Blog 9

Pinker & Yo-Yo Ma

Steven Pinker and Yo-Yo Ma talk about the importance of sciences in our world not just based off of experiments, but also on religion, and art. Science is often argued as solely a subject with experiments, data, and observations that have nothing to do with art. However, art may play a larger role in the sciences than an individual may think, as they help to compare and inspire ideas. It may be agreeable that science is such a closed society which needs to open up to the world we live in. Pinker states that, “To cultivate the world, we must cultivate work-arounds for our cognitive limitations, including skepticism, open debate, formal precision, and empirical tests, often requiring feats of ingenuity”. Likewise, Ma argues that science needs art to inspire a scientist by allowing their brain to be flexible in the ways in which it studies a subject. Ma states that, “The values behind arts integration – collaboration, flexible thinking, and disciplined imagination – lead to the capacity to innovate”. As Ma argues, arts will introduce more qualities of a successful individual that will allow them to better explain what it is that they are researching. Science is not just about the experiments, or the data, or the observations. It is about being able to understand our limits and using our senses and emotions in ways that other subjects, such as art, can do. After comparing the arguments of Pinker and Ma, I agree that sciences need to open up to the humanities as they will vastly impact the way the scientific universe works.

Text to Self

As a student in the medical field, I can easily say that all types of sciences are important to my education, as well as many other fields students study these days. Science seems to be a large part of our world’s educational society these days because experiments, observations, data, and measurements are always being taken. In a world driven around technology, we are always finding ways to make science easier, find cures for medicine, and angles and tools at which to build buildings. As a future dentist, science even goes into the creation of making an effective toothpaste that will benefit your teeth in all ways possible. When it comes to science, Pinker states that, “It is, rather, indispensable in all areas of human concern, including politics, the arts, and the search for meaning, purpose, and morality.” Essentially, Pinker is telling his audience that science is important in all fields and serves a different meaning for different perspectives in our lives. Personally, I am able to see how science correlates to any field someone may choose to work in. Furthermore, an individual may even notice how their field helps the science world to become more explainable. Whether we want to acknowledge it, or take a science class, or not, science is and always will be a major part of our society.