[뉴욕타임스로 논술을 잡아라]The hubris of the humanities

■ 칼럼

The best argument * against “intelligent design” 1) has always been humanity itself. At a time when only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and only 13 percent know what a molecule is, we're an argument at best for “mediocre * design.”

But put aside the evolution debate for a moment. It's only a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: a profound * illiteracy about science and math as a whole.

One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.

The problem isn't just inadequate science (and math) teaching in the schools, however. A larger problem is the arrogance of the liberal arts, the cultural snootiness of, of well, of people like me -- and probably you.

What do I mean by that? In the U.S. and most of the Western world, it's considered barbaric in educated circles to be unfamiliar with Plato 2) or Monet 3) or Dickens 4), but quite natural to be oblivious of quarks * and chi-squares. * A century ago, Einstein published his first paper on relativity - making 1905 as important a milestone for world history as 1066 5) or 1789 6)- but relativity has yet to filter into the consciousness of otherwise educated people.

“The great edifice * of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had,” C. P. Snow wrote in his classic essay, “The Two Cultures.” 7)

The counterargument is that we can always hire technicians in Bangalore 8), while it's Shakespeare and Goethe who teach us the values we need to harness science for humanity. There's something to that. If President Bush were about to attack Iraq all over again, he would be better off * reading Sophocles 9) - to appreciate the dangers of hubris - than studying the science of explosives.

But don't pin too much faith on the civilizing influence of a liberal education: the officers of the Third Reich 10) were steeped in Kant and Goethe. And similar arguments were used in past centuries to assert that all a student needed was Greek, Latin and familiarity with the Bible - or, in China, to argue that all the elites needed were the Confucian classics.

Without some fluency in science and math, we'll simply be left behind in the same way that Ming Dynasty Chinese scholars were. Increasingly, we face public policy issues - avian flu, stem cells - that require some knowledge of scientific methods, yet the present Congress contains 218 lawyers, 12 doctors and 3 biologists. In terms of the skills we need for the 21st century, we're Shakespeare-quoting Philistines *.

A year ago, I wanted to ornament a column with a complex equation, so, as a math ninny * myself, I looked around the Times newsroom for anyone who could verify that it was correct. Now, you can't turn around in the Times newsroom without bumping into polyglots * who come and go talking of Michelangelo. But it took forever to turn up someone confident in his calculus -- in the science section.

So Pogo 11) was right.

This disregard for science already hurts us. The U.S. has bungled research on stem cells, perhaps partly because Mr. Bush didn't realize how restrictive his curb on research funds would be. And we're risking our planet's future because our leaders are frozen in the headlights of climate change.

In this century, one of the most complex choices we will make will be what tinkering to allow with human genes, to “improve” the human species. How can our leaders decide that issue if they barely know what DNA is?

Intellectuals have focused on the challenge from the right, which has led to a drop in the public acceptance of evolution in the U.S. over the last 20 years, to 40 percent from 45 percent. Jon Miller, a professor at the Northwestern University medical school who has tracked attitudes toward evolution in 34 countries, says Turkey is the only one with less support for evolution than the U.S.

It's true that antagonism * to science seems peculiarly American. The European right, for example, frets about taxes and immigration, but not about evolution.

But there's an even larger challenge than anti-intellectualism. And that's the skewed intellectualism of those who believe that a person can become sophisticated * on a diet of * poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes. That's the hubris of the humanities.

■ 돋보기 - 인문학이 왜 오만한지, 오만의 위험성이 무엇인지 살펴보세요

이 칼럼은 ‘인문학의 오만’이라는 제목부터 시사적입니다. 인문학이 왜 오만한지, 인문학의 오만이 어떤 위험성을 안고 있는지를 지적한 칼럼입니다.

미국에서나 한국에서나 정부의 정책을 수립하는 공무원, 국회에서 법률을 제정하는 의원, 그리고 언론인의 대다수가 인문계 출신입니다. 이에 비해 중국의 지도층에는 이공계 출신이 많습니다. 중국경제가 고속 성장하는 원인을 거기에서 찾기도 합니다. 정책 결정자들이 수학과학 문맹이기 때문에 줄기세포 연구, 유전자 조작, 조류 독감, 지구 온난화 같은 문제에서 시의적절한 결론을 내리는 데 실패할 우려가 있다고 필자는 지적하고 있습니다. 황우석 사건도 이런 관점에서 바라볼 여지가 있습니다.

미국에서는 기독교 근본주의자들이 학교에서 진화론을 가르치는 것을 반대하고 있습니다. 성경을 문자 그대로 해석해 창조론이 옳다고 믿는 것이죠. 과학자들은 과학과 종교의 싸움에서 늘 과학이 이겨 왔다고 말합니다. 지동설을 주장한 갈릴레오의 종교 재판이 대표적인 사례라고 할 수 있지요.

인문계 학생들에게 수학 과학 교육이 필요한 이유, 과학과 종교, 창조론과 진화론의 관계에 대해 논술을 써보도록 하기 바랍니다.

황호택 논설위원

☞자세한 주해는 이지논술 사이트를 참조하세요.