A Response to Toyin Falola's "Humanism and the Future of the Humanities"

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                        

                                A Response to Toyin Falola's "Humanism and the Future of the Humanities"

                                                                     The Third Kwasu Humanities Lecture

                                                                                Delivered on Aug.24,2018

                                                                               Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                                 Compcros

                                                                        Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                                       "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                                          

                                                

An image from Aesthetica Magazine, of  German artist Anselm Kiefer's torturedly powerful Shevirat Ha-Kelim, a Hebrew expression meaning "The Breaking of the Vessels", evoking the fusion of a historical and a cosmological occurrence.

The historical events is Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, which, as described by the linked Wikipedia essay on the subject,"was a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed", foreshadowing   the eventual burning of books seen as inimical to the Nazi vision, and the momentous effort to exterminate all Jews in Germany and in all territories the Nazis annexed, historical incidents   evoked in this work  by the shattered glass and the charred books.

The cosmological happening is represented by  the shattering of the vessels containing divine power as the Ultimate Creator poured his force into them in the process of creating the cosmos, as described by Isaac Luria, a seminal figure in the Judaic movement Kabbalah, who described the imperfections of the world as emerging from that primal rupture, hence the bent arc of  wires that surrounds  the book case, wires on which are placed plaques inscribed with the names of the various centres of divine power that constitute the cosmos in Kabbalistic  thought.

The entire work is thus a visual meditation on chaos in the human world in the context of cosmic being and becoming.Kieffer's work is described as mediating between Germans and Jews in relation to the Nazi engineered Jewish Holocaust.Central to Toyin Falola's "Humanism and the Future of the Humanities" is an understanding of the humanities, in general, and art, in particular, as critical to mediation and healing between parties affected by conflict.

Summative Response

Toyin Falola's "Humanism and the Future of the Humanities" is a   remarkable exploration of the significance of the humanities in the light of the accelerating dominance of science and technology in relation to the  premium placed on economic power as a measure of the value of human activity. Focuses on the West, and within the West, the US, and also Africa but also ranges across Asia and South America. Powerful range of ideas and scope of mobilization of approaches to and research into empirical studies of the comparative value of science, technology, the arts and the social sciences. 

Excerpts of my favorite sections with brief commentary on the excerpts.

Paragraphing and order of quotations is not always identical with the sequence and structure of the original text. No changes have been made to content or word choice and sentence structure.

"The humanities...known for their often-non-empirical subjects of study, are governed by principles of critical understanding, discernment, and creativity, from which these disciplines dedicate themselves to understanding the human experience.

The development of the humanities creates and centralizes characters and historical figures as symbols of emphasized values; individuals can understand various cultures and experiences through them. Fields such as history and literature visualize and imagine the world as seen by our predecessors while also inviting the possibilities accompanied by the unexplored into their creation and viewpoints.

The study of art and its manifestation allows for the visual recreation of historical events while also promoting dimensions of creativity through imaginative imagery and subjective interpretation.

Conceptually, philosophy and religion center around ideologies bringing various communities together through identifying practices and established values. Collectively and individually, the humanistic fields allow for the expression of core thoughts and beliefs, the formation of an acknowledged history for people of numerous origins, and the attempt to address human curiosity regarding the origin, surroundings, and purpose of life".

Magnificent summation, in its zeroing in on the cognitive distinctiveness of particular humanities fields and the sweeping but concretely grounded overview of their ultimate directionalities, delivered through  a memorable stylistic flourish.

This summation projects a clear and lofty perspective of  the distinctive forms of knowledge represented by the humanities, those disciplines centred on the study of the intangible qualities that define humanity, as different from other forms of being with whom the human person might even share biological relationships, although I would argue for a spectrum of qualities shared by human and non-human existents, rather than for a stark distinction between  the human and the non-human.

Along similar lines, can the discipline named "the humanities" have developed in an animistic culture, such a world view being one I understand as truer to reality than than non-animistic ones?

How may such a question impact on Falola's urging a rethinking of disciplinary epistemologies and metaphysics to accommodate non-Western perspectives in his "Ritual Archives" fromThe Toyin Falola Reader 2018 and the Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy edited by Toyin Falola and Adeshina Afolayan?

"Humanities majors know how to search for strong sources, dissect arguments, detect underlying prejudices in opinions, and find data that communicates a point of view. Simply put, humanities majors know how to approach problems from multiple angles, and they know how to adapt to any new challenge. Adaptability and versatility are vital in a fast-paced world—perhaps more valuable than basic technical skills taught by STEM fields.

There is a future for the humanities because of their ability to adapt [ creating candidates who can 'solve problems outside of [their]  expertise'].  This has always been our field‘s strength, which will be even more useful for development in advancing societies".

A magnificent ideal. Its actualization will depend on the degree to which learning is approached as a search for understanding, leading to the creation of new knowledge, rather than the assimilation of what is already known, which latter, however, is also vital for building new knowledge.

"...93% [ of employers]  agreed that the best candidates applying for jobs are the ones who demonstrate the ability to ―think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems. If candidates can do this, their undergraduate major is almost irrelevant—but these skills, as described, are usually attributed to humanities majors. While technical skills from STEM majors are important, the humanities majors‘ skills are found to be the most valuable. They are not rigid, and they can be applied to any situation.

At a primary age, children learn through integrated and kinesthetic learning; incorporating elements of the humanities, such as religion, history, and art, allows children to develop their imaginations and visually explore abstract concepts.

...another role for the humanities is its ability to allow self-governing principles among people, educating individuals about the inherent rights and expectations of citizens within a society.

This [underlines] the intrinsic value of the humanities, the part that makes them human. The humanities fill basic human needs for thought, expression, and connection. They contribute to society through humanizing it.

The humanities hold practical benefits for development in Africa; many of us will agree that they provide the humanistic perspective to define development. They also provide vital perspectives for policy creation, economic development, and conflict resolution.

I deduce without apologies that the fundamental way for the humanities to impact development in Africa is by humanizing development. In scholarly estimation, humanism is a cross-disciplinary perspective created by the ideas of philosophy, contexts of history, advocacy of literature, and the contribution of many religions and cultural values. The humanities are fields of academia, while humanism is the perspective they inspire. This perspective is diverse, including secular and religious arguments. Humanism uses logic and reason to meet the needs and interests of humans.

Africa needs more humanistic ideas for development. The current developmental frameworks stem from an unquestioning global acceptance of neo-liberal standards—ideals that champion democratic, capitalist principles established by developed countries. They advocate for development through industrialization and increased economic growth, measured by Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. This approach to development is often unsustainable, to say the least, and its environmental and economic practices either support or perpetuate social stratification.

Economics measures the amount of resources, while humanism examines the social justice involved in their allocation. The perspective of humanism allows us to understand the human dimensions of development".

I admire this conception of humanism although I am wary of what I would describe as 'hard humanism', the interpretation of the universe in terms of a narrow focus on the human. How accurate or representative is Abiola Irele's summation in "Tradition and the Yoruba Writer" that "the cosmologies of the different African cultures reveal an intelligence of the world centred upon the privileged position of man, an imaginative and symbolic organisation of the world not simply in human terms, but in a comprehensive relation to man".

"Development‘s nature is multidisciplinary. It includes subjects ranging from health, politics, economics, social justice, and education to anything else within the fields. This multidisciplinary nature requires contributions from the humanities. They provide insight from various cultures and philosophies, comparing and criticizing logic. They define the human condition and examine the social barriers in society, questioning the assumptions underlying policies.Bureaucrats can utilize the humanities‘ insights to create policies.

...technology cannot aid development without the assistance of the arts. The humanities provide the innovation and ideas needed to overcome the challenges of technology.

In essence, the humanities create the  'what‘, and they establish the need of the people. Their by-product, humanism, offers a practical perspective for the application of technology. Technology is only useful when it meets the needs of the population that created it. The humanities, through art, science fiction, and philosophy, bring attention to science—applying creativity and new perspectives to the application of scientific discoveries. The humanities articulate the need and STEM creates the ' how'.  The humanities provide a moral and ethical scope for the new technologies. They define not what technology can do, but what technology should do. Skyscrapers and advanced technology are not constructive developments if they aren‘t meeting the needs of the population".

Impressive summation of issues that have been highlighted  by the such questions as the relationship between the human potential for  scientific and technological achievement and the decision to pursue such achievement  in the context of the implications of the methods of reaching that achivement as well as how it may be used.

"Several scholars have advocated for the decolonization of academia in Africa, calling for the creation of African methodologies to fit African purposes and philosophies. These can be legitimized within the growing scope of African academia. The humanities do not take knowledge for granted, in any form, and they provide insight to evaluate the assumptions in knowledge production. They consider the historical, philosophical, linguistic, religious, and cultural assumptions involved in production. The humanities are necessary to criticize the foundations of knowledge, and the cultural and linguistic translations that affect them. Africa‘s economic development, the growth of the increasingly STEM-oriented job market, and the production of knowledge rely on insights from the humanities".

Impressive summation on the role of various fields of philosophy as  meta-disciplines in relation to all disciplines. Exploring questions that might not be addressed within those disciplines but which are nevertheless central to their significance and the larger context of their application.

"Philosophy, art, and cultural studies provide critical perspectives on conflict and its consequences. Historical studies examine successful efforts to promote peace, such as the leadership of Nelson Mandela. Colonialism in Mandela‘s time championed the paradigm of war, which created binary narratives of race, nationality, and class that could only be resolved through violence and oppression. Mandela advocated for an alternative paradigm of peace, which privileged the non-violent resolution of conflicts. Peace unites nations through a humanistic perspective. The goal of the paradigm of peace is to do what is best for humankind, even at the expense of political and economic agendas.

The humanities promote peace by bringing alternative perspectives forward".

Moving summation on the humanities as providing frameworks for creating expansive understanding of human co-existence.

"Education has long been championed to promote peace by teaching children about diverse languages, histories, and cultures. Educating children develops citizens who bring global perspectives to conflicts. War dehumanizes the enemy, while the humanities humanize the opposition. An intentional example of education for peace is constructive storytelling. During conflicts, constructive storytelling shares the perspective of the opposition. Instead of perpetuating stereotypes, this strategy promotes empathy. It has amplified voices that were previously unheard, solving social problems".

Reminds me of  Yafa Eliach's Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, in which the storytelling culture of the Hasidic sect of Judaism is used as a means of mediating the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, a mediatory process in which, in some cases, empathy is reached between the  increasingly brutalized Jews and their German captors, both groups victims of a relentless machinery of evil in which former friendly  neighbors were made oppressors of their old friends.

"The implementation of traditional African transitional justice mechanisms requires the humanities. It must include the cultural, linguistic, and historical knowledge of the regions, as well as the philosophical and global perspectives of the humanities to evaluate them critically.

Procedurally, the humanities can be used to evaluate and justify the use of truth commissions, which has come under scrutiny. Truth is not a single story; it has many faces. Different sides of a conflict each have their own perspective, and truth commissions aggregate the multitude of truths into a single collective memory. The problem with the creation of a singular collective memory is that it will never include all perspectives.Truth commissions must listen to a large variety of perspectives so that they can actively uncover the marginalized ones. They must shed light on these silenced perspectives to educate the public and the government and to give direction to reformation institutions. Collective memories cannot be created without evaluation and judgement. Truth commissions require the humanities to make these judgements; historians must decide which perspectives are most valuable for historical reference.

Communities can also process trauma together through oralities. Oralities encourage individuals to release their trauma by passing down spoken stories. This action acknowledges and supports them as individuals. Oralities allow communities to process trauma in social contexts over time.

The humanities offer insight into the benefits of various types of trauma recovery. Aspects of the humanities, such as art and literature, are tools for the expression of trauma. Through the humanities, individuals and communities have global and philosophical perspectives to implement trauma recovery programs".

Takes my mind to various ways in which these strategies have been used in various geographical contexts, across history, with my essay "Memory and Amnesia: An Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Exploration" bringing to my mind various artistic works through which this process of healing has been pursued.

"English, philosophy, history, and foreign language majors are finding many different and useful careers in government work, law, business, public relations, human resources, and other fields—their communication skills and strong work ethic are in high demand.

Some might regard humanities students as worthless for business and development, but many have recognized the wide variety of skills and free-thinking abilities that humanities students possess; they are vital to success and diversity in the workforce. These qualities include the  ability to rise above details, clear communication, and market research skills. Robert Wolcott, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management, compared the exaggerated 'benefits' of learning code with the study of ancient Greek. He insists that in terms of value and practicality, you don‘t need either set of skills to understand how technology can change and benefit society.

In February 2017, billionaire investor Mark Cuban predicted that there was ―going to be a greater demand in ten years for liberal arts majors than for programming majors and maybe even engineering because ―free thinkers would have an edge in a world where robots performed an increasing number of routine tasks. Technology continues to advance to the point where human input is less needed, and the real value of success will lie with the power of language and human understanding."

Arresting issues for technology and the humanities. Astrophysicist Martin Rees, who holds that people underestimate the scope of human activities that artificial intelligence can carry out and the range of human sensitivities they can be made to demonstrate, is devoting a lot of effort to these questions, as a Google search for "Martin Rees on artificial intelligence" will demonstrate. He is a co-founder of Cambridge University's Centre for Existential Risk, which describes itself as aiming to "reduce the risk of human extinction or civilizational collapse" by working to understand extreme risks associated "with powerful emerging technologies and the impacts of human activity" [in order to] reap... the enormous benefits of technological progress while safely navigating these catastrophic pitfalls", a perspective that suggests the indispensability of humanities centred approaches to exploring issues as a critical oversight in relation to science and technology.

"As for the future of the Humanities in Africa, scholars such as Mpalive-Hangson Msiska believe that the goal of studying the Humanities should be ―to inquire into the changing nature of the human, but doing so by finding out how the human in [the continent of Africa] is shaped by his or her contingent location. Msiska argues that the humanities must respond to scientific and technological advances; it could be beneficial to develop more study programs where the humanities and sciences intersect, such as Medical Humanities, Digital Humanities, and the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Such courses could have value for students in both fields. As universities play a huge role in the development of African countries, it could be extremely beneficial for universities to invest in such crossover courses, and it is important for the arts and humanities to show the value of their combination with science and technology degrees, promoting more creative industries such as music, fashion and film.

The humanities are essentially the study of human experience and understanding, and it is important to continually diversify the content we study and challenge our preconceptions about humanity.

If humanities scholars continue to encourage the core values of empathy and free thinking, while adapting to technological advances and increasing diversity, there is sure to be a future for the humanities. It is important to reevaluate the importance of education; if we only think vocationally, we will only ever concern ourselves with making money and finding "success." We must always take the time to actually be human".

I find these summations challenging and inspiring in provoking the question "why are we here?", "where are we going?", "Where did we come from?", "how best may we live now that we are here?", questions engaged with particular power through enquiries that reflect the intimate interweaving of all aspects of human experience.

"Contemporary society has become complacent with the totality of injustices committed in plain sight. Headlines and news broadcasts have normalized acts of violence and deprivation in the world. Individuals must understand and interpret these situations with assistance from cultural contexts, objective reasoning, and humanistic thinking. Education, through the liberal fields and the humanities, employs cultural relativism and ethical humanism to identify conflicts and cultural constraints, power and its abuses, and hunger and surpluses in the world.

By contouring to the background knowledge and experience of students, while also engaging in alternative approaches to teaching subjects of political and social stamina, teachers can shape the behaviors and attitudes of their students. Inclusive curriculum tactics, such as practicing the principles of mindfulness and cultural relativism at an early age, can help generate attitudes of tolerance and sensitivity throughout the socialization of students".

I am struck by these passages primarily for the inventive expression "contouring", a metaphoric expression transposing an idea from concrete objects to pedagogical methods as well as for the invocation of "mindfulness", resonant for for its particularly strong use in Buddhism in terms of an alertness to relationships between self and experience and for "cultural relativism" in its cultivation of a cosmopolitan rather than what I would call an overly local mindset, in which reality is  judged primarily by how things seem from the backyard of one's house.

Ideas for Further Reading On the Arts/Sciences Interface

     In Nature and the Greeks and Science and Humanism, Erwin Schrodinger, one of the founders of the revolutionary scientific field of Quantum Mechanics and an influential figure in the life sciences through the impact of his What is Life? argues for the blending of philosophical and scientific literacy  in order to adequately grasp humanity's place in the cosmos. Since the publication of these essays in the early 1950s, various heights have been reached  by a good number of scientists and non-scientists in demonstrating the power of such an interdisciplinary conjunction.

      The revolution in Isaac Newton scholarship, to which Ricard Westfall's Never at Rest: A Life of Isaac Newton,  demonstrating how Newton's scientific work was shaped by a lager alchemical and spiritual project,  is central, has been one of these heights. Rob Ilfe's Newton : A Very Short Introduction is a concise but comprehensive engagement with later research into the scope of Newton's inspiration and tools while Tian Yu Cao's Conceptual Developments in Twentieth Century Field Theories provides, in relation to twentieth century science,  an entry into the general multidisciplinary context in which early modern science emerged.

      Bertrand Russell, one of the most impactful figures in modern Western philosophy and a  deeply influential mathematician, depicts the beauty and power of science in The Scientific Outlook, projecting a futuristic warning about the distortion of that power, and, in his conclusion, draws  compelling parallels between scientific rationality and the affective and imaginative centres represented by  love, mysticism and poetry, arguing that science began with roots in love of the beauty of nature and the knowledge such love enables but has developed into a focus on power provided by the ability to control nature.

Written in the early 1930s, Russell's vision would receive telling resonance with the technological development and deployment of increasingly devastating  weapons, from the building and detonation of  atomic bombs in civilian populated Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagazaki, taking war to a level hitherto unknown, to contemporary pilot-less  but remotely guided drone warfare, to global balance of power created through Mutually Assured Destruction enabled by possession of nuclear weapons, although the love of the beauty and cognitive power accessed through nature has become a staple of popular and philosophical writing by scientists, from Stephen Hawking ( A Brief History of Time, among others )  to Roger Penrose ( The Emperor's New Mind, The Road to Reality, etc) to Martin Rees ( Just Six Numbers, and more).

   One of the richest demonstrations of conjunctions between the sciences and the arts is in Islamic art and architecture, represented by its  use of geometry in evoking cosmic structure and dynamism. Peter Lu and Paul  Steinhardt's  "Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture", published in the iconic science journal Nature, is famous for its demonstration of the conjunction of mathematics and aesthetics in Islamic architecture, as is evident from the plethora of information on Peter Lu's personal website and from the videos and images emerging from a Google search on the article. Sebastian Prange's "The Tiles of Infinity" provides a rich account of this work while Titus Burchardt's Art of Islam: Language and Meaning is glorious on the philosophical and theological implications of Islamic geometries, as can be seen from the book's pdf at that link.

A more recent contribution to this field is Laura Mark's Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (2010), which  argues, as stated at the book's Amazon page,  that

"In both classical Islamic art and contemporary new media art, one point can unfold to reveal an entire universe. A fourteenth-century dome decorated with geometric complexity and a new media work that shapes a dome from programmed beams of light: both can inspire feelings of immersion and transcendence. ... Laura Marks traces the strong similarities, visual and philosophical, between these two kinds of art  [  proposing]  an aesthetics of unfolding and enfolding in which image, information, and the infinite interact: image is an interface to information, and information (such as computer code or the words of the Qur'an) is an interface to the infinite".

An Amazon reviewer sums up  the book " Laura is fascinated with the fractal geometry and the way that art (and life) unfolds as one examines an overall picture at closer and closer levels, unfolding the art to reveal hidden mysteries and connections to life forces and the divine".

Perhaps the greatest single exemplar of the art/science conjunctors is Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest artists in history and, in terms of the distance between his visual projections and what was possible or even conceived in his time,  a perhaps  unrivaled  visionary scientific thinker, except, perhaps,  for such later visionaries as Nikola Tesla.

Martin Kemp's Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, and Design explores the maestro as

"going] to enormous pains to describe art and science as the remaking of nature on mathematical principles. But he knew there was something else, lying outside the compass of rational definitions. This something else, whether defined as spiritual, psychological or sexual, haunts his paintings. It has tantalised every generation of interpreters" , as quoted by Stephen Bailey in the Guardian,  UK,  of Kemp's summation on the exhibition the book represents.

Fritjof Capra draws this synthesizing understanding of Leonardo into what Capra describes as a paradigm that integrates art and science in a cohesive understanding reflecting the actual nature of reality in The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance and Learning from Leonardo: Decoding the Notebooks of a Genius, a philosophical perspective he first introduced in an  essay and the book it led to, the highly influential  landmark text, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Eastern Mysticism and Modern Science, the "systems thinking" he developed eventually issuing into perhaps its most mature form yet  in his recent The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision.

In a world in which science and technology are so pervasively potent, religion continues to grow in power in different parts of the world, this historical confluence stimulating the growth of studies about the relationships between these cultural forms,  in which works like Thomas Dixon's Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction initiate the reader into the scope of the subject using  examples from a range of religions and a number of varied philosophical perspectives, as Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson's edited The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (2011)  describes itself as "The most comprehensive introduction to the field of science and religion currently available" covering  " all the major fields of science, all the major subfields of science-and-religion, and all the major world religions".

For conjunctions between art and science in African and  cultures less prominent in such studies, the work of Ron Eglash is invaluable, as represented by  his African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design, his essays and his website and the surge of information unleashed by a general Google search and Google Scholar enquiry using his name or the title of his book.

Other work in this field is demonstrated by enquiries into the epistemic and metaphysical intersections within the mathematical, artistic and religious matrix realized by, of those systems I am best informed about,  Hindu Sri Yantra, Ghanaian Adinkra symbolism and Yoruba origin Ifa symbolism.

Falola's enquiry in "Humanism and the Future of the Humanities", which inspires these suggestions for further reading,  may   be understood as an exploration in interdisciplinarity, exploring convergences and divergences between the humanities and the sciences in the context of their relative  social positioning, interdisciplinarity, generally speaking, addressing various disciplinary combinations, being of field of study in itself, as handsomely demonstrated by The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2nd ed (2017), the Amazon page of which, linked here, along with a good number of  other Amazon book pages, enables one read part of the   book and see other books like it pictured beneath it.

The kind of vision emerging from interdisciplinary study may be seen as a perception of consilience, made prominent by Ewdward O. Wilson's Consilience (pdf), "in which the author discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences and might in the future unite them with the humanities. Wilson uses the term consilience to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor" as summed up in the book's Wikipedia page. Edward Slingerland and Mark Collard's Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities is a more recent effort along related lines.

For more of Toyin Falola's interdisciplinary thought one may see his The Humanities in Africa along with other books of his that adopt that exploratory perspective.

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