The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st Century [Paperback]

In 1959, C. P. Snow, who was both a prominent chemist and novelist, published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. This influential book was a set of variations on the theme that the traditional unified intellectual life of antiquity and the Middle Ages was ruptured by the scientific revolution, so that mid-Twentieth century culture faced an unbridgeable gap between the traditional humanities and the upstart natural sciences. In this new world, novelists, poets, literary critics, and philosophers had little understanding of physics, chemistry, and biology, and considered such knowledge beneath them. Moreover, though there were many highly cultured scientists, most had little interest or understanding of the humanities, and considered the cultivation of literary knowledge an unaffordable affectation.

Kagan, who is an eminent developmental psychologist and Emeritus Professor at Harvard University, bills his new book "revisiting C. P. Snow." He aims not only in updating Snow, but in adding a new actor---the social sciences. Unlike Snow, however, this book is not about the relations among the three intellectual arenas in the minds of the participants, but rather about their relative social standing. This is a very interesting question, and Kagan has very important insights to offer.

In sum, in world of the early Enlightenment until the Eighteenth century, the Humanities reigned supreme. At this point, the sciences broke away, providing explanations of the natural world that were completely independent from the natural philosophy of Aristotle and the natural law of the Middle ages, not to mention the natural theology of the churches. Prior to the Twentieth century, the humanities were the major source of insight and understanding concerning human nature and society. This was especially true in philosophy, where Smith, Bentham, Mill, Kant, Locke, Hume, and Nietzsche expounded for the public on the nature of the human condition, and where the great novelists, the likes of Bronte, Austin, Tolstoy, Goethe, Balzac, Proust, and James informed the public of the basic structure and dynamics of social life. However, the rise of the social sciences in the Twentieth century, first in the preeminence of Freud and later in the widely accepted and highly professionalized fields of sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, and political science, drove the humanities from any role in explaining the world into the soft cocoon of social constructivism, post-modernism and highly subjective self-expression.

Kagan concludes that there is a clear status hierarchy, in which "physics is the sun and mathematics its core...Chemistry and biology are the near planets and in increasing distant orbits, lie economics, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, sociology and political science. Even though history and philosophy lie in appreciably more distant orbits, they are not completely free of this force field." (p. 245)

Kagan's insights in defending the above reasoning are often useful and refreshing. For instance, he gives four reasons for the relative decline of the humanities (which, you will note, do not even appear in the status hierarchy of the previous paragraph). He notes that not only did social scientists invade their turf, but the television and cinema displaced literature, art, and poetry as the source of entertainment. "Although Virginia Woolf denigrated films as an art form in 1926, " notes Kagan, "more Americans have seen the movie version of Mrs. Dalloway than have read the novel..." (p. 227)

For these insights and their elaboration, this book is worth reading. Nevertheless, it is a deeply flawed work. It is much too long, and the filler material is often not at all compelling. For instance, Kagan offers two more reasons for the decline of the humanities. The first is that "when women and minorities began to join White middle and upper-middle-class males in English and history departments...these disciplines began to lose some of the prestige they had enjoyed." (p. 226) This may be true, but I very much doubt it, and Kagan provides no evidence. Kagan's second reason is that "postmodern critics argued that anyone could write a history, biography, or novel...Natural scientists policed their members more effectively by maintain strict rules as to who could call themselves physicists, chemists, or biologists." (p. 227) The idea that John and Jane Q. Public became disenchanted with the humanities because of postmodern critiques is simply ludicrous, if only because no one outside academia ever even heard of such critiques, and no one outside the postmodernists themselves took such critiques seriously.

Kagan offers arguments for his position much like a lawyer: make all possible cases for your position, and let the jury decide which ones they like and which ones they do not. This makes for tedious going on the part of the reader, who must go over page after page of meandering trivia, with may arguments either obvious and not worth repeating, or outlandish and clearly tendentious.

Kagan's treatment of the natural sciences is pedestrian and uninsightful. Most important (a) he does not deal with the importance of geology and astronomy in affecting the public understanding of our species in the larger physical order of things; (b) he does not deal with the stagnation of physics after 1960 and the meteoric rise of biology from 1970 to the present; and (c) he does not deal with sociobiology, the fusion of biology and social theory, except in passing, and places biology squarely in the natural sciences, despite the fact that the biology of social behavior has become one of the strongest forces in the social sciences.

Indeed, if I were to venture a generalization, this book could have been written in 1970, with an update that adds more recent additions to the repertoire (e.g., postmodernism). Dealing with fields in which I work, which include biology, economics, anthropology, and sociology, Kagan shows only the most superficial understanding of developments over the past two decades. For this reason, he completely misses the reintegration of the natural sciences, social sciences, and even the humanities, which is currently in progress. I don't have the space to describe these forces here---see the final chapter of my book, The Bounds of Reason (Princeton 2009) for an extended analysis, or the paper on my web site, "Five Principles for the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences" (people.umass.edu/gintis)---but they are dramatic indeed.

Kagan's treatment of the social sciences is very poor and uninformed. He has deep prejudices, approving of his own field of psychology and deeply admiring anthropology. Has he not heard that for decades anthropology has been dominated by the know-nothing, insipid postmodernists, with their sniveling critique of objectivity? Evidently not. His treatment of economics is a caricature of the know-nothing arguments that abound in leftist circles. Economics uses too much mathematics, he argues, and it is full of right-wing prejudice. I will not go through his tedious and tendentious arguments, which I have dealt with elsewhere, but I do want to stress three points. First, the high point in economics as far as the general public is concerned was the two decades following World War II, in which the modern microeconomic theory of the interaction between market competition and government regulation was developed. Economic theory has been very productive in recent years as well, with the rise of behavioral economics, but there was a long hiatus between 1970 and 2000 during which economics really produced nothing new, and even now, economic theory is in deep need of developing dynamical models that complement the comparative static models where it is strongest.

Second, the smart critique of economics recognizes its strengths and successes, identifies its failures, and proposes how to move from failure to success. Kagan's tedious critique dismisses the successes because they are not complete. His critique of the rational actor model is worthy of a high school poetry major, and his treatment of game theory is just a warmed-over succession of anecdotes and quotes judiciously selected to make his case.
Third, economists are often tarred with being ideologically biased in favor of right-wing political philosophy. This is just wrong. The political views of economists are, if anything, biased to the left. Kagan provides quotes showing that economists don't care about the environment and are inhuman slobs who only know about the material side of life and ignore the higher human capacities. In fact, there are just as many quotes on the other side, and the economic journals today are full of papers on the emotions, love, altruism, honesty, and corruption.

If I had to guess, I would say that Kagan outlined this book forty years ago, but just got around to filling in the details. In fact, a lot more than mere details have occurred in the past forty years, and it remains for someone to write a more cogent analysis of the three cultures.

Recipe for a heckuva good book for scholars and serendipity. For an eagle-eye scrutiny of the intellectual landscape. In fact, a master recipe for us now. (BTW I do acknowledge a quite-negative review right herein, by a professional social scientist, and I surely nod to and attend to his specific technical expert-specialist objections to be considered. A useful critique, showing value of insider-expertise scrutiny. Still, I, as a teacher believing the or a goal of education is "how to think complexly in the real world," I feel that, to simmer up a nourishing dish of brainpower, Kagan followed this recipe, as I would describe it:)

(1) Show how a specific discipline can be generalized, for true "liberal arts or general education." Start with a generous portion of solid knowledge from your own specialty as a base. I never imagined how a technical field, such as "developmental psychology," could be underpinning background for so many general issues. Nor is it myopic monism, but expert's knowledge related to the whole--true general-education.

(2) Show enormous awareness of general "intellectual history," plus the know-how and workings of many fields--applied epistemology at work. This is true informed "philosophical," plus "interdisciplinary," perspective.

(3) Pour in a measure of "systems" theory, approach, perspective. Relate ideas to their context. Use this for better "cause-effect" analysis. Two fine examples: Kagan shows the oversimplifications of (A) evolutionary biology explaining everything by simple fitness to transmit genes, and of (B) economics' rational-choice theory--so many other variables complicate up that single mantra.

(4) Add a dose of that useful ingredient of "comparison-contrast." This shows how natural sciences, social sciences, humanities both are similar, but mainly differ in important, significant, but overlooked ways. End up recommending the meta-methods of biology, not of chemistry-physics, to better handle issues in the social sciences. This shows command of "complexity 101" (or even 499) plus a good dollop of "systems" thinking.

(5) Season with a tone, stance, attitude not of rampant relativism or non-judgment, but of awareness of ethical moral political issues (postmodernism, relativism, "steamroller egalitarianism," etc.)-- but in a disinterested balanced fashion. This demonstrates rare but refreshing "fair-minded" critical thinking.

(6) Mix and fold in a nice ration of "intellectual history" including "world-views." Specifically, demonstrate dozens of times, how ideas, ideologies, movements (etc.) have a cause-effect relationship with the field (time-place situation circumstances environment). Example: after the apparent determinism of Darwinian evolution, behaviorism and the work of Pavlov became popular, because it offered apparently more choices in life, a key issue in views of the world. The book becomes a mini-textbook in "ideas and contexts 101."

(7) Before baking, sprinkle in here and there, deft "analogies" to get point across; this lightens the leavening.

And serve hot (though it will "keep" and re-heat!)... Result: Kagan seems to be one chef who has interned in every relevant intellectual kitchen ("how could one thinker easily know all this?"). We could award three Michelin stars for richnesses controlled and perfected... A very useful volume, a nourishing "master recipe" for reconsidering the issue C. P. Snow discussed a half-century ago.

This is a great book that takes an integral view of the sciences, social sciences and humanities. Professor Kegan artfully shows how these three domains are similar to the "big three" of Greek philosophy (Art Morals and Science)and are best viewed as complementary rather than competing. I highly recommend this book for academics and students who want more than a parochial education. Kegan also writes eloquently of the politics of education and particularly the problematic nature of disparity in funded research across the "three cultures."