The humanities of healing, post-Covid: thoughts on a broader recovery. From the editorial:
When we do emerge from this pandemic, the world will be a different place, but we have the opportunity to build a more inclusive, kinder society. While scientists and medical professionals are central to physical recovery, it is those who specialise in the arts and humanities who will support and help us understand new cultural, societal and behavioural norms.
For example, we can learn lessons from our social history, as the world has faced pandemics before. Similarities are being drawn between our current reality and that of the roaring 20s, which followed in the wake of the Spanish influenza outbreak in 1918.
But the joy was short lived, as overspending and over-borrowing to make up for lost time contributed to the Great Depression. Historians can draw parallels between these occurrences and our present-day realities, and the more we identify and understand these patterns, the better our chances of realising the risks and opportunities of our situation and how best to proceed.
At a political level, those who have an arts and humanities background are creative problem solvers, critical thinkers, and are imaginative when it comes to finding solutions. Their work is often based around communities, and so they have a thorough understanding of ethics and collaboration. All of these aspects are vital components in good decision making and can be applied to coronavirus and beyond.
An understanding of ‘SHAPE’ (Social sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy) subjects is important at all life stages and has an important role to play in the development of our society and economy. And while STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) has become a household term, more needs to be done to recognise the value that the arts and humanities also bring to our lives and understanding of the world.
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H/t Rob Townsend (@rvthisted)
Not until those in the humanities get beyond speaking abstractly about CP Snow’s call for bridging the gap between the
Two Cultures – science and humanities – will any serious work be accomplished. CP Snow himself was both a scientist and novelist.
Those in the humanities need to finally get beyond their academic comfort zone and educate themselves on AI where the most
productive work on the historical lessons from pandemics for the post-Covid period is being conducted.
The Canadian AI firm BluDot predicted the Covid pandemic before it began. It presaged which countries would next
be infected by analyzing flight patterns. AI has also predicted the severity of the condition of Covid patients and guided
hospitals in prioritizing their resources. AI scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have introduced
technology to scan tens of thousands of research papers to identify and distill the most effective course of action in countering Covid.
It is AI that is also identifying the lessons of past pandemics and envisioning solutions like UVC lighting in post-Covid world.
Either those in the humanities will educate themselves on these developments in AI science and infuse their own learning — or they will continue to lament in abstraction, loitering in the split
between the the ’two cultures’ of science and humanities.
Dr. G. Heath King