Dr. Wai Chee Dimok’s lecture has allowed me to consider the potential intersections that exist between science and literature. Dr. Dimok suggested that the potential failures of scientists in inspiring people to understand the impacts of climate change lies in their inability to express emotional significance. She suggested that the lack of emotion in science makes climate change unbelievable for the common member of society. Literature provides the platform for the unbelievable aspects of climate change to be portrayed with emotional relevance and impact. The role of the humanities in scientific development of knowledge lies in the ability to encourage scientists to further establish the humanistic qualities of thought in subjective fact. The scientific method from question and hypothesis to result and conclusion must in turn have elements of emotion and social quality to encourage valuable and necessary change in structured culture.
Dr. Dimok claimed that vulnerability should not be considered an obstacle to knowledge development but rather an opportunity to be open to the unknown. We must make an attempt to understand the unknown in order to correct human behavior to be less detrimental to the wellbeing of the world. Giving into vulnerability as an obstruction to knowledge is an example of what Dr. Dimok termed, “weak environmentalism”: the attempt to improve behavior without intentional thought or knowledgeable action. We stand in an era of drastic and controversial change that is challenging previously static facts that remained for 2 million years. We therefore are acting as strangers to our own earth, having an unrecognized influence on our surrounding world without conscious thought.
So how are we expected to understand what falls in the cracks between subjective knowledge and emotional vulnerability? In order to make constructive change, what is “lost in translation” between the literary and the scientific must become the focus rather than an either-or perspective of knowledge production. Dr. Dimok called for action in educational value and knowledge of simple facts. People are not as intelligent as they seem to believe as defensiveness often prevails. We are heading towards a future that eliminates a “powerful prophetic voice”. This ultimately provides the challenge of how we can actively attempt to change such division between thought and knowledge, between emotion and understanding, or perhaps between that which is seen versus that which is imagined.
Collegiate education provides the unique opportunity for the division between science and literature to be brought together into a single discipline. More courses should offer the opportunity for intersectional thought across different categories of study: sociology, anthropology, psychology, biology, neurology etc. Leaders in each field of collegiate study should be expected to encourage the development of multi-faceted learning. How would our world change if students were expected to develop knowledge of every aspect of the humanities and the sciences leaving little room for either unemotional or non-subjective thought? If every living organism on the planet is inherently influenced by the decisions of the few, we must improve those decisions for all.