In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Intimate Science and Hard Humanities
  • Roger F. Malina, Executive Editor (bio)

Re-reading Darwin's Origin of Species on its 150th anniversary, one is struck by its lucidity and humility and the transformative power of its conclusions. Yet the theory of evolution is still not widely understood or accepted. Arrhenius first wrote about the impact of increasing CO2 on global climate in 1896, and yet among governments the issue was still argued until recently. The projects of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution are incomplete. Scientific knowedge is not culturally appropriated. In many ways science has become a cargo cult. Many people use the cell phone for daily survival but could not explain the difference between a photon and an electron.

One reason may be that common science does not make common sense. The information I study as a scientist is nearly all mediated through scientific instruments. I can tell when my instrument is hallucinating. I develop new words to describe phenomena I encounter. I can manipulate concepts not grounded in my experience as a child. But this intimacy is not the daily experience of most people.

In an interesting new development in the art world, a generation of artists are now collecting data about their world using technological instruments but for cultural purposes. Shared tool-using leads to overlapping epistemologies and ontologies. These artists both make powerful art and help make science intimate, sensual, intuitive.

A second reason for the disconnection of modern science and public understanding is that scientists carry out their work mostly in guarded monasteries, unwilling to consider that a larger public could be involved and thereby change the direction and content of future science. This institutional isolation is a historical accident, largely due to the societal compact of science and government following World War II.

There are, however, encouraging signs of new types of "micro science" made possible by the Internet and the new public access to scientific data and instruments. To coin a phrase, micro science is to the National Science Foundation what micro-credit is to the World Bank. I am not calling for a renewal of amateur science but for embedding mediated contact with the world in everyday life.

Intimate science by artists and micro science at all levels of society are important components of the "hard humanities"—the arts and humanities disciplines essential to the cultural transformation necessary within the next two generations. Controlling climate change, abandoning dependency on fossil fuels and creating the conditions for sustainable development will require as deep a transformation as our ancestors accomplished over tens of thousands of years in moving from agrarian to urban societies.

The work of the Leonardo community in promoting art-science and art-technology collaboration is part of the toolkit for survival. We know what a landscape artist is, and indeed landscape artists over several hundred years have helped shape the relationship between humans and nature. But what is a "climate artist"? Two hundred years from now we will identify the climate artists working today who made possible the transformations now beginning. Climate artists will use their senses, mediated by technological tools, to reshape our relationship to the world around us. The "hard humanities" also include social sciences, now suddenly required to be prescriptive. Anthropologists find themselves in industrial innovation workshops; historians are called upon to explain the ways that societies can transform themselves. Artists working with these scholars also engage in intimate and micro science that, as in the Renaissance, will help reshape our relationships to the societies we build.

Over recent months a number of us have been developing the concept of "open observatories" that disseminate methods and knowledge for micro science, intimate science, people's science and crowd sourcing. These open observatories would allow small communities to develop locally generated knowledge and to evolve rapidly to confront climate change, end oil dependency and create sustainable development. Open observatories would include artists collecting data for cultural and artistic purposes, as well as community leaders and researchers seeking ways to mediate personally meaningful access to scientific knowledge. They will help make new science indigenous and intimate. [End Page 184]

Roger F. Malina

Leonardo E-mail: <rmalina@alum.mit.edu&gt...

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