On Arts and Sciences.

I have been watching the current debate over the nature of knowledge and education in American society with some attention, given my personal and professional interests in such matters. It is my opinion based on such observations that there is a faction of ideologues moving to reshape the foundation of modern knowledge in a way that fundamentally cripples its ability to be an effective arbiter of reality by essentially objectifying the arts and the subjectifying the sciences. It seems that their intent is to remove the ability of traditionally subjective disciplines like philosophy, history and literature to critically analyze and challenge any social, political or economic system they consider. At the same time, this group is seeking to challenge the fundamental nature of science as a consideration of reality, moving to make it a tool of faith rather than reason.

On the topic of objectifying the arts, take the easiest and highest profile example of Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor accused of "Anti-American" thinking on the matter of the September 11th attacks. Churchill suggested that the people who died in the World Trade Center towers that day were legitimate targets for the terrorists, as they seem to have seen the economic impositions of the United States in the middle east as one of the primary causes of their jihad. "Patriotic" Americans instantly cried foul, arguing that the Americans who died on September 11th were innocent civilians who were singled out for their defenseless condition to strike fear and terror against all Americans.

As I've written in a previous post, I don't think anyone deserves to die at the hands of another human being (God seems to agree: see Exodus 20:13 for further elaboration), and I think most of the people in the towers on that day were hapless victims of the same oppressive system that the hijackers were trying to bring down. But, let us consider the framework for this consideration. Churchill's critics pointed out that the Americans in the towers were innocent civilians and should not have been killed because they weren't legitimate targets, given the rules of conventional warfare. Correct? If this is what they believe, then how would they consider the American firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo during World War II, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were targeted and died at the recieving end of American incendiary bombs? According to their stated formula, they would have to condemn the American firebombings as well, given the aforementioned problem of killing civilians, but I doubt you'd ever hear one of them do so. This is simple inconsitency, something that their attempt to make the subjective nature of history an objective inquiry cannot handle. Objectivity depends on models and formulas to insert variables to come up with consistent results. This model produces inconsistent results, and is therefore worthless.

Next, consider the current debate in Kansas over whether to challenge evolutionary theory in the classroom with the argument for "intelligent design." Intelligent Design is, as columnist Ellen Goodman wrote last week, simply the evolution of creationism; a stronger, fitter version picking up where its weaker predecessor left off. While the irony there is heavy, it is also worth noting that proponents of "intelligent design" are ultimately suggesting that scientists and students take a leap of faith. Scientific inquiry at its very foundation eschews assumptions, yet they expect this exception to be made because it serves their ideological agenda to do so. Thus it makes science subjective, open to interpretation, and devalues the entire discourse in the process.

This is, at its base, a move by people with a belief that America is exceptional to any moral rule they see fit to impose on others, and that scientific inquiry corrupts rather than uplifts the human condition. The result, were these inconsistent ideologues successful, would be the corruption of all the progress made in science and the arts since the Renaissance, when any books not initially burned by the Christians during their rise to power after the Roman emporer Constantine incorporated it into the ruling framework and the subsequent "Dark Ages" came out of their hiding. If this whole thing doesn't seem terribly scary to you, consider the fact that, due to the work of Eratosthenes, the Greeks and Romans were very conscious of the fact that the earth was round, and had actually calculated with some degree of accuracy its exact size, before such knowledge was deemed heretical by the Christian hierarchy once it gained power. That it took some convincing of the faithfully ignorant that Columbus would not fall off the surface of the flat earth should he sail west from Spain serves as warning to us not to let those more concerned with faith than reason begin dictating the terms by which we understand knowledge and pursue education.