Gateway to Ideas; Is Science Sterilizing Humanistic Thoughts

it's been gateway to ideas as they try to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in addition to reading on today's program entitled is science sterilizing humanistic thought you bell science editor of the new york herald tribune talks with i've got the nobel prize winner and physicist at columbia university we rapidly approach the time when no corner of the universe public or private will be immune to the probes of science the distant galaxies the microcosm of the album even when the lightening of nerve cells or come under the regular days of the scientist perhaps i ought to amend that slightly public sensibilities seems to

want to keep scientists out of the jury room but it has failed to keep them out of the bedroom as the continuing reports of dr alfred seeking disease colleagues demonstrate in this proliferation of the region's accessible to science with the rather distinctive triumph of scientific investigation as a prime route to reality and with the pervasiveness in our lives of the things of science or more properly the things of technology we might ask about the power of science to change the human animal and in particular his motor for up to very recently art has been largely a tradition of humane letters of poetry literature of the classics just one generation or most to this tradition has changed and sciences come for to challenge that literary preeminence in response of the charts the man of letters have been an english less when sea the smell attempted to describe the dichotomy between the two traditions which he called the two cultures he was promptly vilified by the literati and in some

sense the stone by the scientists performers seem to be saying that science is outside interest and a lot of seem to be saying that search also struggling with a cliche to what extent has science changed man sport willing or not this is the question for us today with me is doctor ii robbie a nobel prize winning physicist louis university professor of physics at columbia university i do not think we should attempt dr robbie to catalog all the homes in the novels and plays know things of literature which reflect the current scientific term rather let's talk you and i about some of the differences which science has introduced into our thinking before we do that the karate let's get the two cultures problem out of the way please erupt on the issue first let me rock counterparts from our professorship all go it's not contested professor of physics at university professor gerard are the sort of

intellectual maid of all work and can roam from department to department so far i've kept all my troubles and i'm still have my office and the physics building i had physics with a small k the move though respect to see these laws are two cultures and i think he made a tremendous contribution with this happy phrase because he revived the discussion there which had become dormant and more in the name of science and the humanities he brought this up again from the standpoint of you in the sense that as a successful novelist he spoke more from the literary tap perhaps not the extra labor camp but deadly fungal or a cab and was a man who could not be ignored by the literary peak as such a shopping the issue he made one other very important contribution and

that is he brought the issue into the more rich but there was a moral difference between the position of the literary people and the position of that of the scientists and that the scientists will more morally sensitive to the needs of the world the literary people who would or pastor talking about it and did not try to do anything about it as the scientists really good actually that point of view was taken by mr green who was somewhat more sensitive as a literary man to snow's point of view than say lenders who attacked us know violently green and his science in the shabby cured pork week points out that the literature and the biggest modern literature is just terribly against society and for the individual i think that something terrible would happen the great prestige of science and the mathematical language in which so much of it that is written

has prevented literary people from understanding what it's all about the way their education and forty they do have the mathematics which enabled them to enter this language more easily and as a result they're find itself in the position of living in the world which is continually being changed by science without having any part of it and are alienated and they cry out in anguish but they don't do anything about it in the sense of educating themselves to know what they're talking about or green attempted to do that she's been tempted to do this i think has to be odd for them is very sensitive and a very interesting very simple yes well the think anything can be done by the average human is to say has gone through it tradition of education which includes only surveys in science elementary algebra and perhaps geometry ray cipher with is going to work all right but it probably won't be that he should not stand in the way of educating the young so to get a proper education with science is a central core of the

curriculum to enable people to live in the twentieth century rather than in another century and antisense the feelings and cliches monks one another you know it's interesting that sergeant jose historian of science that really went the other way and were devilishly hard to understand greek and latin in order to do his work old has nothing against that as far i'm not talking about a scientist you know like he was writing a history of science and he was not going to take sources a secondhand and he really wanted to understand the loser writing about nothing i've said is again scholarship what i'm talking about is the educational young in order to enable them to understand the world in which they live i would love to see people with aig good grounding since iran's going to walk our julia go into a literary criticism but they should have the basic background just as i think it should have the basic background of being able to speak english language with

some pursell the stage but i don't want you to define science for us because that's sort of one of the on the finals in a way unlike all at the music and what is good music and good art but i wonder if you would the gist talk for a moment or two about what you think of the essential ingredients and science which makes it somewhat different from a literary ski scholastic point of view they basically we would like to know what were talking about i would like to be able to us to work subjects are ideas the two verification by comparison the universe we are basically revolutionary in the sense that we are very happy if an established system of art is upset with great distinction that which is in a certain sense the opposite of the humanistic culture we do not look to the past we look to the future we creative were

optimistic were progressive we build on the past but we look toward a future where is the most of the letter word culture is partly in the present with tremendous the starter for the past and can hardly accept the present much less the future of an audience to accept that the direst expectation of course it was on this point of view that lettuce attacked snow most loudly namely snow said that scientists have a future i'm a bones so to speak and snow pointed out that people like orwell hated the future and didn't want any part of it and again this seemed to be particularly entertaining thriller uttering you think this is part of the idea that as science itself perforce pushes us into the future or removal question that the roots perhaps lead dominating force which is shaping the future of pushing ourselves a fugitive and doesn't have to go to the future when he stepped off the bus only party

votes against the law in this area but the future we'll be more and more of it a whole new set of ideas attitudes built up by the scientific revolution since the renaissance and even the the most severe critics of science nonetheless a cork in it in their language in their attitudes toward has to do is to compare a moderate with a man of a century ago and you see how great the change has been well you know white head sided to preview some bound as an unconscious use scientific language that the court and eight a transcript in which she said don't i spend beneath my permanent night which points into the heavens dreaming the light murmuring victorious join marian chant asleep and so on and then when it goes on to

say this stands it could only have been written by someone with a definite geometrical diagram before his him would i a diagram which is often been my business to demonstrate a mathematical classes and don't you feel at something similar is going to be happening as we go forward that as people put into the inward eye the ideas of quantum mechanics mechanics geometry what's shelley of course was privileged and science and cambridge typical english recruited fleeing the strike i am worried about it that second part the real point that people of that quantum mechanics relativity will enter into the fault of our times unfortunately is very difficult to express those ideas without some mathematical language

and it seems that the very people who would enjoy it have a certain block a second car a mathematical symbols to get that this is a it's a language in shorthand and the precise language for conveying ideas which would be very difficult otherwise with the sos they see the letter x that someone get into the debate and the last great care is taken in their earlier education to make them at home with this language that will never be able to touch on what we talk about well willy nilly these ideas of relativity and quantum mechanics to some extent have ended our thoughts for example we speak now the relativity of cultures and i think this is a phrase which was unheard of before einstein it's truly insolvent ultimately a culture as soon it will make any difference to toll because that was napoleon relativity the einstein relativity is a much deeper and more subtle idea

and is says radical at this place the human as a critical theory was or as the darwinian theory was but i do not believe that there are this has ended to any great degree into the thinking of the non scientific educated public money think that's so i've seen no sign you think they simply given up simply given up there was a great deal of interest in those young man in the early twenties which has since died of especially with the death of einstein was this great world figures in an interest focused on his personality and his ideas i see very little reference to his basic thoughts the lawyers intellectual side of science is getting less and less attention from the educated public and from that from the press wearers some of the drugs would surely

should more be doing which owe more to the credit of engineering arm called signs and the intellectual side the deeply intellectual side is there's not touched on but more the engineer and a construction site not voters in very great and very important but the other side is correct well it is if it is neglected whose whose problem is that is that the problem of the of the scientists who haven't themselves sort of made their own world i lived in it and said if you want to come along with us you have to jump on a bus or have they made any attempt to reach out and to but scientific material to stop disposal team and i'm afraid the scientists haven't the scientists have become an elite and the search and sites to become a certain sense of sacred couple that does not have to defend itself so they make their own private language and talk to one another and to not talk to the public

galileo said that he had to spend eleven months drawing philosophy for every month they could do science because he had to defend itself against the clerics now scientists don't have to defend itself against a body except a budget cutters and therefore have no direct connection with a public or our science popularizer is what they really come from the ranks of the scientists themselves use to belt of them very well but it's not clear that it's not scientists say they themselves have done very little there's this new book of weinstein and unfurled a few but no real attempt has been made to make all it's understandable and so and the only way i think that would really do it there was a couple people were obligated to teach freshman in the united states not only

freshmen who are going to be scientists but freshman in general than they would have to make themselves why we you know there are many top people who have undertaken just this task for example big fine at cal tech and teller has also undertaken to teach freshman and but i agree with you these are few and forth between her there wasn't another element to teach the subject a freshman teaching science to freshman in the sense of giving them a tool is one thing but connecting it up with other elements of life is another i think the first is rather ineffective for those were not going on the science simply withers away in time since the not going to use if it's connected up with other elements all the law says it's connected up with biographer in the way a literary people connect of writers if it's connected connected with velocity is that connected with

history it's connected with a technological results with sociology then i think it's a real meaning and the fact we've become clearer and the impression would be probably be a lasting one marine whom i refer to be formed just published this book science machete through poetry makes exactly this point of view and not affecting who is a parallel between edison and mark twain before that time which is very much to appoint him and points out that plane and edison are essentially though figures of the bombastic days of our industrial revolution i think this can be promoted generally in our modern times the biographies of war oppenheimer wrap yourself like that might mean something to a new generation with a very interesting to me that there is a four volume biography of henry james no very great writer and yet there was no real biography of

einstein which knocked me at the foot of the biography not one which starts one day little albert said to his father an associate and as far as i know there's no no such biography in progress i don't normally selling american side when there's a biography of henry roeland when the great physicists of the nineteenth century and one can go on to lose weight each morning there was a biography of joseph henry but it's only a slim volumes in law and an uncle honk if you take literary figures are legal dimensions you'll find wipers about them and this is again a situation with its scientists are not compelled toward that kind of scholarship and literary people oh that hard to project what larry for the public hasn't been educated fluent although i think if people well done that would be a hit there would be a public just as it was for jones a

biography of fraud i i think that's certainly true and it's kind of interesting that even a minor biographies of of scientific individuals have had their influences for example pol describes microcomputers was read by a generation of high schools do this and it seems to me very interesting that every time i meet a microbiology has to save the ages were between forty and this fifty five which they would've been in high school the times when it was published and i asked them what got you started in microbiology or biochemistry or even science they say i report crimes my competitors and and that was not a debt write it so well worth two planes from and going to an event had a wide so we had students who came to colombia's was all the reading that long after keeping with that well is it isn't the facts here though that the reason that we have more biographies of literary people than we do of sciences a twofold thing mainly that after all writers can write in their interest as another writers

and not and not necessarily and scientists so they're no more likely to write about things of their interest and about other things and secondly in order to write a intellectual i'm definitive biography of a scientist you really have to come to grips with the body of his work while and this pamphlet this is very difficult for people in the literary field well scholarship was no word novelty of people want to become scalia history a lot of other fields study and really dig very deeply and learn new languages and then when i see no reason why anybody wanted to write a biography of our psyche and lemon of mathematics and physics to begin to have a feeling for what it did of course in addition to that you have to give the dimensions of the man luca wrote a long life her books on their experiences in different

world met with it top statesmen crowned heads of the world and others to dissipate and many movements what's on amanda's this the head and they leave the force why before he had children what happened to the miners relations all the things you'd want to know about a human being but the scientists into the human family now this has not been done the scientists is the soul somewhere at the moment were no signs the matter what else he is he's become a specialist and apart from the rest of the non scientific world what's that one of the big problems in the spot of the century is to bring the scientist back into the human that you can get into the family of humans well maybe we have to wait two hundred years or so after all of the kind of definitive biography has been done for kepler and from others yes we have had it with three hundred years for the conference of what

this was you could see the front of the brain and the last envoy the but probably the greatest scientists the absence that quote perhaps overshadows vigilance if a real influence there will be no and hold on the new book well just to go back to the influence of this so of the kind of science which has been done in modern times are on the way we think what the great deal has been made of the problem of aesthetics in science we sort of give lip service to it and very few people who have not done a scientific experiment which has never been done before and seen the results come bouncing out out of the equipment or out of the page or whatever you can really a in my view really feel this this a static experience was or any way do you think this experience can be made real to them on side it's very very difficult but certainly i don't think literary

people for example have made the experience of a poet who has written a successful poll revealed to those of never tried to write a verse so some particular feelings can be communicated only to those who had similar experiences and i think one can get radio a sense of it but one can't really get the thing itself and solving that sense as a different from any other creative act i mean if you read the though a mineral and what was the area then christoph army and the air and he has a he's a great life but you don't get the feeling of his excitement creates goes along i think this is essential songs that but i think the scientists can totally composer

and they will both have had a similar experience and perhaps the totem pole and and the shape views about the moment of insight the feeling when you've had written something and that's exactly true when you do an experiment a complete a piece of work and feel that this has a kind of solidity and quality and which will carry i've had that experience only once it's you know my it's scientific experience is limited but i remember once a working on a crystal structure model and deli had a computer set up to compute the fourier patent on the idea of a molecule and out they're all i was watching in that instance after weeks of work was just a teletype write a punching out numbers and after the first twelve numbers you realize that yes i finally had the answer to this intricate puzzle and you could hardly contain yourself yes exactly exactly i think of the scrub a beautiful area yet this kind of

experience is really described in the literature and family and the non scientific literature talking about a snow attempted and a search record i you know i get out last year opened with an aggressive national gallery of science but those two sites the scientists and i did try to describe the situation we just so to speak amongst friends and got to the general public as it was on their adventures yes i agree with you but but nevertheless this is high drama and in a certain sense it's the act in the moment of creation the fulfillment of weeks if not years i only work weeks but some people work is and then suddenly see this a congenial you know all things come together and yet the times which has it been described in the literature citing trivial for years you know having experienced that maybe you'll go up and down right well and there are practical problems as you know i was just wondering if

there's anything one can say about the ways in which shows scientific research and the way science has going has changed our values in any way nothing's done a great deal to change a foreign news or think has brought a great piece of clarity into situations which didn't they exist for for instance for example the yearling take three word in something that's illegal word that now psychiatric ward we've probably enough into the human mind to understand the gradations which exist and i'm not for the weddings the mine to look at things quite differently from the rather odd moment legal and travelers i mean this is an example so the thing which occurs and love of their license because from a newspaper reader and i think this is a classic

example i think we've gone far enough to show that in these various ways the way people experiment the concepts of science the future looking ideas in science that these are going to and controversially incomparably continue to have a kind of pressure against modern thinking and that will push modern thinking into new malls which is which to pre caucus for siebert never less worker and perhaps if the world of science made more of an outreach into a day of the world the changes will be more controlled and for the better you've been listening to gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's program is science sterilizing humanistic thought has presented balanced science editor of the new york herald tribune talking with i've got the nobel prize winner university professor and physicist at columbia university to extend the dimensions of today's

program for your list of the books mentioned in the discussion as well as others relevant to the subject has been prepared you can obtain a copy from the local library or my writing to gateway to ideas post office box six four one time square station in new york he's in close as stamps self addressed on the right about six four one time square station in new york gateway to ideas has produced the national educational radio under a grant from the national home library foundation the programs are prepared by the national book committee and the american library association in cooperation with the national association of educational broadcasters technical production by riverside radio wypr in new york city this is a national educational radio network fb