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SCIENCE IN CULTURE

Who are we? ... as peoples?, as humanity?

How did we become what we are?

What is our future? ... our own role in and responsibility for the future?

Can"understanding"help with such questions?

What kinds of"understanding"are there, what are the relations among them, how do they relate to other ways of saying/becoming who we are?

Imageby Rachel Grobstein
I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two groups. When I say the intellectual life, I mean to include also a large part of our practical life, because I should be the last person to suggest the two can at the deepest level be distinguished ... Literary intellectuals at one pole - at the other scientists ... Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension - sometimes (particularly among the young) hostitility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding ... This polarisation is sheer loss to us all. To us as people, and to our society. It is at the same time practical and intellectual and creative loss, and I repeat that it is false to imagine that those three considerations are clearly separable.

C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures

If the natural sciences can be successfully united with the social sciences and the humanities, the liberal arts in higher education will be revitalized ... The future of the liberal arts lies ... in addressing the fundamental questions of human existence head on, without embarrassment or fear, taking them from the top down in easily understandable language, and progressively rearranging them into domains of inquiry that unite the best of science and the humanities at each level of organization in turn.

E.O. Wilson,Consilience

GENERAL EXPLORATIONS
PROJECTS
SCIENCE MATTERS:
Research that could change how we think about ourselves