Blog 9

The two authors, Steven Pinker and Jonah Lehrer, both argued their views on how science should be integrated with the arts and how the arts could ultimately prompt new discoveries to be made within the field of science. Pinker in his article “Science is Not Your Enemy” described the idea of how science is necessary for society to find out the complex processes of life. Also, he mentions this issue by stating, “The commitment to intelligibility is not a matter of brute faith, but gradually validates itself more and more of the world becomes explicable in scientific terms” (Pinker 4).  In this quote, he describes how scientists are able to discover more and more about the world and could help humanity explain things that we couldn’t before. These complex discoveries could be made by scientists with the help of other influences such as art. Lehrer also believed that incorporating science with the arts is an essential way that new topics for discoveries are made. He even went to the lengths that even metaphors could help lead to new ideas. He states, “The power of a metaphor is that it allows scientists to imagine the abstract concept in concrete terms so that they can grasp the implications of their mathematical equations. The world of our ideas is framed by the only world we know” (Lehrer 5).  He implies that the use of metaphors has allowed humanity to advance this far and making these simple comparisons has led to many new discoveries to be made. They both agree that science and the arts could help answer complex questions that we have not been able to answer yet and could help society advance.

Pinker connection

In the future, I have not yet decided whether I want to become a dentist or an optometrist, but I know that both of these fields will be difficult and will involve utilizing many different ways of grasping the topics like using sculptures, diagrams, and comparisons to fully understand these topics. “A consilience with science offers the humanities countless possibilities for innovation in understanding. Art, culture, and society are products of human brains” (Pinker 10). Using comparisons and metaphors will be very important to me as I continue to advance through my education and hope that they will be taught to me to simplify complex topics in my science classes. This is already starting to occur in my biology class where my professor always tries to create comparisons or analogies that are related to the topics we are learning. For example, he related the ideas of potential and kinetic energy in the cell to a drawing of a strength tester carnival game so that we would be able to easily understand the topic by relating it to something we already know. I hope that I will continue to make these connections and comparisons to aid my education in the future.