Abandoning the "War" Between Science and the Humanities: One Student's Experiences

Sarah Halter
Bryn Mawr College 2006

I think I would have continued to believe in the impenetrability of the boundary between sciences and the humanities if not for a sex and gender course I attended last semester. During Playing with Categories: Re-doing the Politics of Sex and Gender, we read feminist literature and discussed gender theory for hours at a time. One class period in particular stands out, however, because during this class my professor brought in Paul Grobstein, a biology professor, to facilitate discussion. I think most college students have three or four class periods that really stay with them. Maybe it is the one in which she first understands a bit of poetry by T.S. Eliot or when she finally figures out how to derive an equation. For me, the class period in which we mixed a critical approach to sex and gender with an advanced discussion of biology will remain burned in my mind because this is the class during which I finally Ògot it.Ó

At the time, the professor told us that a biologistÕs approach could aid us in understanding the complicated relationship between sex and gender, but since most of us were English students, we smiled and nodded, quietly grinding our teeth and readying ourselves for an insufferable onslaught of scientific babble. As I recount this, I canÕt help but feel shame over my unreflective contribution to the ÒwarÓ between science and the humanities.

As Professor Grobstein lectured, however, I slowly began to understand that he wasnÕt just pitting chromosomes against gender theory. He was outlining the ways in which the mind works, and how we see the world, the way this perspective influences our thoughts, and suddenly my understanding of the brain and its inner workings fell into place with my understanding of gender theory. Gender constructs and feminist theory made sense not because I was setting them alongside biology but because I was looking at them together, with biology. Gender, theory, literature, biology and my thoughts rolled into one ball so that I wasnÕt thinking about humanities in opposition to science Ð I was simply thinking about Professor GrobsteinÕs discussion point. As I absorbed myself in the lecture, the battle fell away, and I realized that I had left the ÒwarÓ behind.

I wrote my final paper for this sex and gender course a few weeks after Professor GrobsteinÕs visit. I have never been as proud of a paper as I am of this one. Rather than serving only as a paper for a course, this essay turned into a study on a very focused subject. Sure, I used class materials in this paper, but I also pulled in material from other classes, such as a course I was taking in English masculinity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and a class called Here and Queer that I had taken a year ago. I also relied on the ideas I had formulated during Professor GrobsteinÕs visit. History, English, and science worked together for this paper, which emerged as a transmutation of all my schooling, all the things I had learned in my college career, and not just the result of one class. For the first time, I wrote as though I wasnÕt just an English major. I was a student, a scholar.

My dad has been telling me to read Stephen Jay Gould for years, and after I told him about my change of heart during this sex and gender class, he insisted that I read GouldÕs The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the MagisterÕs Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities. In this work, Gould addresses the gap and the tension between these two studies: ÒThis conflict É became both silly and harmful long ago.Ó I like GouldÕs characterization of the gap as harmful. For a society that valorizes those who can Òmultitask,Ó those who can juggle familial and professional life, and those who can balance work and play, our culture remains puzzlingly hesitant to merge these two worlds. WeÕre serving science and the humanities poorly by so often refusing to let them communicate. It feels like weÕre only using half of our brain power and ignoring our potential by keeping these two areas of study apart.

Science as Story Telling in Action
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A project initiated by the Serendip/SciSoc 2005 summer working group