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When the Science is Uncertain, Turn to the Humanities

Posted on June 15, 2020 by David

On June 17, 2020 from 1pm to 2pm. Eastern Time I will be giving a TED-style talk and hosting a discussion with i4j. The password is i4jcommunity. i4j Innovation for Jobs is a global leadership forum organized by the IIIJ Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with headquarters in Silicon Valley.

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when there was little data, world experts conducted what can be thought of as an analogical inquiry, using the liberal arts. They consulted historians who had studied the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 or the Black Death in medieval times. They look for other coronaviruses that might be comparable, like SARS and MERS. They began to compare experiences in different countries with similar circumstances. They searched for metaphors and analogies, even fiction (e.g. Albert Camus, The Plague) that might be relevant. Only once data was available could they claim to be ‘guided by science’ and ‘evidence-based’. In this presentation I suggest that analogical inquiry is at the root of all learning in conditions of uncertainty a.k.a. ‘life’. As information becomes available, abstraction and analytical thinking allow us humans to turn uncertainty into risk that can be managed. But it all begins (and ends) in uncertainty….