An effort should be made to dispel the misunderstandings that still prevent the much-needed synthesis and mutual supplementation of science and the humanities. This reconciliation should not be too difficult once it is recognized that the separation is primarily the philosophical foundations of both science and the humanities.
Some humanists still identify science with an absurd mechanistic reductionism. There are many who feel that the scientist is interested in nothing more than "bodies in motion," in the strictly mathematical, physical, and chemical laws that govern the material world. This is the caricature of science drawn by representatives of the humanities contain an irreducible spiritual element and for that reason can never be adequately explained by science.
Some scientists, on the other hand, claim that the humanist is interested in nothing more than emotion and sentiment, exhibiting the vagrant fancies of an undisciplined mind. To such men and women the humanities are useless because they serve no immediate and technological function for the practical survival of human society in and the arts should have only a secondary importance in people's lives.
Thus there are misconceptions among humanists and scientists alike that are in need of correction. This correction leads to a much more acceptable position that could be called "scientific humanism," attempting as it does to combine the common elements of both disciplines. Both science and the humanities attempt to describe and explain. probable, if we begin by noting their common objectives, rather than seeing only their different means.
What this question is testing
Topic
The author wants to bring the sciences and the humanities back together — and shows how both sides have caricatured each other.
Framework
Problem-Solution.
Main Point
The simpler version: scientists and humanists each have an unflattering picture of the other side. Scientists think humanists are fluffy dreamers; humanists think scientists are cold reductionists who ignore human values. Both pictures are wrong. Once we drop the caricatures, we can see that both fields are actually trying to do the same thing — understand people and the world — and a combined "scientific humanism" becomes possible.
P1: The thesis
The split between science and humanities rests on misunderstanding. Clearing that up makes a synthesis possible.
P2: One side's caricature
Some humanists imagine science as obsessed only with measurable bodies in motion — incapable of explaining morality, religion, or art. The author calls this a caricature.
P3: The other side's caricature
Some scientists imagine humanists as nothing but emotion and sentiment — "vagrant fancies of an undisciplined mind." That phrase is the scientists' way of dismissing humanists as impractical, since the humanities don't serve immediate technological needs.
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