“
Unnatural. The current relationship is unnatural
because it is a partitioned one, and there is something
inherently violent about the partitioning of intellectual
life away from its child-like natural state of holism.
By promoting the construction of an intellectual
culture of fenced-off areas within which each citizen
must live out their lives, we have implicitly endorsed
the idea that specialization requires trade-offs: that the
existence of cultural differentiation necessitates a lack
of cultural integration. Yet this is simply not supported
by the evidence. Psychological studies on highly
creative individuals, such as those conducted by
Professor Nancy Andraesen at the University of Iowa,
have shown that scientific and artistic geniuses are
often polymaths and audodictats with swaths of
interests that span both the humanities and the
sciences. The cognition of geniuses cares as little for
fences as rivers do. So the healthiest of minds are
not split down the middle in their thought, yet
our culture is. If nothing is done to overcome this
partitioning, and the humanities and sciences remain
as far apart as they are today, our culture will never
become its best self.
Erik P. Hoel
38
”
SciArt in America August 2014