Humanities, sciences? Both, please

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books, C.S. Lewis, education, humanities, movies, science

JMNR reminds us that the sciences need the humanities:

Knowing what a thing is made of, after all, does not tell us what it is.

. . .

Literature, the fine arts, theater, and music teach humans what it is to be good, true, and beautiful. They point to meaning. What does it profit a man to learn all mysteries of matter and energy if he does not have love? Science can only simulate or stimulate the feelings of love, but . . . cannot create one real passion.

That first sentence, as Reynolds very well knows, is a paraphrase from a conversation in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

“In our world,” said Eustace, “A star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of….”

How I hope that the makers of the movie don’t lose or obscure that particular bit of wisdom!

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Sometimes skepticism is useful

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Bedtime for Bonzo, language, movies, Return to Me, science

Generally, I would describe myself as favoring the “credo ut intelligam” approach to things (“I believe in order that I may understand”), but reason is also God’s gift and, used rightly, science reveals truth, as in this recent eSkeptic feature about experimental attempts to teach chimpanzees, etc., various types of sign-language, which shows that, just as many of us have always believed,

Descartes was right after all. Animals do not understand language.

In fiction, I’ll fall for a Bonzo or the signing gorilla in Return to Me as easily as the next person, but in reality, there’s no getting around it: humans are unique. Now if we can just live up to all that implies.