An article written by Natalie Angier entitled: "Curriculum Designed to Unite Art and Science", appeared in the The New York Times on May 27, 2008.
She described what may be the first practical attempt to establish a program of studies in an academic institution devoted to the interaction of the two erstwhile separate disciplines: science and technology on the one hand and the arts and humanities on the other. The number of platforms for bringing the two together has been sporadic at most but in recent years there have been attempts to demonstrate how the two interact. Most noteworthy is the journal "Leonardo" (a loner in the field but now celebrating its 40th anniversary!), the TED Talks and SIGGRAPH, all available on the Web. And there are now others. But the program she describes appears to be unique.
In reference to the famous lecture on "Two Cultures" delivered some 50 years ago
(!) by C.P.Snow, Angier underlines his observation on the mutual " hostility" and "incomprehension " to be found between the sciences and the arts.
She observes that at present there are nevertheless a few scholars who "... believe that the cultural chasm can be bridged and the sciences and the humanities united into a powerful new discipline that would apply the strengths of both mindsets, the quantitative and qualitative, to a wide array of problems. Among the most ambitious of these exercises in fusion thinking is a program under development at Binghamton University in New York called the New Humanities Initiative".
Angier reports that: "Jointly conceived by David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology, and Leslie Heywood, a professor of English, the program is intended to build on some of the themes explored in Dr. Wilson's evolutionary studies program, which has proved enormously popular with science and nonscience majors alike, and which he describes in the recently published "Evolution for Everyone." In Dr. Wilson's view, evolutionary biology is a discipline that, to be done right, demands a crossover approach, the capacity to think in narrative and abstract terms simultaneously, so why not use it as a template for emulsifying the two cultures generally?
As he and Dr. Heywood envision the program, courses under the New Humanities rubric would be offered campuswide, in any number of departments, including history, literature, philosophy, sociology, law and business. The students would be introduced to basic scientific tools like statistics and experimental design and to liberal arts staples ..."
As Dr. Wilson is quoted in the article: "... You can study music, dance, narrative storytelling and artmaking scientifically, and you can conclude that yes, they're deeply biologically driven, they're essential to our species, but there would still be something missing," he said, "and that thing is an appreciation for the work itself, a true understanding of its meaning in its culture and context.
Other researchers who have reviewed the program prospectus have expressed their enthusiasm, among them George Levine, an emeritus professor of English at Rutgers University, a distinguished scholar in residence at New York University and author of "Darwin Loves You." Natalie Angier quotes Prof. Levine: "When you maximize the importance of biological forces and minimize culture, you get something that doesn't tell you a whole lot about the particularities of literature," Dr. Levine said. "What you end up with, as far as I'm concerned, is banality." Reading the New Humanities proposal, by contrast, "I was struck by how it absolutely refused the simple dichotomy," he said. "There is a kind of basic illiteracy on both sides," he added, "and I find it a thrilling idea that people might be made to take pleasure in crossing the border."