Science can teach the humanities about successful communication

Be expansive and visionary in order to bring about a successful dialogue between the humanities and the sciences. Picture: Austin Turpin

“I reject your reality and substitute my own” – I first saw it on a T-shirt at a festival and, according to Urban Dictionary, it comes from the 1984 movie The Dungeonmaster. Then it seemed a good joke, but now it names something very disturbing about the relationship between knowledge and opinion in the 21st century.

It feeds into a shared problem for the humanities and the sciences: a world where fact checking is often rejected as tricky elitism and truth becomes indistinguishable from opinion.

Ever since CP Snow’s “two cultures” Rede lecture of 1959 declared a largely false war between science and the humanities, we have been too easily distracted from the need for interdisciplinary solutions to complex problems into sectarian disputes.

For decades academics have been encouraged to break down silos, but the “lithe” corporate university seems to be peculiarly bad at following through on this dream. It seems instead to be a fact of institutional life that for every broken silo, two or three jump up in its place, all with short-term KPIs. We talk Jack and the Beanstalk but we live The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The Australasian Consortium of Humanities Researchers and Centres will address these issues in a free, online conference on November 15 and 16 through the Australian National University’s Humanities Research Centre. On the theme of Communicating Truth and Beauty we will hold a practical and intellectual dialogue with the sciences driven by these questions: What do science and the humanities share? What can they learn from each other in a difficult research environment? What can they do together that they cannot do apart?

A major thread of this dialogue has to be communication: all research, regardless of discipline, needs translation for someone, needs reframing, needs contextualising, to engage widely.

It seems like a paradox, but here the humanities have much to learn from the sciences. We humanists own language, so we assume this sort of translation to people will just happen because we are spontaneously good at communication. Evidence for this phenomenon is scant.

By contrast, scientists realised they needed something called science communication in the 1980s, and have largely won that battle in the public mind. Nowadays everyone knows science is fascinating (space and dinosaurs); it is economically productive (technology); it keeps people safe (medical science and, ironically enough, military research).

I could go on, but you can see the pattern. In particular, it seems, the sciences generate graduates who are “job ready”, according to a recent education minister with a BA (like a third of the federal cabinet). The humanities, meanwhile, are framed falsely as an indulgent luxury. Linguistic, historical, social and cross-cultural understanding make the world go round, even if occasionally they do come up with inconvenient truths.

Science has become really good at conveying the value of its works, even if much of the detail is too abstruse for many non-specialists to understand. The achievement of science communication is much deeper than marketing. It is an evidence-based argument that has been sustained across decades. And it bespeaks a sense of wonder and commitment as well as usefulness.

Meanwhile the academic humanities and creative arts experience shrinkage, despite a lot of inchoate public support evident at libraries, museums, galleries and festivals throughout the land. We need to sustain a similar public argument, based on the real and appealing value of what we do, not just passing policy enthusiasms.

Susannah Eliott of the Australian Science Media Centre will give a keynote on the need for people interested in fundamental research to work together, ignoring disciplinary boundaries. She will deplore disciplinary gatekeeping because her work has taught her that the public interest is better served by reaching across these boundaries.

Ian Gibbins is a neuroscientist, poet and multimedia artist who has lived this necessary fluidity and collaboration. He will give a plenary about science, art and the limits of knowing. Then a series of panels will explore how the data of science can be beautiful, how collecting institutions and peak bodies can bring the “two cultures” together better, and how we can learn to communicate engagingly about the values of truth and beauty that we share.

Scientists learned long ago that you cannot simply slap the expert analysis down on the table and expect change or even assent. Too often humanists still seem to assume that a subtle critique will change minds and institutions if only people would listen. It could certainly be working better.

Every question, and every job, these days involves words to be understood and written. Qualitative evaluation and quantitative analysis are the fundamental practices, for research and the world of work, if truth and beauty matter. These are good foundations for a shared dialogue between science and the humanities. To be practical, we must also to be expansive and visionary.

Robert Phiddian is professor of English at Flinders University and was foundation director of the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Researchers and Centres. The website of the November 15-16 conference, Communicating Truth and Beauty: A Dialogue with the Sciences, is www.achrc.net/annual-conference-2021