Both Art and Engineering - Both Music and Science
photo: Van Gogh Museum
It was love at first sight of Van Gogh’s boots—I stared at the painting in the Rijksmuseum until they fit me perfectly. My father framed the print, rubbing the wood with shoe polish, silently understanding. Moving with me from place to place, it now hangs over the fireplace (just checked). A nineteenth-century Dutch painter gave me my most comfortable, comforting shoes.
“During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third,” writes Nathan Heller in “The End of the English Major.” While spending time with faculty and students at Arizona State University and Harvard, Heller explores and details “free falling humanities enrollment nationally.” STEM majors soar, students confident their jobs guaranteed in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Wait. What about Van Gogh’s boots? Will students see them in art books and virtual tours of museums?
How did we arrive at this narrowing, restrictive view of education? We live in an age in which we quite often deliberately, though perhaps unknowingly, limit ourselves. It must be either this or that. Simple. The quickest and easiest path, go for it. But, how about the liberating rewards that come from seeking both this and that? Why not make the educational goal to innovate and incorporate course offerings, rather than reduce and eliminate them? For example, ASU offers a new interdisciplinary major in “Culture, Technology, and Environment.” Both culture and technology. Lacing up our boots, we ramp up our imagining and reimagining, starting over and creating, expanding and evolving, experimenting and adjusting, listening to others and challenging ourselves. Interdisciplinary and ongoing, online and in person. Intrigued students can sign up for crossover classes aplenty, such as “Literature and Science.”
Imagine where investment in the humanities, however it looks, advances us generations from now. Heller’s article concludes: “Everyone agrees that the long arc of higher education must bend toward openness and democratization. And universities, in an imperfect but forward-inching way, are achieving the dream.” Study International touts many inarguable reasons why, and excellent ways to, secure the enrichment found in the liberal arts and humanities.
Scientists, as you seek discoveries in nuclear thermodynamics, what precedents are you considering when you imagine where your knowledge could lead? Computer programmers, as you create that platform, are you anticipating how it might be abused? Engineers, you can build it, but should you build it there and with that design and those materials? Statisticians, what’s your motivation for gathering this compelling data, and how are you going to disseminate it?
Carl Safina, Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University, writes in his Prologue to Becoming Wild: “ A flock of scarlet macaws bursts from the deep rainforest like flaming comets, several dozen big, bright birds with streaming tails and hot colors…. A little chimpanzee rides on his mother’s back to a water hole…. Meanwhile, in tropical water two miles deep, a defenseless infant sperm whale waits at the warm, sunlit surface while her mother hunts squid in night-black frigid water thousands of feet below.” Both nature and humanity. Another professor meticulously chalked Beethoven’s symphony on all three boards before my first college chemistry class. There when we walked into the classroom on the first day, the notes surrounded us all semester. The natural world, its atoms often playing along with Beethoven, sparked alive. Both music and science.
“Dear March—Come In,” Emily Dickinson gladly welcomes her winded monthly visitor. “The Maples never knew that you were coming - / I declare – how Red their Faces grew.” Dickinson senses the next knock of April at our doors, as does poet Toi Derricotte. Ah. We mesh our breaths with that of “Cherry Blossoms,” gazing up through the branches to the sky. Right here, let’s anchor our card table for “linens, candles, / a picnic basket and wine.” Cup your ears. Listen to the whispery blossomed reminder of our “ancient beauty.”
In bluegrass harmony The Steel Wheels echo that same beauty of “the songs from the ancients.” Where to plant roots? Wichita—Pittsburgh—Colorado? “Rescue Me, Virginia,” the quartet decides. “In all the miles that I’ve traveled, it’s / good to finally find myself at home.” Old boots snuggle in home’s dirt. Heel—toe. Settle—joy.
What an indescribable pleasure, letting the film “Everything Everywhere All At Once” take you far away and bring you home at last. Looking out from our window sills, we dance in unending possibility. “This Is A Life”—indeed, “This is our life.” Mitski and David Byrne sing of (“not only what we’ve known”), but also…. Both “slow and sudden miracles.” Both instant and eternal.