Fw: Prof's column
Ayo Olukotun
----- Forwarded message -----From: "Ayo Olukotun" <ayoolu...@gmail.com>Cc:Sent: Thu, 13 Jun 2019 at 16:23Subject: Prof's column
Development Arrest: Insights from Science Religion and Fiction
Ayo Olukotun
“Our collective lackadaisical reactions to science should become an issue of national concern; we need science and its engagement more than it needs us. Science meant to complement faith not to contend with it” – Toyin Falola, Distinguished Humanities Professor at Babcock University Convocation lecture, June 2, 2019.Ordinarily, science, religion and fiction are considered to be exclusive of one another; a scientific mental software is considered in many circles as inadmissible of religious fervor which hangs on seeing the invisible, and certainly intolerant on fiction that is the product of imaginative exuberance. However, in a massive convocation lecture delivered at Babcock University a fortnight ago, Professor Toyin Falola, the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas Austin, shows that in actual fact, faith, fact and fiction are far more interrelated than we think or admit. He buttresses his argument by showing that faith or religion has been the fundamental fabric and central optic of society since human civilization came into existence. Religion determined the boundaries of thought, in spite of a few skeptics was in his words “the major portraits through which society saw itself”. Consequently, inventors who departed from the mainstream asked uncomfortable questions from the religious establishment, while in some respects, maintaining at least, the lineaments of a religious outlook. Falola’s point can be elaborated upon, when you consider that the earliest universities in Europe and United States were established and sustained by the more intellectual sections of the church, reinforcing thereby the binary or complementary rather than conflictual relationship between religion and the birth of science.
Similarly, fiction, if we ignore its derogatory connotation as mere fabrication, straddled religion and the world of fact or science. Many will not be surprised to know that the best scientific and technological institutions such as: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also harbour vibrant humanities department, including some, devoted to literary creativity. Science fiction, don’t forget, preceded several technological breakthroughs in the modern world; creative works devoted to space travel and exploration had flourished before men took the first tentative steps out of planet earth. It is no wonder, for example, that the Greeks of old exhibited both an Aristotelian grasp of science, logic and discoveries while maintaining a hold on fiction and religion. One of the greatest minds of the Ancient world, Paul of Tarsus drew the linkage in one of the Christian epistles, when he orated: “As some of your poets have said, we too are his offsprings”. Poetic imagination and luster became a gateway for unveiling deep philosophical and spiritual truths. The linkages between science, religion and fiction can be further illustrated by the recent rediscovery of Development Studies experts on the place of psycho-spiritual ethics and world view on development, especially in the light of the rise to industrial prominence of a clutch of Asian countries whose ideational backcloth is woven in an Eastern religious outlook. Hence, in place of the protestant ethic which privileges, frugality, hard work and predestination to greatness through outstanding industry, Asian religion exercised catalyzing effects on countries like China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, among others in their ascent to the world stage.
Indeed, if we come back to Nigeria, we observe the paradox, that outside of a minority of religious adherents, the majority of devotees have failed to display the benevolent connect in other climes between a modernizing religious outlook and existence at the frontiers of civilization. What perhaps is more prominent is the perverse manifestation of religion, evidenced by the Neo-jihadist impulses and murderous outrages of groups like Boko Haram, and the instrumentalization of religion for primitive accumulation as well as for grasping and sustaining power, power, not moderated by the tenets of religion. This of course, is a topic for another day.
In the context of building a modern state however, Falola insists that the close relationship between faith, fiction and facts underpins every successful attempt to undertake transformation. He alludes to the origins of such discoveries as artificial intelligence, the Internet in the fabulist fabrications and fantasy world of creative writers. More specifically, in an African society such as ours, fiction has performed roles which include: Providing beneficial tropes for character building, rising awareness of economic and political issues, acting as a town crier warning of looming disasters or mediating between state and society, entertaining the mind, and providing fodder for interpersonal development. Without doubt, moral training was a purposive agenda of recycled tales and stories, including allegories about animals and moonlight tales which suffuse African society. It can be reasonably argued, that the failure to sustain in one form or another, the ethical and moral compass contained in these oral narratives account for much that is wrong in our society. While the Asians, as noted earlier, have been able to come up with a blend of the traditional and the modern, Africans, in large measure, have left behind the valuable lessons taught by the creative minds in traditional society. This untoward dimension partly accounts for a situation in our universities where the research agenda are set, not by the problems and exigencies of our immediate environment, but by what western journals consider topical and relevant.
Falola puts it slightly differently, but no less pungently, “despite the number of universities in our continent, are we really competing with other continents of the world?” perhaps, if we were to restructure higher education to accommodate more, vital indigenous concerns while staying at the frontiers of the global knowledge map, we will be able to answer the scholar’s question in the affirmative. We can make a creative adaption of Falola’s insight into the realm of Nigerian politics, its bizarre twists and turns, and its unscientific, sometimes irrational character.
Some four or so decades ago, an American Economist wrote a book on Nigeria entitled “Planning without Facts”. It is surprising that so many years later, there remains a dearth of statistics and crucial information that undergird national planning and prediction. Hence, we are forced to depend on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international organisations to source data on economic development indices. In scientific terms therefore, Nigeria is mired in the premodern stage, with policies being made in a hit or miss affair. There is another dimension to this problem; namely the way in which politics is distorted by failure or fear to circulate authentic information. For example, my colleague, Punch columnist, Azuka Onwuka has argued recently that there is a conspiracy of silence around kidnappers’ activities in the South west, because the leaders who should inform President Muhammadu Buhari about it are tongue tied, so as not to offend the president by talking about a Fulani invasion. This is another example of the substitution of fact for a convenient fiction borne out of fear of the leader.
The scholar concludes his lecture by making several policy recommendations, which include the provision of an atmosphere favourable to imaginative thinking, repositioning our youths by nudging them in the direction of academic excellence, hooking up to global currents, and the productive deployment of the interface between religion, science and fiction to the benefit of national development.Professor Olukotun is the Oba (Dr) Kayode Adetona Professorial Chair of Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University Ago-Iwoye.