When Natural met Social: A Review of Collaboration between the Natural and Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper investigates the opportunities for further collaboration between the natural and social sciences. From 81 systematically identified and reviewed papers published in scientific journals, it became clear that complex situations that depend on human behaviour as well as natural processes require natural–social science collaboration. The creation of a community of collaborative natural–social science research, that learns from and can contribute to best practice across the sciences, is advocated to support natural– social science collaboration. Across disciplines, it became clear that such a community should deal with (1) difference between paradigms in the current sciences; (2) creation of skills and competences of the involved scientists; (3) scarcity of institutions sympathetic to collaborative research; and (4) the internal organization of collaborative projects.     

Mapping the audit traces of interdisciplinary collaboration: bridging and blending between choreography and cognitive science

ABSTRACT

Two long-term sci–art research projects are described and positioned in the broader conceptual landscape of interdisciplinary collaboration. Both projects were aimed at understanding and augmenting choreographic decision-making and both were grounded in research conducted within a leading contemporary dance company. In each case, the work drew upon methods and theory from the cognitive sciences, and both had a direct impact on the way in which the company made new work. In the synthesis presented here the concept of an audit trace is introduced. Audit traces identify how specific classes of knowledge are used and transformed not only within the arts or sciences but also when arts practice is informed by science or when arts practice informs science.     

An overview of women's health in the U.S. since the mid-1960 s

Women's health became intertwined with the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. The process and history of the interactions among physicians, feminists, health care consumers, activists, and politicians have brought women's health into the foreground of health research and curricular agendas in several ways. It identified major gaps in research and practice and initiated a critique of the current health care system at all levels; it originated from, and remains connected with, the non-medical community; it is interdisciplinary and requires interdisciplinary teams for research and clinical practice, as well as collaboration with colleagues in non-medical academic fields; it developed new curriculum focused on women's health; it emphasizes race, class, sexual orientation, and other diversities among women. The continuing presence of activists and feminist scholars will insure that health and science include women's needs to provide better health for all.     

The Study of Time: Proceedings of the First and Second Conferences of the International Society for the Study of Time

Abstract

In the past, the nobility of science was taken for granted, and it was universally venerated. Today many scienti!, ts are depressed by the morally doubtful applications of science: the high ideals of science should prevent the application of science to weapons research. In comparing science and religion, the moral dimensions of science are stress, ed and their extension is urged. In this way the world can be saved from war and the dignity and nobility of science can be restored.     

Information Retrieval in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of applying modern information retrieval techniques to the cultural heritage domain. Although the field of information retrieval is closely associated with computer science, it originally emerged from library science — also one of the main disciplines concerned with access to cultural heritage material. Hence we are, in a sense, exploring what happens if we bring these strands of research back together again. The article consists of three parts. In the first part, we explain the field of information retrieval and its multidisciplinary nature. In the second part, we discuss how and why the problem of providing access to cultural heritage can be cast naturally as an information retrieval problem. In the third and main part, we present a detailed case study of applying the modern information retrieval approach in practice within a museum.     

Theory and Practice As Responsibility

Abstract

Ralph Hancock's felicitous term “the responsibility of reason” opens a significant revision within political theory. It places primacy in practical reason and reminds us that theory is itself a mode of practice. He finds the deepest affirmation of this insight in Tocqueville's elevation of the art of association into the first principle of the science by which politics is comprehended. There is no science of politics apart from the exercise of responsibility itself.     

Seeds: Contracting the Audience in a Play about Science

Abstract

In pursuing the question ‘what can scientists learn from theatre?’ Particularly, ‘what can scientists, as scientists, learn from theatre?’ this paper argues that science lacks a normative framework that theatre is capable of providing. Despite science’s well-earned epistemic reputation, there is adequate reason to question its ethical reputation, particularly at the point where cutting edge scientific technology impacts society. I consider science as operating in four categories: the scientific method; the scientific hypothesis; the scientific experiment; and the scientist’s personal character. The realms of the scientist’s hypothesis and personal character are those where social pressures are reciprocally exerted, where imaginative play mentality and epistemic values are most in evidence. Theatre can examine these realms effectively because it is able to use narratives that appeal not only to logical and social moral judgements but to emotional and visceral responses, so as to situate science in the social context in which the pressures of law, funding, experimentation, society, and personal ambition converge in ‘the game of life’.

This can be seen in the theatrical process known as ‘contracting with the audience’. I point out a spectrum of traditional narrative tropes by which science makes “contracts with” audiences. The paper draws on theories of entrainment and theatrical game-play from Peter Stromberg and Philippe Gaulier, as well as my own practice and research into the process of contracting with the audience, to propose how to reach beyond tradition and to shift normalising contracts “outside the box”. To illustrate my proposition, I examine the play Seeds by Annabel Soutar as directed by Chris Abraham for Crow’s Theatre and Theatre Porte Parole. Seeds follows the controversial court battles of Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser against agricultural-biotech corporation Monsanto, which sued him for patent infringement of its Genetically Modified Organism Roundup Ready Canola. Seeds helps its audience define a public arena for discourse even as it brings to our attention the factors that make this difficult to do, while making an excellent contribution to the genre of ‘Documentary Theatre’. It is a successful contract with the audience that creates a public forum for discussion about contemporary ethical debates in science, thereby merging artistic ambiguity and scientific theory.     

Letter to the Editor

Abstract

The last decade has seen an increasing awareness of the global impacts on our environment of modern technological civilization. To understand and deal with these impacts, we need to develop a science of the biosphere – a science that views life on the Earth from a planetary perspective. Recent scientific and technical advances make this science possible now. These advances include the development and testing of satellite remote sensing of Earth resources; advances in computer-based data acquisition, storage, analysis and dissemination; development of interdisciplinary efforts among scientists who recognize the need for this science; and the development of mathematical theory and computer simulation methods appropriate for the study of the biosphere. This review describes the basic needs for this new science and the advances which make the science possible.     

The potential of destruction in art and science

ABSTRACT

Artist and researcher Neal White argues for the potential role of radical engagements in science by drawing on the work of pioneers of conceptual art: John Latham (1921–2006), Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) in the UK, and György Kepes (1906–2001) and Robert Smithson (1938–1973) in the US. Starting with destruction as a positive force in artistic practice, White examines the ideas developed by these artists as a conceptual framework for thinking through time, chemical process and event structures within the context of the Cold War. In further examining the social context and contemporary landscape of cultural forms servicing science in terms of the communication of ideas, or underpinning further a knowledge economy, he argues for artists to engage science on their own terms, through a renewal of radical practices. This would in turn create new and critically framed work of benefit to culture and society more generally.     

The promotion of phrenology in New South Wales, 1830–1850, at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts

ABSTRACT

Sydney, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, began as a penal colony in 1788. British phrenologists would later show an intense interest in this new settlement, aroused by questions raised by convict transportation and indigenous assimilation into European culture. A more sinister engagement involved the scientific trafficking of Aboriginal skulls. This practice was seen, however, not as body snatching but as a meaningful contribution to the progress of science. In 1833, a group of educated, influential men formed the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts (SMSA). This organization was successful where previously learned societies had failed. These men aimed to see the diffusion of scientific and useful knowledge throughout the colony and to enhance the lot of the working man (mechanics). They planned to achieve this aim with lectures, demonstration classes, and the development of a library and museum. Phrenology fitted perfectly into their curriculum. From 1838 to the late 1840s, many of Sydney Town’s prominent medical practitioners and other professionals delivered lectures promoting this “science.” However, interest in the study of phrenology at the SMSA waned from the 1850s, when itinerant phrenologists turned the practice into a popular entertainment.     

Communicating Science through the Performing Arts

Abstract

The author reviews over a decade of science and the arts programming he and his colleagues have produced and disseminated. The programs have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Physical Society, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and various foundations and corporations. The author gives detailed examples of using science and the arts to reach the public and students with respect to programming related to the play Copenhagen, the opera Doctor Atomic, the Science & the Arts Series, a major international conference on Communicating Science to the Public, and many other outreach efforts.     

Taking Direction: New Dramaturgies of Science from the Splice Symposium and the Performing Science Conference

Abstract

This short article responds to two recent conferences on performance and science: the Splice Symposium (Chimera Network/University of Notre Dame) and Performing Science (University of Lincoln). Rather than a conventional conference report, the author reflects on a selection of presentations in the light of issue one of ISR’s ‘theatre and science’ series.     

Scientists and the media: the struggle for legitimacy in climate change and conservation science

Abstract

Despite the uncertainties associated with forecasts of the possible negative effects of climate change on natural environments, such research is often widely reported in the news media. Here we review the presentation in the UK news media and on the internet of an academic study published in Nature, forecasting future global extinctions as a result of climate change. The results and conclusions of the study were widely misrepresented, especially in the news media, to make the consequences seem more catastrophic and the timescale shorter. Representations of the original article on the internet were more variable, with several sites ranked highly on popular search engines being overtly critical of the underlying science. We suggest that such polarised representations of environmental science are indicative of a 'struggle for legitimacy' between environmentalist and anti-environmentalist groups, with potential negative consequences for public trust in science.     

Science and Theology Diverse Resolutions of an Interdisciplinary Gap by the New Priesthood of Science

Abstract

In an age where the trend towards secularization has been slowed down, new religions and ideological movements are competing with the more traditional positions to be found in society. Those who are anxious to justify their own particular position share only one criterion for comparison with those holding other positions: a belief in the epistemological efficacy of science. A new priesthood of scientist has emerged to offer justification in the name of science for a variety of ideological positions and to explain to a bewildered public what the real relationship is between the various disciplines of science and those of theology or moral and political philosophy. This paper describes the variety of positions taken up by the new priesthood, typifying these as Fundamentalism, Orthodoxy; Liberalism, Modernism, Agnosticism and Atheism.     

Science War II: the shift from physics to biology as the field of struggle

Abstract

It is generally agreed that, in some sense, there have been 'science wars' for at least the past ten, perhaps even twenty, years. In fact, as I argue here, there have been two such wars, the second of which is ongoing. The first part of this paper is concerned with distinguishing the two science wars and marking the transition between them. The second part deals with the substantive issues arising from a key theatre in Science War II, namely evolution versus intelligent design. The third part concludes the paper with a brief proposal for regular monitoring of the state of science in society, perhaps anticipating the terms of engagement of any subsequent 'Science War III'.     

Art and science in the UK: a brief history and critical reflection

ABSTRACT

This paper begins by reviewing the historical construction of ‘SciArt’, and the way in which its supposed interdisciplinarity often shaded into science communication. Early discussions about the complementarity of art and science were conceived in terms of epistemology, notably the qualities of imagination and curiosity. The paper moves on to discuss how, during the current decade, Art and Science (A&S) discourse has altered due to changes in the cultural politics of both its constituent fields, emerging as a ‘transdiscipline’ characterized by ‘creativity’. Eighteen in-depth surveys with leading practitioners in A&S form a substantial part of the research material, yielding an evaluation of what the disciplinary, economic and cultural implications of this changed discourse may be. Though potentially angled towards the solution of ‘wicked’ problems, transdisciplinarity also sacrifices the specific critical expertise of art, fetishizes tech at the expense of science and selectively ignores institutional problems inherent in funding and power structures.     

Why we need a philosophy of engineering: a work in progress

Abstract

Engineering problem solving employs a contingency based form of reasoning that stands in sharp contrast to the necessity based model of rationality that has dominated Western philosophy since Plato and that underlies modern science. The concept 'necessity' is cognate with the concepts 'certainty', 'universality', 'abstractness' and 'theory'. Engineering by contrast is characterised by wilfulness, particularity, probability, concreteness and practice. The identification of rationality with necessity has impoverished our ability to apply reason effectively to action. This article locates the contingency based reasoning of engineering in a philosophical tradition extending from pre-Socratic philosophers to American pragmatism, and suggests how a contingency based philosophy of engineering might enable more effective technological action.     

Spatialities and the feeling of doing

Recent discussions of non-representational theory and expressive/sensuous embodied practice have provided new orientations for rethinking how people live and feel, and inform notions of spatialities and lay geographies. These arguments I develop in this paper through a consideration of an ethnography of recreational caravanning in the UK. I consider how spatialities may be developed in practice in relation to a refiguring of contexts and embodied semiotics.     

The Limits of Science and Trans-Science

Abstract

Many different limits to science have been identified, the most common being those between science and religion, or more generally between fact and value; between science and art; as well as the sociological limits imposed on science because it is becoming too large and unwieldy to be encompassed by a single mind. Here another realm is explored, lying beyond science: we call trans-science those questions which epistemologically are matters of fact, yet are beyond the proficiency of science. Trans-scientific questions consist of very rare occurrences and 'catastrophes' in the Thomian sense. It has been pointed out that unanswerable, trans-scientific questions are usually asked of science by policy makers. Consequently the scientist must concede that his proficiency is limited by this trans-scientific limit to science.