Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures: A Plea for Experimentalism

CHAPTER 1: Two tramps in mud time

Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done. — robert frost There may be no better description of the humanities and the social sciences, and no better characterization for the time, than the title of Robert Frost’s poem quoted above, “Two Tramps in Mud Time”. My argument raises questions about two basic assumptions on which, at present , most demands made on governments by humanists and social scientists rest: first, that the humanities and the social sciences play an important and useful role in modern society; and, second, that governments should therefore provide important additional resources for their support. Unless human scientists change their ways, it may be argued, the case for their social usefulness and their deserving of funding is not very strong. Here is a road map of my argument. First, the humanities and the social sciences are quarrelsome twins that may not be identical, but are also not fundamentally different. They are sets of languages of illumination, exploration and interpretation of the physical and human worlds. CHAPTer 1 Two tramps in mud time PART I: CRIPPLING EPISTEMOLOGIES 17 Second, a crisis of confidence in the humanities and social sciences has developed recently, but analysis of this crisis has generally evaporated into a boring enumeration of troublesome symptoms. The real source of the crisis, I will argue, is in a loss of origin, in the fading away of the founding questions from which the social sciences and the humanities originated. This has led to a gradual displacement of content by method in the practice of both the humanities and the social sciences. Third, such a displacement is particularly unfortunate when the substantive form of our social and economic order is mutating. The fixation on procedures has induced a great deal of irrelevance in their discourses, just when the humanities and social sciences appear to have the most to contribute. Fourth, the professionalization of the academy, without a parallel growth of professionalism as part of its duties, appears to be at the roots of this loss of origin. Since World War II, academics have professionalized the practice of both the social sciences and the humanities, and self-regulating corporations have transformed and perverted the use of their languages. The much-needed shift back from method to content is unlikely to occur as a matter of course, and additional public funds will not suffice either. Despite specious arguments to the contrary, governments have legitimate concerns about affairs of the mind, and have to accept responsibility for stewarding the humanities and the social sciences back toward substantive questions. Fifth, what is required is nothing less than a strategy of culture, to serve as a sextant for such government action. The intent of this chapter is not to deny that much work of great value has been done, and is being done, in the human sciences. Rather, the point of my argument is that despite their technical and sometimes substantive contributions, the human sciences have not lived up to what could reasonably be expected from them and that, 18 CRIPPLING EPISTEMOLOGIES AND GOVERNANCE FAILURES if anything, the situation is likely to continue to deteriorate (although there are signs that a true renaissance may be in progress). Thus, it seems important to ask why this is so, and how one might correct such a situation. THe quArreLSOMe TwINS MAy NOT Be IdeNTICAL, BuT . . . Scientists, social scientists, humanists and artists illuminate reality, explore the unknown, and interpret the physical and human worlds. It is their common fundamental task, and it is instructive that “theory” and “theatre” have the same ancient Greek roots (Nisbet 1976: 10–12). Robert Nisbet has argued that art and science are simply different paths, different logics of discovery of synthetic, self-consistent worlds. In this array of perspectives, the humanities and the social sciences are close neighbours. Even though reality is the quest of the artist as much as of the scientist, a sort of division of labour has occurred and each group appears to be attempting to illuminate, explore and interpret alternate realities. Lawrence LeShan and Henry Margenau (1982) have tried to illustrate the multiplicity of those alternate realities through an account of a businessman’s day, as, successively , a tycoon closing a profitable deal at lunch; a husband almost telepathically communicating with his wife on the dance floor in the early evening; a worried...