Culture: one and hybrid

In his famous lecture on “Two Cultures,” CP Snow lamented the great divide that separates two great areas of human intellectual activity, “science” and the “arts.” Snow argued that professionals in both areas should build bridges between them, to promote the progress of human knowledge and benefit society as a whole. And in this, finally, we are, or try to be, in what the businessman and critic John Brockman called in 1995 the third culture, or what we could now call hybrid culture , which goes further than that relatively recent separation between what They are two forms of knowledge. It is worth remembering that in the unique culture – so typical of Renaissance Europe – the philosophers were mathematicians and physicists and these were philosophers. Isaac Newton, father of modern physics, considered himself essentially a philosopher.

The separation occurred later

As a result of what Ortega y Gasset called the “barbarism of specialization,” which becomes inevitable in the face of the growing complexity of the subjects. Very few can afford to Buy Phone Number List be transversal, although there should be a basic transversal university education, as the Spanish philosopher proposed in his Mission of the University , for a basically common first year. And prevent the cut between types of culture from occurring so early, in high school. Engineers’ concerns with ethics and other issues are growing, which is being responded to with a growing number of courses on these subjects in their schools. The ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a hot topic not only for experts, but also for governments.

This hybridization is clear in the conversations

With renowned scientists, technologists, humanists and artists, in the dialogues between disciplines, in the book by Adolfo Plasencia, defender of the “third culture”, From neurons to galaxies (2021), for which Research is fast-moving, intellectually hybrid, and scientifically promiscuous. Transversality Chine Directory rather than occurs more frequently in teams of people than in individuals. Many scientific and technological research, including economic or political management methods, are transdisciplinary, requiring experts from various disciplines working together and generating collective intelligence, and yes, in a certain way collective culture that goes beyond the interdisciplinary. This hybridization must improve the relationship between the university and research centers, in cooperation with companies and better jointly prepare the skills inherent to the new professions that emerge from technological frontiers and in the market.

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