science to bad education. The good news is that we can
reduce, if not eliminate, the language gap by teaching both
languages well. This is a challenge for both parents and schools
and will take time. Change is hard, especially when it involves
the ways we talk about the world.
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