Poetry lessons: bridging the chasm between the sciences and the humanities - engineering and science professors at Cornell University take a poetry course

Science News, Dec 22, 1990 by Ivars Peterson

But Wetherbee also warns that the age difference between these special students and typical undergraduates may limit the experiment's applicability to teaching in the humanities. "It seems to me ... that where scientific information of an objective kind is in question, all beginners are pretty much on the same footing, whether they are 19 or 45," he says. "But in the case of literature, the difference between 19 and 45 fundamentally affects a reader's approach to the material."

Whereas the faculty-students more readily appreciated the social and psychological situations of Chaucer's characters -- whose ages were comparable to their own -- they were in some ways less flexible than a junior-year class would have been in adapting to the peculiar demands of literary study, such as constructing an argument to support a particular viewpoint. Whetherbee says. Thus, lessons learned about pedagogy when science professors study the humanities may not be as relevant to Tobias' study as lessons learned when humanities professors study science.

What did the participants learn about scholarship in the humanities?

"I'm concerned that people incorrectly think of the humanities as cultural fluff rather than as a way of understanding the real world, the way science is," Abel says. "I was hoping to dispel some of that. I'm not sure we did."

"I think the rigor and sophistication came through," Tobias says. "What didn't come through is whether there is any truth in the humanities."

Nonetheless, it was a valuable experience for the participants, Wetherbee says. "It is very salutary for scientists to be teased, even baited, by having to try to engage the elusive kinds of knowledge accessible through imaginative literature," he maintains.

The experiment as a whole could serve as a model for increasing interaction among faculty members in diverse disciplines. "It has always struck me that our students are having a more interdisciplinary experience than we are," Tobias says. "It's a natural activity for a faculty day or weekend ... to stir the pot and get faculty to talk about core curricula."

Adds Parrish, "I wouldn't mind sitting at the feet of some scientists to see how they live."