Science Is Good But Without The Humanities It's Dangerous

As the world becomes more technical and computer orientated, we are expected to learn these hands-on and tactile skills to ever higher levels. The phenomenon of the number and exact which we have grown to expect from computerised systems has become a foundation-stone for our own learning. When misinformation is a real source of misery and poor choices the skills of scientific appraisal can't be highlighted enough. This being said, science is a precision tool that manipulates nature to our desires. Just because we can do a thing doesn't mean we should. What is out there in the world that stops us from doing the unthinkable unless immediately possible?

​Most of us don't have dreams of dominance and world-wide subservience or visions of a future in which our particular thing becomes the only thing available. We know about weapons and war, but science can also do other things we don't want. It can change the world in ways we did not plan for or want. If we are not careful and show enough consideration, our products and procedures can do more harm than good. A moment of anger can be a moment when a good person does the unimaginable, a moment of compassion can put many others at risk. We need to be able to weigh up the various choices available and understand what the possible implications are.


A world of dogmatic precision and unbending philosophies based on the line of best fit analysis seems like only a hair's breadth away at times, in which dry and uncaring decisions are made around the world. The humanities offer a counter-weight to this understandably powerful influence on our society. The collective ideas and experiences of our entire global community take the form of history, memoirs, fiction, music, theatre, painting, and more. Each expression of humanity is either based on experiences directly or indirectly which help to anchor the consensus feeling about various subjects. Apart from sciences, the humanities do not rely on agreement but they thrive on variation. Like the ecosystems of the world, human culture expands well beyond individual bubbles. Each relative story and expression can be linked to others, which in turn link further still. In this interconnectedness of global diversity our thoughts and feelings are given a forum to be understood and built upon.


Our cultural heritage is wall to wall with reasoning, observation, and societal flow-charts that show us how certain things potentially play out. We use our history to learn from the past and we use our art to decipher our own feelings about things happening in our own lives and those of others. By dissecting complex and uncharted subjects with probing artistic exploration, we can better understand the way people think and the effects of various changes. We can learn that we do not want something to happen or that we do not think a certain way when presented with something artistic we feel affected by. Art doesn't need to be accurate, in that it can show us the obscure and abstract to help us see for ourselves a viable and realistic alternative.


In our own continued journey of discovering meaning in our lives and purpose behind the infinite coincidences that brought us to these luminous shores, we can look to the humanities to see that even the most simple of things can become the keystone or the fulcrum in a grand equation that brings about something brand new. Like light streaming in through the window pane, our stories and creativity can show us that the just so universe is not always just so at all.