Science interplays with Humanities

As far as science concerns me, I have only been truly interested in medical pursuits. Medicine is a field dominated and supported by logic and exhaustive research, yet wrought with history based on deadly errors and superstition. Though modern medicine seems far advanced when compared to the medicine of 100 years ago, it still stands that, to treat illnesses, we must bombard the body with relatively simple chemicals that have a desired effect on the disease, but often carry side effects in other parts of the body.

The human body is an amazing machine, capable of astounding acts of self-repair that require no conscious thought or effort on our part. Medicine can extend that ability even further, stretching the limits of our lives immensely within just the last couple of centuries. Yet, for all its wonders at giving us quantity of life, we have yet to find a way to increase life’s overall quality. For that, we must look away from the cold, hard studies of scientific endeavors and count on the humanities; for it is there that we find discourse on our different ways of viewing the world. Science is necessarily logical, but human beings are known for defying such predictable, rational behavior. The reason for me, then, to take a course studying the interplay of science and the humanities, is to find new ways of applying scientific knowledge to benefit the public—hopefully a skill I can carry with me for a lifetime.

Yet I proceed with caution…scientific findings have many different ways of being spun. Pinker, in his blank slate manifesto, uses certain information to argue for his particular vision of what humankind really is. Yet, even he fails to account for other individuals’ lack of realization of his own paradigm: the paradigm belongs to him alone. What makes the study of this interplay interesting, then, is to hear other perspectives and compare them to mine. I do this to structure my own view of the world—my own paradigm. Therefore, I argue that with any new scientific information, we may be doing ourselves a disservice by arguing if it is right or wrong. Instead, perhaps we should ask ourselves, is it useful?