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Because We Are Digital
crossing the boundaries
page 2 of 7HUMANISM AND THE LIBERAL ARTS The computer has value only as it enhances that which makes us human. Most likely this is our ability to learn or rather to learn how to learn - the knack to order, manage and re-configure that which we know. Our humanity lies in our ability to transmit from one to another allowing others to gain access to successful formulations and articulations which further our notion of being. This is what builds culture - the accumulated conceptual riches brought through the history of civilization. We use the Liberal Arts to understanding these riches. They treat the fields of knowledge in a balanced and equal manner, emphasizing the commonality of human experience and its expression within its diverse fields. A student of the liberal arts creates meaning by weaving a nurturing blanket from the common threads that hold the fields together, rather than focusing on the seams which set them apart. This balance between fields of knowledge, and search for commonality is precisely what is furthered by a judicious use of multimedia digital technology. Thinkers of the Enlightenment rediscovered patterns of thinking which today are embodied in this technology. Francis Bacon followed the Renaissance masters as a model of the creative interlocutor, connected the spirit of the Enlightenment with the great Age of Reason. Through his methodology of inductive reasoning he sought to free intelligence from dogma which constrained and limited our understanding of the greater rational scheme of the world. In Novum Organu in 1623, he argues not only for scientific methodology, but for its integration with the arts and the humanities. In inductive reasoning, which is the accumulation of information and the detection of pattern therein, is the commonality of procedures that dispels notions of a priori preconception. His philosophies opened the field of human inquiry to an ever-expanding body of knowledge. Francis Bacon's life rooted in philosophy, politics and the creative art of writing is exemplary of methodological inquiry furthering the connectedness of our human interest. Anna Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was the visual arts analogue to Bacon. Through her use of the evolving technologies of optical magnification and mechanical reproduction she was able to further humanist values and the ideals of the Enlightenment. Born to a family of book makers, she took at an early age to observing and sketching insects. She would take the observational skills learned as a child and go on to publish two major works : Raupen and Metamorphosis, both editions of copperplate prints. In these works, she depicts the insect and plant life of Europe and Surinam to the emerging intellectual class of the period. Merian was unique among botanists of her age. She depicted insects and plants not as specimens, but rather creatures as intricately and intimately involved in the cycle of life. She was not interested in then conventional classification schemes or in cabinets of wonder which present sterile specimens. In fact, she told one potential collaborator to stop sending her dead insects - she was only interested in "the formation, propagation, and metamorphosis of creatures." Prior to the 17th century, our understanding of the world was formed by a combination of myth and doctrine. During the Enlightenment, the West found a new fascination with the real, and developed ways of thinking and the technology to explore the world. Merian was inspired by the new optical technologies of her time; the compound microscope came about in the 1660s and Athanasius Kirchner published his book Ars manga lucis et ubmrae, which discussed the camera obscura as a tool for observation and illustration. In her imaginative use of these tools, Merian was an artist who responded to Enlightenment discourse about knowledge and the natural world, and effortlessly crossed boundaries. The fruits of scientific methodology fathered by such as Bacon, Merian, and the great thinkers of the Age of Reason brought forth the Industrial Age. In this new age, the ever-expanding fields of knowledge required specialization at the expense of more universally learned individuals. |
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This site ©2003 Charles H. Traub and Jonathan Lipkin. Maintained by webmaster@intherealmofthecircuit.com. | |
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