by The rivalry between the world of humanities and sciences is one that has vast history. The academic world in which we live is separated into cultures that have a past of not working together and not appreciating one another. According to Snow, in order to succeed in an constantly increasing complex society, these cultures need to work together in order to succeed and thrive. One of the primary reasons in which this separation exists is due to the fact that we are told and assigned to one of these cultures from a young age; however, there is progress in the cultures working together when it comes to climate change.
The concept of the separation of the cultures starts from a young age. Through elementary school and middle school, your peers and teachers assign you a label of either being a humanities person or a STEM person. This assignment, although not always explicitly stated, is illustrated through actions from the people around you. Through these years, you are also encouraged to choose one thing to focus on and become your number one priority. By the time most people reach college, they know what they want to do and which culture they are going to associate with. This clear separation and assignment from a young age perpetuates the idea that the two cultures do not work with each other. The stigmas and stereotypes about one culture against the other accentuates how the cultures’ lack acknowledgment of the strengths of the other one. However, we constantly make more progress in the two cultures working together to help solve important issues that continue to plague our world.
Our society is constantly increasing in the complexity of the issues that we need to solve in order to survive. Climate change presents one of the most pressing and multifaceted tasks that we have to solve. Science is crucial in understanding the core reasons behind why climate change happens, and technology is even more important in figuring out a way to fix it. A program was created that placed humanities students into science teams in order to combine both the different cultures’ knowledge. The issue of solving climate change goes beyond the scientific aspect but into a more humanistic approach. Millions of Americans do not believe that either climate change is real or that humans can affect it. As humans, when something affects us more personally, we start to adjust and acknowledge it. When people start seeing climate change affecting their livelihoods, jobs, and loved-ones, many more people will start to make adjustments. People constantly ignore the scientific data on climate change but will make adaptations when it affects them personally. This combination of both cultures allows us to make more progress in the fight to stop climate change.
Sources:
https://theconversation.com/why-science-needs-the-humanities-to-solve-climate-change-113832
Pictures:
https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/what-is-climate-change/