• The (Third Culture)… But

The (Third Culture)… But

The echoes of the expanded seminar which Al-Arabi conducted under the title of "The West in Arab Eyes are still resounding, not only in terms of the media and the cultural press, but also in the essence of the subjects which have emerged as priorities worthy of discussion in today s world with regard to the West, whose influential position on our planet cannot be ignored.

Among these subjects, arises the term the Third Culture, which reflects the preoccupation of the West with the effects of scientific and technological progress for the past fifty or so years. Many of us are still ruminating on the culture of attack and retreat in spite of the changed times. The Third Culture is a term that is almost unknown in the Arab cultural arena, although it is serious and its implications are a matter of urgency. It is something that must not be neglected or allowed to pass without examining and reviewing it.

In the Talk of the Month last October, I dealt with the subject of scientific and technological education" as a missing link in the chain of Arab education, which no one can dispute is in a state of crisis. When I chose to deal with the subject with the logic of comparison with others, particularly Israel, and made the subtitle Self-Awakening through the Pain of Comparison, I had not imagined that the comparison would be so painful. Many friends, who are intellectuals, and dear readers, became aware of how horrifying the facts and figures of the comparison are which indicate our scientific shortcoming. It is a shortcoming that harms ourselves, which places us in the position of the weakest without any real justification. Those whom we are confronting are not superior to us in their physiognomy or nature, on the contrary the whole matter is due to reasons which we have neglected for a long time, and I hope we will not ignore them forever. Thus I find myself impelled to continue to inflict this pain, dreaming of the minimum contribution possible for the sake of self-awakening to the facts of comparison with others. And the others this time are not confined to those whom we are confronting within our Arab region, but rather those who look down on us with their scientific progress from the verandahs of the West and the windows of the North. We look at it in feigned impotence, or consumers idleness, and it is the source of this new cultural education around which our talk centers this month.

I have talked about scientific and technological education before, stressing its importance and seriousness to close the gap between ourselves and others. And I would like to talk today about the culture of science and technology, which is now being referred to by the term Third Culture as an indication of a serious and actual change in the concept of culture and the definition of an intellectual. This of necessity leads us to wonder about the nature of the elite which is conducting the process of introducing this culture which is a reality and a necessity. It is an elite referred to by definition as the Third Culture Thinkers.

The new factor, from the angle of what we are accustomed to in cultural history, is that this Third Culture and its thinkers are no longer a kind of luxury for the traditional cultural elite, the conversation of salons and the snobbery of ivory towers. On the contrary, from examination and experiment, it has become a necessity of existence in the world today, and a necessity for living in a way that is suitable, or ought to be suitable, for a human being at the outset of the third millennium and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Since this is so, there is no way to avoid the need to go back to self-evident truths to investigate the nature of this Third Culture and its thinkers, and what is the significance of their presence, their absence or exclusion from our Arab arena. I also do not fail to warn against continuing to regard the Third Culture as a comprehensive substitute for the whole variety of human cultures, without which this "Third Culture" itself will become like magic which boomerangs on the magician. This is a matter to which I will come back, even if I prefer to return to discussion of this Third Culture itself. It has a special friendship with me, and general meanings.

All Over Again

Nearly three years ago the title of a book caught my eye among the pages introducing important books in the foreign periodicals. The main title was The Third Culture. Several months later a good friend, who is one of those who look at the West from civilized Arab eyes and return from their trips to this West with all the new provisions for minds thirsty for new knowledge, gave me this book. No sooner had I looked through it that I realized that it is extremely important to us Arabs, from the position that the real gap between us and the others from the political North (and whatever peoples of the East and South who follow in their footsteps) is a gap in scientific progress and its new applications in technology which are manifested in knowledge.

I promoted this book so it was presented on the pages of Al Arabi. This presentation was published in the issue of November 2003, a month after the publication of the editorial in the October issue to which I have referred. Thus in two successive months, science and technology were the central issue in the alerting to one of the defects in our education and culture. But the enthusiastic reactions which I have observed make me review the concept of this Third Culture with a critical rather than a welcoming logic. So I will say what importance and repercussions this concept has, and mention what I believe are the things one should guard against and the reservations associated with it.

From Disavowal to Glorification

In 1959 the Cambridge University Press published a book by C.P. Snow entitled The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. The essence of this book is the statement that there are two cultures one of which is linked to science and the other to the humanities. The book faced widespread criticism for considering that science is one of the mainstays of culture. This may have been what led Snow to republish his book in 1962, adding to it a new article which does not say that there are two cultures as he did previously but rather expects the emergence of a third culture based on contact between literary intellectuals and scientists. Hardly had a few years passed than the Cambridge University Press produced a book by John Brockman entitled The Third Culture, and it was reprinted several times after that until the latest and most famous edition whose fame became widespread recently. It has a new subtitle which indicates that this Third Culture is the helper of the revolution of science and technology. The author s point of view was indeed new, and shocking to hose who had closed the door of culture on the humanities, and did not allow science to be even associated with the concept of culture. He cut off the way even to the compromise solution that would combine the data of science and the re-presentation of these data to the public by intellectuals of the humanities like literature, the arts, philosophy, the social sciences and others. He gave the scientists themselves the right to present this new culture linked to science to the public directly. This leap had its logical justifications, namely that science particularly at the heights to which it has reached recently is no longer expressive of intuitive realization, but has become associated with a special method of thinking which contradicts intuitive thinking, which is increasingly likely to commit massive errors when it is applied to problems that require a strict quantitative system of thinking, as in the sphere of science. Many of those who belong to science and scientific culture agree with this observation, in opinion and action. Louis Wolpert, in his book The Unnatural Nature of Science which has been translated into Arabic by Dr. Samir Hanna Sadiq, says that scientific society has now become dependent on the explanation of realms of its work to the public, after the scientists have given up the idea of skepticism in the process of simplifying science. This allegation was not far from the actual truth, since recent years have witnessed a noticeable emergence of books on the culture of science, which are presented by eminent scientists. Their books have come to compete with popular novels to win the title of the world’s bestselling book, like A Brief History of the Age, Brave New World, How We Die and other books which have made their authors stars with their broad public, through various publication and information media.

The Third Culture", therefore, is the scientific culture presented by scientists or people who work in science. Regardless of the name which needs to be reconsidered because of its implied meaning of alienation from a first and second culture which preceded it or a fourth and fifth which follow it, as well as other suggestions of numbering which are not without danger, for scientists and those who work in science to apply themselves to presenting a culture of scientific knowledge and its technological applications, naturally is an important and valuable step added to one of the mainstays of culture. It is no longer possible for modern human beings, who live in the age of information technology, the communications revolution and astonishing discoveries in the depths of the living cell and the horizons of the expansive universe, to be cultured without knowledge in which there is sufficient depth about what is going on in the fields of science and its applications, which have reached the remotest points of our planet, wherever there is human life, even in the most backward environments in the world. As Isaac Asimov says, a public which does not understand how science works can easily fall victim to the ignorant who make fun of what they do not know, or to people with slogans who claim that today s scientists are mercenaries in the service of the military.

And What Is the Benefit, or the Profit?

Beyond what Asimov said, the spreading of scientific culture with precision and clarity by those who know about science stops only at the limits of completion of a modern intellectual's system of knowledge. Indeed, it constitutes a real return for human development and modern evolution in any society that is aware of the need to spread this scientific culture among its members.

The spreading of scientific culture like the spreading of culture in general is a contribution to polishing and refining human beings through the action of knowledge. Also awareness of it in the world in which we are living, in terms of time and place, will increase the strength of their vision and the precision of their insight, in moving towards new and more exalted positions in the life that they live. Add to this individual influence general influences to which Louis Wolpert refers in his statement that the hope for the public to understand science is that it will lead to a more correct ability to take decisions on questions like the environment, genetic engineering and other important subjects.

Perhaps this vision directly calls to mind the image of Arab decision-makers. It is self-evident that providing them with scientific culture outside their professional areas of specialization related to administration and politics, would make these decisions more correct in future, since scientific culture gives insight into the future. This has logical results and tangible foundations regarding the negative and positive effects of any decision whose implementation extends from the present to the future. We would not be surprised by projects which are brilliant today in their outward appearance and turn into a major curse tomorrow, with regard to either the environment or humanity or economic or social patterns.

The spread of scientific culture is a guarantee for the protection of society from the misuses of science and their consequences, particularly in their consumer implications.

The exploitation of scientific culture in human development is an element whose benefits exceed other investments, since they look to the future directly through the young ones of the present. There is no doubt that a child or youth who has been provided with scientific culture from a tender age will be able to choose the field of specialization which is suited to his own talents and abilities, and make the most correct decision on his direction. He will give more successfully, the returns from him will be more harmonious and satisfying, and he will give more to his society, and what he produces will be more and of higher value.

All this is excellent, and that is indisputable. This Third Culture" is the dimension of knowledge behind the material motive force of the modern life that we live, of science, but excessive enthusiasm for this culture can lead to negligence that harms the overall cultural content necessary for individual human beings and for their social fabric.

Precautions and Dangers

The fear of the tyranny of science, and hence the tyranny of scientific culture or the "Third Culture, is an old fear. Dr. H. Lawrence expresses it by saying that knowledge has killed the sun, and made it into a ball of fire full of black spots. This world of intellect and science is the barren, dry world in which the abstract intellect lives.

In this pattern, Vaclav Havel says that modern science abolishes the main profound foundations of our world, and considers them mere imagination. Science has become the sole legal guardian and presumptuous judge of all facts. Humanity thought that he could explain nature and control it. The result was that he destroyed it and lost his right to inherit it.

The last intimation of Einstein, although it was decades away from our present moment, was an intelligent and correct one, just as if it saw what we see today. From the most arrogant of scientists to an ordinary person who watches those scientific documentary films on the television screen in astonishment, we are all increasingly surprised whenever modern science reveals a new page which had been unopened and unknown before. Our astonishment increases with the landing of the first man-made spacecraft to send photographs of Mars, our astonishment increases when we see the results of genetic engineering in cloning, and our astonishment increases when we see time disintegrating in front of Ahmed Zuweil s laser camera, and it arrives at the femtosecond which in turn increasingly disintegrates.

Modern science is astonishing and full of magic which resembles the magic of art, indeed there are those who believe that scientific inventiveness and artistic inventiveness have a single creative nature, because they are products of the human imagination. The German scientist Max Planck says that a scientist must have an indomitable imagination, since new ideas are not born from deduction, but from a creative imagination.

This is what Jacob Bronowski also repeats in his book The Commonsense of Science, in which he says that the discoveries of science and works of art are explorations, indeed explosions which have an inner similarity. A discoverer or an artist present two faces of nature which are joined to each other. This is the process of creativity in inventive science and art

All this is fine, and hardly any thinking minds will disagree about it. But we caution and warn against contenting oneself with scientific culture as a sole and all-inclusive source of culture. While this may enrich the contemporary scientific mind a little or a great deal, this enrichment will remain premature and will rapidly turn back on itself with manifestations of mental impoverishment as a result of cultural abbreviation.

The Humanities

Excessive exaggeration in evaluating the role of this Third Culture, among those who feel the wretchedness of the political and economic position in the world of today, as a result of scientific and technological backwardness, is an invalidation of the wisdom of development, indeed of scientific development itself. Cultural history, including the history of science, informs us that the culture of literature, art and human knowledge in its various forms usually paved the way for leaps forward in the realm of scientific discoveries and their applications. I cite as evidence here what is written in J.G. Crowther s book A Short History of Science on the subject of the birth and rise of modern science. He points out that the foundations of modern science were established thanks to urban society which grew up during the age of the Renaissance, and developed to start with in the cities of Italy. Life in those cities was subject to the increasing domination of moneychangers, merchants and professional men, who introduced improvements to their various techniques. The growth of wealth had numerous effects, including two effects of great importance, namely that the profits of trade and manufacturing made people more enthusiastic about improving their basic technical processes, and the growing wealth allowed more free time to contemplate other natural and industrial processes. At the beginning their attention was turned to antiquities and literature. They excavated for Greek and Roman antiquities, and discovered statues and flower vases.

This was the beginning of the age of the Renaissance, the age when Europe moved from the Middle Ages to the modern ages, through the cultural and intellectual currents which appeared initially in Italy in the fourteenth century, until it reached the climax of its flowering in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This renaissance traveled from Italy to France, Spain, Germany and England. In these early beginnings of the rise of Europe, the greatest personalities of the age of the Renaissance were outstanding artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Thus culture, in its aesthetic visions in art, architecture, music and the humanities, was the true preparation for the comprehensive advances in Europe and the West in general. Recent scientific advance, and the scientific culture accompanying it or the Third Culture, were simply the last features of this advance.

Let the Third Culture be one of the aims of the hoped-for Arab advance, but it must not be the only form of culture that should be emphasized. Culture is a broad spectrum of colors, and one must begin with progress and beauty, and continue to aspire to progress and beauty. Hence the humanities must not be neglected. They are not only one of the preconditions for the occurrence of the scientific and non-scientific renaissance, they are also a safety valve so that any renaissance will keep its human face, and thus for this renaissance to be worthy to continue its effective life for the benefit of humanity, and for the longest and best time possible.

Sulaiman Al-Askary

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