I am puzzled by the many people who
believe that steeping oneself in the opposite of what you practice makes you a
better person. Scientists like C. P.
Snow believed those in the humanities would be better off as persons, more informed,
more nuanced in their thinking if only they had a whiff or two of the second
law of thermodynamics. I’ve also known
scientists who felt that a course in the humanities added to the medical
curriculum would make doctors with more empathy for their patients. I read a blog site that used Jim Watson as an
example of a scientist who epitomized to that writer the “it’s in your genes” interpretation
from everything to voting Democratic or liking fat dripping hamburgers.
I happen to like the humanities and
the arts. As a youth I considered becoming a portrait painter. I have read
voraciously in the classics and among contemporary novels. For the past 55
years I have been reading a book every month to discuss in a book discussion
group. I do so not because it makes me a
more moral person or augments my empathy for others but because I like to know
as much about the universe as I can. My
moral practice comes from an oak tag motto in the Brooklyn middle school class I attended which read “Virtue is its own reward.”
It took me a long time to figure what it means. I find doing the right
things sufficiently rewarding. I don’t
need fear of punishment or some reward in an afterlife to spur me to be as good
as I can be, even if I fail to live up to perfection.
I prefer scientific explanations to
supernatural explanations. Evolution
makes more sense than reading Genesis books 1 and 2. You can make few predictions about the life
sciences, astronomy or geology by reading Genesis. You can make many testable predictions by
studying rock formations, fossil remnants and traces of long dead plants and
animals, or by studying the mutational histories of cognate species by
sequencing and comparing their DNA. Geneticists are aware that character
traits are expressed with different intensity in different environments. They are
aware that some inherited traits involve the participation of chief genes and modifying
genes. I am skeptical of genetic interpretations of complex behaviors like
personality, intelligence, or creativity. I
am skeptical of claims that social failure is an outcome of defective heredity
in the individual. There are certainly
some genetic conditions or syndromes that limit what a child or adult can
do. Persons with normal color vision
will see a 28 on an Ishihara chart. Those
with red-green color deficiency will see the same chart as bearing the number
73. It is less clear what a person with an IQ of
125 can do. James Watson in one of his
biographical works said his IQ was in the 120s. If so he is a hell of a lot smarter than
people with 160 IQs I’ve met. High IQ
correlates well with test-taking. It
does not correlate well with the creativity and imagination that make people eminent,
like Watson.
What I do believe about human
abilities and behavior is that they are complex. We respond to our genotypes, certainly. But we also respond to circumstances that can
push us beyond our predicted abilities. When I was Master of the Honors College
at Stony Brook University, I ran a “My Beginnings” evening soiree for our students
and invited a Nobel laureate [C N Yang], a Pulitzer Prize poet [Louis Simpson],
and a MacArthur genius recipient [Paul Adams] who is a neurobiologist. Yang described the hardship of retreating as
the Japanese conquered China and how he learned his lessons dressed in rags sitting on floors
of mud as the rain pounded on a tin roof near the Burma Road. Simpson described the tension at home with
his mother, a former actress recruited from a sweat shop and meeting her future British husband, a lawyer, in the island of Jamaica. As his parents separated he suffered the stultifying
atmosphere of a boarding school. Adams
described how he disliked school which he found boring, and he preferred
setting up his own worm races in cereal bowls using batteries and wire leads to
goose the worms along. All three had
stressed or unconventional childhoods.
For those who believe that a whiff of
the humanities is needed for scientists to make them better people, remember
that Hitler was an art student, Mussolini was a novelist, Stalin was a seminarian
in the Russian Orthodox church, and Mao tse-Tung a celebrated poet. I believe that reading is its own
reward. We do not read to improve our
character. If that happens fine, but it
may not be a direct consequence of our reading any more than the outcomes of
dictators are a consequence of their studying the arts and humanities as
students. One of the most depressing
things I recall about the Watergate scandal was the conviction of Jeb Stuart Magruder
in the cover up of the Nixon inspired Watergate break-in. At the trial, ethicist and Chaplain William Sloan
Coffin described Magruder as his most brilliant student at Yale.
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