The Flower of Science: the Importance of the Humanities in Society Dies lecture by André Lardinois Dies Natalis Radboud University, 28 May 2015

In the summer of 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US equivalent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), came out with a short film, "The Heart of the Matter”.1 In it, science is represented as a flower. The stem stands for the hard sciences (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and the flower itself, the calyx, is the humanities. The film is about the importance of the humanities, and it describes the situation in the United States, but unfortunately much of that is similar to what we see in Europe. In short, what it comes down to is that the humanities have in recent decades been valued less and less, and have been funded more and more poorly in Western society. It is high time for this to change. That is in the interest not only of the humanities but also of society itself. To get a fundamental grasp of things, you have to understand how they came to be. How has it happened that the humanities have lost ground? Since the Renaissance we have actually seen an increase in the valuation of the empirical sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. And Western society clearly has profitted from this: our prosperity over the last two centuries has grown exponentially, and, thanks to medical science, more people can enjoy that prosperity longer. So you won’t hear a single bad word from me about the importance of these sciences. They will remain essential to the future of humanity, and they are worth every penny that goes into them. But something’s gone awry in the relationship between them and the humanities. Until at least the beginning of the twentieth century, the humanities were regarded as essential to the formation of good and morally responsible citizens. Thus they also dominated the school curriculum, with top priority being given to the study of the classical languages, Latin and Greek. This changed in the second half of the twentieth century. With schools of applied sciences being elevated to the status of universities, the rise of the Technasium (“technical academy”), the national campaign promoting the study programmes in the hard sciences, and above all the Top Sector Policy, under which all the money goes to applied research that is meant to yield economic gains for “the Netherlands Inc”, the Dutch government seems to have got the idea into its head that everything that’s good for society emanates from technology and the applied sciences. Now that strikes me as shortsighted and in the end even disastrous for society and for these sciences themselves. Many have argued before me that the humanities are required as a cultural counterweight to the economic benefits that the Top Sector Policy is striving for. 2 That is undoubtedly true, but I would go one step farther: I would say that the goals of the Top Sector Policy will not be met if the humanities are not involved in this research. Even the hard sciences have a stake in having the humanities thrive. Flower and stem are mutually 1 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui4piB7uuZo. For example, M.C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton 2010.

dependent: the flower cannot live without the stem, but without the flower the stem cannot reproduce.3 What, then, can the humanities contribute to science and society? Let me illustrate the point with a story, as befits someone with a humanities background. This story comes from my own discipline, Ancient Greek Literature.4 In Homer’s Iliad, the great hero Achilles organises funeral games for his late friend, Patroclus. The highlight of these games is the chariot race: a contest among five chariots. Prior to the contest, old Nestor, who is known for his wisdom, explains to his son Antilochus how he can win the contest. He must strike at the turning point at the end of the track. If he can hold onto the inner curve at this point, he will force the others to take a wider curve and can build up a lead. That’s how one wins chariot races in general. However, with the contest in full swing, Antilochus suddenly sees a narrowing in the road. Rain has caused part of the hill along the road to collapse onto the track. And this is where Antilochus strikes. He drives his horses at full speed to where the track narrows, and in this way he cuts off the chariot behind him. And that’s how he eventually crosses the finish line as one of the winners. The specific circumstances of this track gave Antilochus an opportunity that his father could not have foreseen and that he did not mention in his general disquisition about winning a race. One can conclude from this story that we should be careful with general rules and should be open to the possibility that there will be exceptions. That applies to civil servants, who must implement government regulations—but it also applies to scientists. The speech that Nestor gives his son Antilochus is like a small didactic poem. This was a type of poetry that existed alongside narrative poetry such as Homer's Iliad. In it, a poet tried to express, in general rules, how the world worked and how people should live in it. Eventually this genre of didactic poetry gave rise to Greek philosophy and then to the various sciences. I think Homer with this story is warning us about this form of knowledge: don’t imagine that you can capture everything in rules. Keep an eye out for what’s special and unique. Stories are especially about the individual. Science teaches us what people are like, but stories tell us what they could be like. Thus they stimulate the creativity that, once again, is needed in order to solve problems, and they make a contribution to what our university would call “an invitation to change perspective”. Now you might say that, in sharing this story I have indeed shown the importance of literature, even of ancient literature such as Homer’s epics, but not that of the humanities,

3

On the important contributions that humanities scholars have made to science in general, see R. Bod, A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford 2013. 4 Homer, Iliad, 23.262-652.

where this poetry is studied.5 But if you did say that, you would be mistaken. My application of this story to modern people was preceded by extensive scientific research. First, a reliable text of Homer had to be assembled out of hundreds of mediaeval manuscripts and ancient papyrus fragments—and you can take it from me: this is still a work in progress. Second, this text has to be opened to the general public by means of translations, for example, and that is also a work in progress, because every generation wants its own translation that matches its own usage. Who enjoys, these days, reading a translation from before 1980? These stories do not come before the public just like that: they have to be actively brought to the attention of the public and be given appealing new forms. Theo Engelen, a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts who is now the Rector Magnificus of the university, once declared that those who work in the humanities are the keepers of the cultural heritage of our society. They know better than anyone what treasures there are among the art, literature, history, philosophy and religions of today and yesterday. It is up to them to present these treasures to the public at large, sometimes quite literally in the form of exhibitions in museums. Few visitors realize what an enormous amount of research in the history of art has gone into an exhibition such as the Late Rembrandt, which this winter could be seen at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. As scholars in the humanities, we should do more to make this clear to the general public. That could increase support for the disciplines we work in. In the end I wonder whether every reader of the Iliad sees right away the relevance of the story of Antilochus to modern science or society. Scholars in the humanities should help to interpret these kinds of story, and they should do this from a scientific perspective. My interpretation of this story is based on a detailed analysis of language usage in early Greek didactic poetry and in Homer’s epics. That is, the idea is not just to project any contemporary problem back onto ancient literature. The scientific study of these texts, which I, as a classical scholar, practice, demands that one first try to determine what the ancients themselves meant in these poems, in order then to see what we can learn from that message today. In addition, we can allow ourselves to be guided by contemporary issues—that’s well-nigh inevitable—but it must be an open debate in which the researcher subjects his or her own prejudices to potentially different opinions from the past. That’s how the study of ancient literature contributes to our capacity to put things in perspective. The same goes for the study of modern literature, art history, philosophy, religious studies, and history. I’ll come back to this presently.

5

For instance, W.B. Drees, “Naked Ape or Techno Sapiens?: The Relevance of Human Humanities.” Inaugural address delivered at Tilburg University on 30 January 2015, p. 21. http://www.drees.nl/wpcontent/uploads/2015/01/150008_oratie_prof_Drees_web.pdf.

Universities are being asked more and more to demonstrate the usefulness of their research to society. This is known as valorisation, to use a contested term. This is not unfavourable for the humanities, because, as I remarked above, our research is often driven by issues that come up in society. Thus in the 70s and 80s many studies appeared on the status of women or gays in ancient and other societies. These were two groups that were making great strides towards emancipation at the time. Today we’re seeing one study after another on Islam, national identity, multilingualism, and so on. So science is less of an ivory tower than many people think. Society’s problems find their way on their own to science, because scientists are themselves part of that society. And government doesn’t need to ramp up its policymaking efforts. Indeed that could be counterproductive, because it serves as an invitation to scientists to come out with hasty judgments. It is really important that, when scientists engage in valorisation, they keep doing so from a scientific perspective. Our contribution to the public debate must be based on thorough research and not on just another opinion on the radio or television. In the Faculty of Arts we have come up with a slogan for this: "Behind every instance of valorisation is an A-rated publication". As scientists and scholars, we must always be honest about what exactly we can and cannot provide to society. One of the most disconcerting reports that I read in the last few months—and there have been many published in connection with the Scientific Vision of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the discussions around “the New University”—was an opinion piece by a young classicist, Tazuko van Berkel, which she wrote for the Leiden University magazine, Mare.6 In it, she describes a training session in scientific communication that she took part in. Workshop participants were tasked to talk in the most exciting way possible to non-specialists about their research. They were given a special tip: be clear about the ways in which the results of your research are useful to your interlocutor. One of the participants was a young psychologist who was doing research on morbid fascination: how it is that people cannot keep their eyes off negative events, even though looking at them is unpleasant? She could tell about this in an inspired way, but according to the instructor this was a mistake: she had to say what use her research was to her interlocutor. For instance, might her research help clear up traffic jams that are caused by people who stop to watch after a car accident? Then she should say so, even if that’s not what her research was about. We should beware of this kind of valorisation and of this kind of instructor, and that applies not only to the humanities but to all disciplines. This would lead to a kind of instant science—Van Berkel calls it Cup-a-Science—which grossly underestimates the public’s need to know and creates false expectations. And this is where, in my view, the biggest danger of 6

Tazuko van Berkel, “Weg met Cup-a-Science: wetenschap biedt geen kant en klare antwoorden op voorgekookte vragen,” [“Away with Cup-a-Science: Science Does Not Offer Readymade Answers to Pre-Cooked Questions”] Mare 38.14, 11 dec. 2014. http://www.mareonline.nl/archive/2014/12/10/weg-met-cup-ascience.

the new Science Agenda of the Ministry of Education lies: the implicit promise that science will solve all social issues and problems, and of course preferably by 2025, because that’s when the next science agenda has to be written. The argument here is that this way we create a basis for asking for more money for science—but if this is the price we have to pay for that, then it’s just not on. For everyone here knows that research doesn’t work that way. Most major breakthroughs in science that lead to new applications come from basic research without anyone’s looking for specific applications. The discovery of graphene at this university is a good example of this. To suggest that it is otherwise or to declare that our research can solve the problem of traffic congestion if that’s not in fact the case, leads to false expectations and ultimately a loss of trust in science. In that case we are better off taking the time to explain to the general public how science does work and what they can and cannot expect of it. The importance of the humanities lies above all in the contemplation of and reflection on human existence7—and precisely on major social issues such as xenophobia, religious intolerance, or the maintenance of democracy. Scholars in the humanities can draw on a huge reservoir of historical, philosophical and literary sources. That way, we can challenge and disprove simplistic statements such as "Islam is an intolerant religion”. Indeed, history teaches us something else. In the Middle Ages it was precisely the Muslims who lived peacefully alongside Jews and Christians, and it was Christianity that showed itself to be intolerant and dogmatic. Moreover, scholars in the humanities study language, which is the basis of all human communications. Linguists produce insights into differences and similarities in language systems and into the miracle of how children make this system their own. And in a world in which we see all around us, every day, the consequences of misunderstandings in or conscious manipulations of language, there is a great need for linguists who can bring clarity to these processes. The Faculty of Arts of Radboud University is particularly strong in this type of research. Finally, the humanities teach us that not every problem can be solved. Human mortality is an example—we simply have to learn to live with that fact. By way of an example of how the humanities can make a contribution to the resolution of current problems in society, I want to go a bit more extensively into some research on innovation that I am involved in, together with researchers from OIKOS, the national research school for classical studies. For this research, OIKOS competed on two occasions for a grant under the Gravitation programme, which is run by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)—and on both occasions it got through to the final round. 7

I have taken the next three paragraphs from my article, “Tijd voor een Alfa-offensief [“Time for an Alpha Offensive”]”, which appeared in the special edition of Vox (the independent magazine of Radboud University) on the occasion of the fortieth birthday of the Erasmus building, 15 December 2014, pp. 30 - 32. http://www.voxweb.nl/erasmus-tijd-voor-een-alfa-offensief/.

However, the final awards went again and again to researchers from the scientific or medical fields or who were doing research related to these. I do not begrudge them that, and there is no doubt that they will conduct important research with these grants. But I see this all the same as a symptom of the low esteem that the humanities and social sciences command with the NWO committees. Fortunately I'm not the only one who thinks so. Our own Executive Board took the initiative, together with the universities of Leiden, Groningen and Amsterdam, to raise 3 million euro, so that the classicists at these universities could still begin their research on innovation in antiquity. In so doing, our Executive Board sent us the signal that it attaches great importance to a scientific landscape in which all disciplines can flourish. I am very grateful to the Executive Board for this. The idea behind this research comes from a colleague of mine at the University of Leiden, Ineke Sluiter.8 She noted, with some examples from antiquity, but also from modern times, that successful innovations, aside from a clearly innovative element, also had an old and familiar element with which the user was already familiar. A modern example is the first cars, which actually looked like horse-drawn carriages. She calls this phenomenon "anchoring": the anchoring of the new in the familiar. Based on this, she developed the hypothesis that a condition for the success of an innovation is that it fits one way or another with what people are already familiar with. At the moment about twenty classicists are testing this hypothesis in a research programme called "Anchoring Innovation" and that is being run from Leiden and Nijmegen. They look not only at technical innovations, which were considerable in antiquity, but also at politics, religion, art and literature, because innovations also take place there. One question is whether innovative processes in these domains are different than those in the technical area. And we are looking at how classical antiquity itself is used today to anchor new inventions. There are many examples of this: from the American space rockets that were named after the Greek god Apollo, to the Innovational Research Insentives Scheme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), which has inherited Caesar’s war slogan, "Veni, vidi, vici”. Whether this is a reflection of the ruthless competition to which candidates for these grants are exposed, is a question that NWO’s management has yet to answer. The choice of the name Technasium (“technical academy”), which I referred to a few moments ago, is also a fine example of "anchoring innovation". This type of school must offer an alternative to the traditional school type of the gymnasium, but it has been given a name that sounds Greek as well and that is meant to suggest that the quality is as good as that of the old school type. I hope you see the paradox. In what way is this research useful to society? It offers only insights, but that's not unimportant. On the basis of this research, we classicists will not develop new smartphones, I. Sluiter, “Anchoring Innovation,” Proceedings of the Vilnius Conference Horizons for the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Vilnius, 23-25 September 2013. p. 71ff. http://horizons.mruni.eu/speakers/inekesluiter/. See also I. Sluiter, “Sokrates en het rendementsdenken” [“Socrates and thinking in terms of profitibility”], in De Groene Amsterdammer 139.14, 2 April 2015, pp. 38-41. 8

nor even write new manuals on how to innovate successfully. But those who do do this can benefit from our insights. At the same time, this research gives the general public some insight into the way in which people are manipulated by concepts such as “the Technasium”. I believe, too, that policymakers can benefit from this research. A good example is the policy on the centres for asylum seekers that the Ministry of the Interior is trying in vain to open throughout the country. These are being planned for villages without the local populations’ being prepared for them in any way. The availability of space seems to be the deciding factor for the ministry, but for the local population it is a real renewal of their communities. One could try to anchor the arrival of such a centre in various ways: one could point to the Christian values of charity, to the long-standing tradition in the Netherlands of receiving political refugees, and finally to the fact that during World War I the Netherlands hosted as many as a million Belgian refugees, sometimes in the same villages where the centres are now being planned. In fact nothing else is being asked of the residents than what their grandparents or great-grandparents already did. One might remind the villagers of the altruism they showed in the past. In any case, one must talk to the people to see how such a centre would fit into their own traditions, and one must take into account the refugees, because given the way their housing is now being arranged, their integration is doomed in advance to failure. The government would therefore be wise to involve scholars in the humanities in this sort of policy measure, because they have the right understanding of the human side of the matter. By the way, with this research programme, we classicists are not claiming at all that we have a monopoly on wisdom when it comes to understanding innovative processes. In developing this programme, we are listening closely to economists, psychologists and technicians who are involved in innovation from within their own disciplines. Bas Hillebrand, who does research on innovation at the School of Management of Radboud University, was a speaker at our first expert meeting in February. His discipline, too, has already been aware for some time that inventors should take the past into account, for instance because of the need for compatibility or given restrictions that institutions impose on new products. However, economists see the past primarily as a barrier to innovation, while scholars in the humanities naturally have more appreciation for this past. In this they are supported by psychologists, whose research has shown that people are conservative by nature when it comes to purchasing new products: arguments for not switching to a new product weigh three times as heavily with people as arguments in favour. Thus each discipline contributes to our knowledge of the processes that are at play in innovation. It is therefore important to mobilise and to finance all of these disciplines if one really wants to make the Netherlands a Land of Innovation. The humanities can especially contribute when it comes to the human dimension that is needed for any undertaking. I thus cannot support the call that Ramsey Nasr made recently in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad—to replace all managers in businesses or at universities with humanities

scholars.9 That strikes me as a bad idea. If we were to follow it, we might well bring an end to thinking solely in terms of profitability, but also, I’m afraid, to profitability itself. There is nothing wrong with striving for high profits, and managers have undoubtedly developed useful techniques to this end, but this must be done humanely, keeping in mind the value of the final product and the needs of individual employees. What we ought to do is to put people with a humanities background alongside managers and let them run businesses together: that’s the way to get the best results. Think of the flower that needs the stem and vice versa. The humanities teach us what it means to be human. No, they will not come up with a cure for cancer. But they can remind people that, notwithstanding all the medicines in world, one day they’ll be dead and gone. And they help people to think about what they can do with their lives in the meantime and to take time to consider what medicines and treatments mean for the quality of life. There’s a nice story going around about Churchill. It seems that during World War II a few British officials suggested a plan to close all the humanities departments at British universities. The money saved, they suggested, could give a boost to the war effort. Churchill is said to have replied: “But if we do that, gentlemen, then what are we fighting for?” Whether this is historical fact or not, it's a nice story that shows the importance of the humanities to society. Thank you for your attention.

Ramsey Nasr, “Manager worden? Leer dan filosofie en geschiedenis” [“Want to become a manager? Learn then Philosophy and History”], NRC Handelsblad, 9 May 2015. 9