Arnold Kling, writing for Tech Central Station, claims that the humanities are irrelevant in today's world because, unlike science, it cannot serve as a guide to humanity's future. Kling's article is in reference to the two-day "Socratic Seminar" he attended, in which were discussed, by various experts in the sciences and humanities, the differences, if any, between their respective disciplines. Perhaps Dr. Kling is putting us on. Who knows? I will have to trust in the sincerity of his convictions.

The article is titled "Moore vs. Plato," setting up a dichotomy between the inevitable accumulation of scientific knowledge and progress, as typified by Moore's Law, and the decreasing importance and relevance of the humanities.

Before I tackle Kling's assertion, I want to make some observations about science and how, in a necessarily limited context here, it can relate to the humanities. For starters, I recognize the triumphant position science holds among all intellectual traditions in the present day, that its ascendancy was already in the making for some centuries, and that it will continue to be an unstoppable force in human affairs. Isaiah Berlin named science as the greatest human achievement of all time, and this from a man well versed in history, his specialty being the history of ideas, especially as they relate to politics and the relationship of the individual to the state. Not surprisingly, Berlin's writing exhibits a predictable clarity that is requisite for scientific discourse.

In some constructive ways, the skepticism, unsentimental attachment to theory, and relentless observation that are among the virtues of scientific inquiry, find their way into other disicplines, but not in the false attempt of tying to ape the sciences. The latter situation occurs in literary criticism with the creation and application of a prodigal nomenclature in a misguided attempt to name and fix every phenomenon in an observable object called the "text."

Not surprisingly, torturous syntax often follows, leaving the "uninitiated" in the dark. Yet such elitism is rightfully reserved for those trained in science. It is a discipline, like law, that requires rigorous formal preparation. Literature and literary criticism should be an open book for everyone who is interested and willing to learn without formal schooling. It should not be the domain of "experts" who grow bitter, yet somehow smugly satisified, that no one outside their clique is listening to them.

An example of scientific virtues existing outside science is the work of Helen Vendler, a literary critic specializing in poetry, whose influence in critical discourse is immense. Her exploration of Shakespeare's sonnets is required reading for anyone who wants to witness for themselves how literature is to be studied today: what she claims about the sonnets is explicitly backed by evidence from Shakespeare's words. She determines concrete patterns and correspondences only if they are observable, not as if they only existed in her head, but clearly in the poet's words themselves. For a number of sonnets she provides a diagram pointing out the relationship between words, phrases, sentences, and micro-structures such as quatrains, as they contribute to one another and to the whole, demonstrating schematically how Shakespeare carefully builds his rhetoric to achieve what he wants to say.

Which is another consideration. Vendler actually believes Shakespeare is saying something. She exercises no agenda outside the passionate need to understand his lyric poetry. No attempt is made to "prove" that Shakespeare was a homosexual (he wasn't) or that his works were really written by someone else (they weren't). She rejects the notion of Deconstruction that a "text' self-implodes to undermine authorial intent. She really believes Shakespeare means what he says and that he intends to say what he means as she understands and verifies what he says and means.

Nor is Vendler a proponent of a renewed New Criticism. It, like Deconstruction, is also a "theory," which has already come up against experience and, like all literary theories, is found wanting. Avoiding the sonnets as something autotelic, she also finds evidence for her reading elsewhere, outside Shakespeare's words, within rightful contexts of biography, history, custom, usage, law, theology, and the literary traditions that informed Shakespeare. By no means aping science, Vendler applies vigorously the skills she learned previously. She earned a Masters in Chemistry before she switched to literature.

Both Berlin and Vendler have rejected the profane scholastic miasmas of post-structural studies that seek to impose a highly ornate paradigm onto experience without regard to studying how experience might very well destroy the paradigm. No shift. No eschewing an unworkable hypothesis. You might as well adopt astrology whose internal logic makes the susceptible forget that it has no bearing on experience. That is because astrology is not a science. It is not about observation and prediction. Instead, you get forecasts. Notice, rightly or wrongly, how meteorology is not quite accepted as legitimate in that it makes forecasts, not consistently predictions.

I am prepared to accept Berlin's claim that science is humanity's greatest achievement. At the very least, science is the single most powerful intellectual force in our world. No? Is there, today, any theological cosmogony or cosmology that convincingly addresses the origins of the universe more compellingly than physics? God is no longer above, nor the Devil below. Won't the human genome, now just completed, tell us things about ourselves, and other life forms, of which the most fantasy-inspired science fiction writer could never dream? Stephen Hawking made such a claim for black holes, that they never could have come out of a writer's head. Yet there they are. Already "black hole" is part of our vernacular. The reaches of science are out of bounds to most people, including this writer, yet they exert their "fallout" effect on the level of vulgar discourse. Have you ever met someone, for example, who reminds you of a "black hole," someone who exhausts your energy, sapping you of life?

Science operates on a plane of comprehension that is both closed and open. Closed in ruthlessly rejecting the unworkable, but always open to possibility. It possesses a system that actually works for anyone smart and willing enough to seek to master it. Literature and history, however, require at least as much of the idiosyncratic flavor of the writer's biases, no matter how erudite, as they do some kind of critical norm.

It may not matter too much that Richard Dawkins is a passionate atheist when it comes to his contribution to evolutionary biology. Would we make the same claim when we turn to his politics? Does his rejection of religious faith and his belief in the dangers posed by faith since September 11th necessarily imply themselves in his theory of genes as a survival machine? While his personal beliefs inform his point of view about human affairs, his scientific theory may or may not be true outside any consideration of religion or politics. Its life, or half-life, will be determined by scientific inquiry. In contrast, Einstein was a believer. Does belief in God imply itself in Einstein's contribution to physics? Clearly not. That does not, however, mean that ethical or moral reasoning, the realm of the personal and the communal, have no place in regard to science.

We get more of Dawkins and Einstein, the men, from their politics than from their science, which hover above personal loves, hatreds, and what each prefers in the realm of organizing human societies. Science, in other words, can be true whether or not you want it to be. But who's going to stop you from thinking that religious education is tantamount to child abuse? That's a moral question. It can also be philosophical. Or it can be political.

Trouble enters the picture when a scientist takes his science to be everything else as Dawkins does with his dismissal of religion. To be fair, Dawkins does not eschew the humanities. He has a deep love of poetry and admitted Bach's St. Matthew Passion, a religious art work, can move one to tears. The triumph of science does not exclude the arts for him, but, perhaps as memes, will edify our understanding of them.

But Arnold Kling goes beyond the triumph of science. What are we to make of Kling's claim, mentioned above, articulated here?

. . . the project of the humanists is degenerating into an exercise in archaeology. It is a way to study where we have been. But it does not tell us where we are going.

To jump to the chase, that is the concluding sentence of Kling's article. Humanities are essentially done for, kaput, perhaps to suffer the same fate President Bush claims for Islamism, along with Nazism, Fascism, and totalitarianism in general: And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

At best, Kling gives history begrudging lip service. We can at least be confident that the humanities will tell us "where we have been." It will not serve to tell us where we are going. That is because history is not a predictive discipline. Science is. Laying down a criteria for how knowledge is to be gleaned and examined, because it proves so fruitful in one discipline, onto another discipline for which it is not appropriate will inevitably find the latter one deficient.

But isn't there a big chunk of the human experience that will be influenced by what Kling assumes science will bring forward, in the place "where we are going"? Will cloning have an impact only in the lab? Stem cell research? The manipulation of genes? Will the humanities be extinguished in this brave new world? Or will they be transformed by science the way they were with the invention of the printing press? Better still, will they not enrich our understanding, in turn, of the very wonders and horrors scientific progress will wield?

I thought we no longer lived at "the end of history." Bad ideas certainly deserve their fate. Not only alchemy, phrenology, and, for that matter, Nazism, but also the idea that ether fills the void of outer space. "Progress" can indeed be measured in this sense.

Kling's error is in placing far too much faith in the material specialization that is a hallmark of our present day existence.

Economists, unlike humanists, see the present as almost completely different from the past. Brad DeLong's chapter on economic growth in his macroeconomics textbook makes this point clearly. From the time of Plato to the age of Shakespeare, there was almost no improvement in the average standard of living. Since then, the rise has been spectacular. Commenting on the price of flour, DeLong made calculations showing that in 1500, a five-pound bag of flour would have represented four days' pay. Modern workers earn close to 500 times as much.

Kling's assumption that today's world is "almost completely different from the past" is mistaken. In terms of material wealth today, and even then not for the entire globe, Kling is of course correct. Where he is wrong is in overlooking the unquantifiable reality of human lives, singularly and collectively, as best reflected, examined, and understood in the humanities. For Kling, a discipline without means of accurate measurement cannot be trusted. Nor can it necessarily be relied upon to get us to the moon. Qualitative knowledge is something for less materially well-off socieities. In the face of material advancement, in which the concrete manner of one's life is ever more manifest, why bother with knowledge that is difficult, at times impossible, to quantify?

One is prompted to ask what does the standard of living have to do with whether or not the humanities are ultimately relevant. A good response would be that the rise of the middle class over the past 500 years has produced a very large body of individuals who can read. Literacy is no longer in the hands of the clergy. An explosion of intellectual activity in the sciences and arts accompanied the economic expansion Kling mentions. What he doesn't realize is that economics has indeed played a role in developing the very disciplines which he implies hold little relevance in the current world where so much is "almost completely different."

Kling has no reason to believe that the improvement in the standard of living separates us from the past. Human passions still run deep and having your material needs met, while extremely important, are not the only bread in town. The humanities are best suited to understanding the human world.

Yet Kling is not satisfied at leaving the humanities behind in the light of scientific and material progress. He also enlists technological advancement to highlight what he believes is a dysfunction in the humanities.

Even more striking is the rate of acceleration of technical change. DeLong points out that most of the increase in living standards took place within the last century. The humanist believes that we can still relate to the early 19th century by reading Charles Dickens. The economist believes that the poverty of that age is scarcely conceivable.

The last two sentences would be true if Kling means that studying Dickens will not give us the kind of understanding of 19th century poverty that economics can. Were someone in the humanities to make the claim that reading Dickens would provide such understanding, as the "humanists" have in Kling's assertion, then they would have misrepresented the true value of literature and be no more qualified than he to make value judgments.

By drawing a parallelism between what the "humanist" and what the economist, in this case, understand, Kling means that reading Dickens is an insufficient way to "relate to the early 19th century" (whatever that means) because many of us are fortunate to live in an age of great material wealth. Yet one has to ask why reading Dickens fails to make one understand the early 19th century and its poverty? It would be better, instead, to turn to history or the contemporary world for that.

But, maybe the power of Dicken's fiction might give us a glimpse of what poverty was like in his day. Who knows? One will only find out by reading him. And no two people will read Dickens the same way.

Kling implies that science and its applied disciplines are to be measured in exclusive worth so absolute it obviates a need for human endeavor and accomplishment in other mental disciplines. Why read Dickens since we can no longer "conceive" of poverty? You have a problem conceiving poverty? Go to Calcutta today. Or, why bother with Wagner's Die Walküre because most of us are unable to "relate" to the incestuous love between Sieglinde and Siegmund? Do we have to empathize with Yukio Mishima's creepy fascist hatred of Westerners, the "white ants," to regard him, as many do, one of the finest novelists of the last century?

Since when did an experience with poverty become a litmus test for appreciating and enjoying the works of Dickens? Kling indulges in hyper-materialism which goes under another brand of superstition: scientism. Scientism is not only the acknowledgement that science is the triumphant intellectual discipline of our day. One may acknowledge that triumph, as Berlin does, while rejecting scientism. Rather, scientism also entails the belief that only the scientific method can obtain knowledge. Period.

This superstition is best expressed by Kling himself:

Humanists will boast that their conception of man has stood the test of time. They argue that Shakespeare's insights have lasted for centuries, while, science keeps changing. Scientists have periodically latched on to false doctrines--Skinnerian psychology comes to mind--with fervor.

However, the evolutionary nature of science is a feature, not a bug. The ability of scientists to sift through ideas has led to great breakthroughs, including Newtonian physics, Darwinian evolution, and the many discoveries of the past century.

So, in effect, there is no evolutionary change in our understanding of literary works, or a painting, or a symphony by Mahler? There is no renewed appreciation of classic works of art to be re-interpreted by future generations? Only science is worthy of being deemed the true heritage of human thought? Because the way Kling sees it, the humanities do not lead to "breakthroughs," and provide nothing worth keeping.

The real point Kling is making is that scientific knowledge is cumulative and corrective. The humanities are much less so. Science leaves behind the notion of a flat earth and, in time, adds to the general store of knowledge about the earth so far verified as true. History will also discard errors made by past historians but the resulting knowledge is not always cumulative because of value judgments. Two historians may see the same thing and call it something different or come at it with very different, even idiosyncratic, angles while adhering to the same facts.

For example, the historian John Lukacs refers to Hitler as a revolutionary and Churchill as a reactionary. In light of 20th century political tastes, Hitler would be seen as reactionary. Lukas didn't necessary come upon a trove of new facts about Hitler and Churchill to come to his conclusion. He sees the "data" differently and makes a judgment. How many colleagues are needed to corroborate his judgment before it becomes what Kling will only value as knowledge? Where is the "reproducibility" of results? Where is the prediction? Yet it is possible for one historian to make a value judgment, which in turn can be qualified by another historian without recourse to a controlled environment to test its authenticity.

To put it a bit too plainly, the humanities are ultimately about humanity, and certain unchanging truths about human beings, about human life, will remain true. If we expect evolution in the humanities as Kling claims for science, then the knowledge and wisdom gained must accumulate over time. Unfortunately, this is not always so. Human wisdom from the past is often forgotten, only to be relearned, if at all, by new and ever recurring trial and error in the realm of life itself. We have to keep relearning the same old lessons, such as the wrongfulness of murder, only to forget them promptly.

What really bothers someone like Kling is that the humanities are less optimistic than science. History, art, literature, the study of politics, tell a different story (in fact, they use narrative) of the failures as well as the triumphs of human beings. At most, the score is even or tilts one way or the other according to your outlook on life: value judgment.

Not all things point north in the humanities. There are things worth keeping even if they reflect ignorance. New facts, a new understanding, that counter assumptions or aspects in a work of art or scholarship need not mandate rejection. There is sometimes wiggle room for selectivity. We may enjoy the genius of Shakespeare but we do have to put up with an anti-Semitic rendering of Shylock in the "Merchant of Venice." We can't very well discard or overlook that fact. But qualitative considerations, outside of measurement used in science, compel us to keep this play as an exceptional work of art despite its unfortunate and widespread assumption about Jews. What model in physics today could possibly accommodate the notion of ether?

If the humanities serve any purpose, it reminds us of the futility of human perfection. Hence its own brand of skepticism, even radical skepticism. Human nature is and will forever be, given the "evidence" of the humanities, outright unevolving. Human beings are not linear but circular creatures, perhaps at best upward spiriling circles leading to who knows where. At worst, degenerating into vicious circles of fear and hate. How does one measure this? The promise of evolution is not to be found here.

Have things changed in so many ways? Have we really evolved, say, into creatures who will permanently abstain from mass murder, especially as we now have the technological advances to make it so easy? A sobering account of history, by historians informed by morality and wisdom, will tell us many things have not changed. No amount of economic success can convince otherwise.

Kling's negation of the humanities takes a comical turn when he compares a "humanist's" to a technologist's point of view on current events: To a humanist, the recent war in Iraq had the potential to turn into a quagmire. To a technologist, such an outcome was highly unlikely, given the advances that had taken place in computer and communication technology in just the last ten years.

Excuse me? That is to say, no one in the humanities did not predict a quagmire? Data, please. Presumably, only people studying the humanities are anti-war types who foretell dire consequences for American and allied forces against Saddam Hussein. I had no idea the propaganda of the anti-war and anti-American academic Left in our nation's humanities departments was so successful at perpetuating the lie that the humanities are properly theirs and no one else's. Thanks to them, the entire camp of "humanists" is considered incapable of rational common sense.

It is not only the technologists who scoffed at the idea of quagmire, but everyday American citizens, whether or not they understand science or read literature. And let's not forget there were MIT types, namely Chomsky, who did predict quagmire. What about the idea (yeah, I know, it's only an idea) that a quagmire was avoided because of clarity of moral purpose, of value judgments such as how to wage war or what government is best, of a sure sense of history, of democracy, of human liberty, and of a subjective understanding of human nature that, in the end, secured victory in Iraq as well? Knowledge outside of science and its advances is equally valid and indispensable. To believe, as Kling apparently does, that technology was the sole guarantor of victory in Iraq is highly reductive like the claim of many Leftists and Liberals that the war was motivated only by oil interests.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to measure how politics, morality, and literature inform us and the decisions we make, either as individuals or societies. One thing is certain: science alone cannot lead the way to the promised land. Kling's implied utopianism, the promise of technology, its material improvement of humankind, is so transparently false on its face that the glaring evidence of recent history escapes him.

If the last century taught us anything it is that scientific and material accomplishment do not secure a better world in any inevitable sense. Too many horrors in the last century speak otherwise. Nor is anyone saying that scientific materialism is the cause of those horrors. Nor will immersion in the humanities save the planet. There is a grisly story of Mengele and his cohorts in Auschwitz discussing philosophy and art between bouts of murdering thousands of hapless innocents.

No one should make the claim for the humanities that Kling assumes for science. The problem with any brand of utopianism is that history has a nasty habit of knocking it down, snuffing out millions of human lives in the process. Ironically, the role Kling has for science, its teleological ability to make things inevitably better for humankind, is itself an idea borrowed from the humanities, within the Judeo-Christian religious tradition itself. It is also a bad idea, I believe, and belongs in Bush's "unmarked grave." Science can improve things only provisionally, all other things considered. Including a Bach cantata.

Why this battle between science and the humanities anyway? The real battle is within the humanities, at least the part of it that is co-opted for political objectives that go beyond the espoused discipline to effect radical change in the world. That is, humanities as activism. How long do we have to put up with Edward Said's orientalism which informs his deep hatred of the United States? Will Chomsky's account of history win the day? Or will the "humanist" Leo Strauss'? Or one more liberal like Berlin's?

The hi-jacking of the humanities by cult-scholars has besmirched the reputation of those disciplines. The blame, however, need not point to something defective in the discipline, but to its practitioners. Contrary to Kling's assumption, the humanities will not become an artifact for archeologists to mull over. Good heavens! Doesn't archeology have a relationship with other disciplines in the humanities as well as the sciences?

There is something else going on here too. Kling admits his discomfort with the inane pretensions he describes among the "humanists" on the seminar panel.

. . . the sherry-sipping, repartee-trading, philosopher-name-dropping set. For my part, I was in over my head, sort of like when people are discussing opera, or when everyone else is eating with chopsticks.

This may be a hostile characterization or something accurate. Academicians in the humanities can have their affectations. But never scientists? Here is his reaction when the "humanists" defend their disciplines.

At the seminar, one of the humanists remarked with casual confidence that Plato will last for 50,000 years. Bailey and I rolled our eyes, because we regard it is (sic) questionable whether the continuity of the human race is assured for even 50 years, much less 50,000. With genetic engineering, advances in neuropharmacology, and computerized implants, our great-grandchildren will be qualitatively different from us.

Granted, the defensive apology for the humanities by a histrionic forecast of Plato's relevancy is pathetic, but so is Kling's dire prediction we won't even recognize our great-grandchildren. Because if we do recognize them, then Plato et al. will continue to be relevant. If not, what proof or reasoning can Kling claim that such a "super" race would have use only for science but not the humanities?

Such a scenario, the irrelevancy of the humanities in the future, smacks less of science and more of fiction, but contains a little of both. Sounds like a perfect combination. Don't you think?