In response to: Tracking DLF

pbrantley [Member] — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 21:51:57 +0000

Ryan, I don't disagree that science should be informed by the greatest possible array of sources. But a humanist by background, a social scientist in training, and yet I think that yes, science is our most crucial savior. My language is strong in part because there has been such an embrace of digital humanities that only a minority among the major research libraries are confronting the myriad challenges of hard science.

In part, I was informed by a re-reading of Charles Ferguson's story of Vermeer, "High Stakes, No Prisoners." In the frontispiece, he quotes John Adams, writing to his wife Abigail:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

I worry, a lot, that we have so harmed our planet that - while we cannot put aside the arts - we must vigorously renew our efforts in science. Poetry will not stop the ice from melting; nor will science (now at least), nor even politics. But it will be science and a more artful embrace of politics than this country has recently demonstrated that will help us figure out how we might survive, if we shall.

In response to: Tracking DLF

Ryan Shaw [Visitor] — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 21:12:16 +0000

I'm disappointed to see your comments about hard science cyberinfrastructure. Art and architecture as "luxuries" to be enjoyed after we've done our scientific work? No. That is exactly the kind of blind faith in the god of technoscience that we need to avoid building into our nascent cyberinfrastructure. Hard science may tell us many things, but it won't help us decide what kind of planet we want to leave for our children or how to understand our place in the larger universe--on the contrary, hard science has consistently abdicated responsibility for such questions on the grounds that they are out of scope. Our systems for pursuing, sharing and interpreting scientific knowledge need to accommodate multiple forms of inquiry and ways of knowing, including humanistic and social scientific strains, including scientific expert and non-scientific expert practitioner views, even when (ESPECIALLY when) the information being disseminated and discussed is nominally in the domain of hard science.

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In response to: Tracking DLF

In response to: Tracking DLF