On the Relationship Between Science and Humanities, John Gray

• published: 09 Jun 2014
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COPERNICUS FESTIVAL, May 6-11, 2014, Kraków http://www.copernicusfestival.com John Gray discusses the topic of relations between the sciences and humanities, which is of great intrinsic importance all over the world. He argues that it is a mistake to think that social science can ever (or should) be modeled on natural sciences. They are different. They apply different types of phenomena - human beings are not machines, however complicated or unpredictable. They have reason for what they do, they are govern by their view of the world, their (right or wrong) beliefs. And the attempt to model human action on a kind of methodology which is derived from natural science is an error. Gray provides three examples. The first is economy or rather economism, which is an attempt to model all of human behavior on economic exchanges or transactions. He argues that economism doesn't even work when applied to economic activity -- it is a mistaken approach even to the marketplace, because marketplace is govern by beliefs, culture understanding and irrationality. The second idea is modernization (some philosophers called it modernity), according to which all societies as they become more modern, become more similar as well as more liberal and democratic. He thinks that it is a mistake too -- societies can become more modern and more different and a particular society can be highly modern and highly barbaric. Finally, he talks about intellectual suppression of religion. He noted that he isn't religious person himself. By intellectual suppression of religion he doesn't mean an atheism or deny of religious beliefs. It is a way, in which religious concepts and categories have been excluded from various disciplines. Those categories reappeared in secular forms. According to Grey much secular thinking consist of repressed religion. *** John Gray is an English political philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas. He retired as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray has written several influential books, including False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (1998), which argues that free market globalization is an unstable Enlightenment project currently in the process of disintegration, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2003), which attacks philosophical humanism, a worldview which Gray sees as originating in religious ideologies, and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007), a critique of utopian thinking in the modern world. Gray sees volition, and hence morality, as an illusion, and portrays humanity as a ravenous species engaged in wiping out other forms of life. He writes that 'humans ... cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them.'