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The “Three Cultures” Problem in Global Change Research

Has academic life become notably less balkanized since C. P. Snow delivered his famous “two cultures” lecture in 1959? Apparently not. In this week’s issue of Science (6 March 2015) appears an article extolling the virtues of the humanities. It argues that scientists too often define research problems narrowly, leading to technical “solutions” that address only symptoms (not causes) or even make the problems worse for those in society affected by them. Kevin Boehnke, the author, commends historians, philosophers, literary critics, and anthropologists to his readers—who are mostly physicists, chemists, engineers, and the like. Humanists’ focus on the intricacies of peoples’ identities, relations, values, and disputes, Boehnke argues, can allow scientists to better link their work to the wider world it so often alters (by accident or design). Nearly sixty years after Snow’s lecture, Boehnke’s article suggests that academic specialization cuts deep—so deep that the editors of Science have seen fit to let him reprise rather old arguments about the need for better links between STEM researchers and those who study the rich tapestry of “the social.”

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Dangerous Knowledge and Global Environmental Change: Whose Epistemologies Count?

The question of how the social sciences and humanities ought to relate to science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM) subjects is a recurrent one. It’s become a burning question in the world of “global change science” of late because the scope, scale, and magnitude of the human impact on Earth is unprecedented. Groups of otherwise sober geoscientists are sounding the alarm, as indicated by the concepts of the “Anthropocene,” “planetary boundaries,” and “global tipping points.” There’s been talk of a “new social contract” between global change researchers and the societies their inquiries are intended to serve. As part of this, geoscientists are now looking to those of us who study diverse human perceptions, norms, values, relations, institutions, and practices. As geoscientists recognize, we need to analyze, interpret, and change the habits of whole societies if we are to reduce and adapt to the enormous biophysical changes we are collectively instigating. Heide Hackmann and coauthors term this the “social heart” of global environmental change (2014). It implies that environmental social scientists and environmental humanists must step forward and make a difference now so that Earth future resembles something far less bleak than imagined by Cormac McCarthy in his shattering novel The Road.