Editorial
From Nutty Professor to Buddy Love – Personality types in modern science
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2007; 68: 243-244.
Summary
People often suggest that scientists should have a specific personality type, usually conscientious and self-critical. But this is a mistake. Science as a social system needs to be conscientious and self-critical, but scientists as people do not necessarily have to conform to that stereotype. Since science works by a process of selection, it makes sense to have a wide range of personalities in science. It takes all types. However, the selection pressures within science have changed over recent decades. In the past, a successful scientist often resembled the white-coated, bespectacled and introverted Nutty Professor in Jerry Lewis’s movie of that name. But the modern science superstar is more like the Nutty Professor’s alter ego, nightclub singer ‘Buddy Love’: a sharp-suited, good-looking and charismatic charmer. While Nutty was dull but impartial, Buddy is compelling but self-seeking. Our attitude towards public scientific pronouncements should be adjusted accordingly.
The benefit of having all sorts of personality types in science is a theme of David L Hull’s Science as a process (Chicago University Press, 1988), which charts the history of evolutionary theory, and interprets it as a selection process. Hull describes a galaxy of scientific personalities performing a wide range of scientific functions, and concludes that diversity is useful in providing the conceptual variations necessary to speed progress in unpredictable situations.
Past scientists usually worked alone and depended on conscientiousness and self-criticism for the validity of their research. Therefore, scientists included a high proportion of shy, introverted, highly-focused and somewhat ‘autistic’ types – rather like the white-coated and stammering Nutty Professor played by Jerry Lewis in the 1963 movie of that title. But under modern conditions different selection pressures apply, and Nutty Professors may not thrive except in the lower ‘technical’ levels of scientific careers (and in the mathematical and physical sciences where innate aptitude is so rare that all manner of weird personalities must be tolerated). As medical and bio-scientific research has expanded, and Big Science ‘industrial’ modes of production have come to dominate, so the stereotypical successful scientist has changed.
The stars of modern science tend to be much more extraverted than the Nutty Prof, because they need the rhetorical, managerial and socio-political skills - and ‘type A personality’ – appropriate to a team leader. They need to get grants, motivate large groups, enforce a high productive output, and act as a ‘front-man’ to present (and ‘spin’) collaborative research in specialist conferences, political arenas and for a broad media audience.
This leads to a greater dominance within science of characters who resemble the Nutty Professor’s alter-ego, night-club singer and womanizer ‘Buddy Love’ – into which the Prof temporarily transforms with the help of a potion he invented. (Note: in modern science Buddy Love is often a woman, mutatis mutandis.) The successful scientist nowadays benefits from being good-looking, charismatic, articulate – indeed, he may be an overbearing and manipulative psychopath, yet still highly effective at his job.
While the Nutty Professor was modest and understated, the Buddy Love-type is a master of hype – someone who pushes and exaggerates the significance of his work to the greatest degree he can get-away-with. In fact, Bud tends to go beyond this point, leading to fakery and fabrication.
In a nutshell, BL lacks exactly that capacity for self-criticism which was so common among scientists of the past. As Hull describes, when there was little peer review, there was a strong incentive for scientists to self-regulate in order to protect their own future reputations. Nowadays, research is so heavily peer-reviewed at so many levels that the major incentive of scientists is to satisfy the referees, not themselves.
Modern science encourages those who possess a fanatical and unshakeable belief in their own research, and a tireless industriousness in promoting it, which helps gain them a hearing in the crowded marketplace of ideas. And one-sided zeal need not damage the progress of science, so long as the criticism of others makes up for lack of self-criticism. (However, this vital negative feedback from rivals may be blocked when Buddy is both powerful and vindictive.)
The Jeckyll and Hyde transformation from Nutty Professor to Buddy Love should affect the way we interpret the public pronouncements of scientists. While NP would usually provide a dull but accurate articulation of current informed opinion, BL provides appealing and memorable sound-bites – subtly calculated to benefit his self-interest.
After all, it is precisely this aptitude with people and words that enabled the elite cadre of Buddy Loves to discard their white coats for sharp suits, and rise above the mass of Nuttys.
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Mega-prizes in medicine
*Since writing this piece my understanding has changed and I now believe it contains fundamental flaws. Anyone who would like further clarification is welcome to e-mail me at hklaxnessat- yahoo.com*
Editorial
Mega-prizes in medicine: Big cash awards may stimulate useful and rapid therapeutic innovation
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 68: 1-3
***
Summary
Following Horrobin’s suggestion of 1986, I argue that offering very large prizes (tens of millions of US dollars, or more) for solving specific therapeutic problems, would be an excellent strategy for promoting the rapid development of effective new treatments. The two mainstream ways of paying for medical research are funding the process with grants or funding the outcome via patent protection. When grants are used to fund the process of research the result tends to be ‘pure’ science, guided by intrinsic scientific objectives. Practical results, such as useful therapeutic advances, are a by-product. Patent-seeking research, by contrast, is more focused on technology than science. It seeks practical results; and aims to pay for itself (and make a profit) in the long term by generating a patentable product or procedure. Prize-seeking research is subject to different incentives and applicable to different situations than either process-funded or patent-seeking research. Prize seeking researchers have a strong incentive to solve the specified problem as rapidly as possible, but the problem may be solved using old ideas that are scientifically mundane or unpatentable technologies and methods. Prizes therefore seem to generate solutions which are incremental extensions, new applications or novel combinations of already-existing technologies. The main use of mega-prizes in medicine would be to accelerate therapeutic progress in stagnant fields of research and to address urgent problems. For example, medical charities focused on specific diseases should consider accumulating their resources until they can offer a mega-prize for solving a clinical problem of special concern to their patients. Prize money should be big enough to pay for the research and development, the evaluation of the new treatment in a clinical trial, and with a large profit left-over to compensate for the intrinsic risk of competing. Sufficiently large amounts of money, and the prestige and publicity derived from winning a mega-prize, could rapidly mobilize research efforts to discover a whole range of scientifically un-glamorous but clinically-useful therapeutic breakthroughs.
***
In 1986 David Horrobin put forward the idea that large cash prizes should more often be used as an incentive to develop answers to important medical questions [1]. This proposal, still neglected, has much merit for stimulating therapeutic progress. I believe that offering very large prizes (e.g. tens of millions of US dollars) for solving specific clinical problems would be an excellent strategy for developing effective new treatments for medical conditions where mainstream science and commercial research and development (R&D) has so far failed.
There are two mainstream ways of funding science: funding the process with grants, and funding successful products by patent protection.
Research grants are used to fund the process of scientific research. Grant funded research tends to be ‘pure’ science, guided by intrinsic scientific objectives. Practical results, such as useful therapeutic advances, are a by-product rather than the primary goal. The incentive for doing good research is mainly the incentive structure of science: rewards of success include high status as a scientist and from this comes the perks of a triumphant career.
By contrast with pure science, applied research or R&D is supposed to solve problems. But, even when R&D ostensibly aims at useful practical results, if this outcome is neither enforced nor rewarded the ideal R&D strategy is to make enough progress to maintain funding, but never actually to solve the problem because that would put an end to income. In other words, grant funded R&D is implicitly supported to ‘do research’, and not to ‘solve problems’. Such R&D may end-up being merely ‘grant-seeking’ and generative of what amounts to low quality pure science. Arguably, much modern medical research falls into this category [2].
Patent-seeking research, by contrast, is a kind of risky investment – un-funded in the short term but intended to have a good chance of paying for itself and making a profit in the long term. The aim is to generate a patentable product (something novel, non-obvious and useful), then make money from the patent. Patent-seeking research is usually more like applied science or R&D than pure science, and includes most of pharmaceutical and much technological research.
Prizes are different both from process-funded and patent-seeking research. Prizes are essentially a way of funding research to solve specified problems in situations where the process of development is more a matter of R&D than pure science, but when the aimed-at product is unlikely to be patentable. Researchers have a strong incentive to solve the specified problem because receiving the prize is contingent upon achieving a solution. But prize-seeking researchers are free to solve the specified problem using ideas and approaches that may be scientifically mundane, technologies that are un-patentable, or technologies for which patents have expired.
Prizes tend to generate solutions which are incremental extensions, new applications or novel combinations of already existing technologies. The most famous example is the 1714 Royal Society of London 20 000 pounds Sterling prize for measurement of longitude to within five tenths of a degree [3]. This was eventually awarded to John Harrison in 1773, for designing a sufficiently accurate and robust clock. The delay in awarding the prize came from the fact that the Royal Society was looking for a ‘pure science’ answer to the longitude problem, while Harrison’s method was based on old science implemented by vastly-improved technology.
Indeed, this seems to be the usual way in which prizes are won. The general rule seems to be that prizes stimulate technology rather than science, accelerate R&D rather than generate paradigm-shifting breakthroughs. The prize winners for motorized flight, human powered flight, energy-efficient refrigerators and the ‘X prize’ for cheap space flight seem to confirm this pattern [4].
The main use of mega-prizes in medicine would be to accelerate therapeutic progress in stagnant fields of research, to address urgent problems, and to do so even when effective solutions are neither scientifically ‘sexy’ nor necessarily money-making. Useful therapies for a disease may be even duller than Harrison’s clock appeared to the Royal Society, and may not be patent-protect-able, yet nonetheless extremely valuable to suffers from the disease.
My suggestion is that those medical charities who concentrate on helping patients with specific diseases should not be plowing all their assets into research grants to support ‘pure science’ – which may or-may-not have a therapeutic payoff. Funding the process of research produces a measurable output which can, in the short term, be ‘spun’ into an illusion of therapeutic progress, yet progress in much of medical research remains sluggish or non-existent [2]. Such disease-focused charities should instead consider accumulating their resources until they can offer a mega-prize for solving a clinical problem of specific concern to their patients. The prize money should be big enough to pay for the research and development, the evaluation of the new treatment in a clinical trial, and with a large profit left over to compensate for the intrinsic risk of competing for a prize which may not be won. Mega-prizes would therefore need to range from tens of millions of dollars up to billions of dollars, according to the size of the problem.
For example, many specific types of cancer might be suitable for offering prizes. Shortly before he died of lymphoma, David Horrobin wrote an article in the Lancet calling for a more urgent and pragmatic approach to cancer therapy [5]. He speculated that there might already exist a variety of potentially beneficial (and non-toxic) nutritional and pharmaceutical interventions – supported by biochemical and animal experiments or case studies, but not yet refined or checked by clinical trials. Specific types of lifestyle advice and nursing care might also make a difference. Such interventions, if properly combined and sequenced, and tested in small and well-controlled trials, could rapidly and significantly help people with various malignancies. Yet such potentially beneficial treatments would probably not be patentable, and would also be regarded as scientifically mundane, so would be unlikely to be discovered with current mainstream research incentives. Mega-prizes might make the difference.
Perhaps sufficiently large amounts of money, and the prestige and publicity which would derive from winning a mega-prize, could mobilize research efforts to discover a whole range of scientifically un-glamorous but clinically-useful therapeutic breakthroughs. Such a strategy could provide realistic hope of speeding-up therapeutic advances for patients suffering from diseases for which, at present, little can be done.
References
[1] D.F. Horrobin, Glittering prizes for research support, Nature 324 (1986), p. 221. Full Text via CrossRef
[2] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Medical research funding may have over-expanded and be due for collapse, QJM 98 (2005), pp. 53–55. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[3] Davis LN. Should we consider alternative incentives for basic research? Patents vs prizes. Paper from DRUID Summer Conference 2002. Available from: http://www.druid.dk/conferences.
[4] Davis LN. How effective are prizes as incentive to innovation? Evidence from three 20th century contests. Paper from DRUID Summer Conference 2004. Available from: http://www.druid.dk/conferences.
[5] D.F. Horrobin, Are large clinical trials in rapidly lethal diseases usually unethical?, Lancet 361 (2003), pp. 695–697.
Editorial
Mega-prizes in medicine: Big cash awards may stimulate useful and rapid therapeutic innovation
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 68: 1-3
***
Summary
Following Horrobin’s suggestion of 1986, I argue that offering very large prizes (tens of millions of US dollars, or more) for solving specific therapeutic problems, would be an excellent strategy for promoting the rapid development of effective new treatments. The two mainstream ways of paying for medical research are funding the process with grants or funding the outcome via patent protection. When grants are used to fund the process of research the result tends to be ‘pure’ science, guided by intrinsic scientific objectives. Practical results, such as useful therapeutic advances, are a by-product. Patent-seeking research, by contrast, is more focused on technology than science. It seeks practical results; and aims to pay for itself (and make a profit) in the long term by generating a patentable product or procedure. Prize-seeking research is subject to different incentives and applicable to different situations than either process-funded or patent-seeking research. Prize seeking researchers have a strong incentive to solve the specified problem as rapidly as possible, but the problem may be solved using old ideas that are scientifically mundane or unpatentable technologies and methods. Prizes therefore seem to generate solutions which are incremental extensions, new applications or novel combinations of already-existing technologies. The main use of mega-prizes in medicine would be to accelerate therapeutic progress in stagnant fields of research and to address urgent problems. For example, medical charities focused on specific diseases should consider accumulating their resources until they can offer a mega-prize for solving a clinical problem of special concern to their patients. Prize money should be big enough to pay for the research and development, the evaluation of the new treatment in a clinical trial, and with a large profit left-over to compensate for the intrinsic risk of competing. Sufficiently large amounts of money, and the prestige and publicity derived from winning a mega-prize, could rapidly mobilize research efforts to discover a whole range of scientifically un-glamorous but clinically-useful therapeutic breakthroughs.
***
In 1986 David Horrobin put forward the idea that large cash prizes should more often be used as an incentive to develop answers to important medical questions [1]. This proposal, still neglected, has much merit for stimulating therapeutic progress. I believe that offering very large prizes (e.g. tens of millions of US dollars) for solving specific clinical problems would be an excellent strategy for developing effective new treatments for medical conditions where mainstream science and commercial research and development (R&D) has so far failed.
There are two mainstream ways of funding science: funding the process with grants, and funding successful products by patent protection.
Research grants are used to fund the process of scientific research. Grant funded research tends to be ‘pure’ science, guided by intrinsic scientific objectives. Practical results, such as useful therapeutic advances, are a by-product rather than the primary goal. The incentive for doing good research is mainly the incentive structure of science: rewards of success include high status as a scientist and from this comes the perks of a triumphant career.
By contrast with pure science, applied research or R&D is supposed to solve problems. But, even when R&D ostensibly aims at useful practical results, if this outcome is neither enforced nor rewarded the ideal R&D strategy is to make enough progress to maintain funding, but never actually to solve the problem because that would put an end to income. In other words, grant funded R&D is implicitly supported to ‘do research’, and not to ‘solve problems’. Such R&D may end-up being merely ‘grant-seeking’ and generative of what amounts to low quality pure science. Arguably, much modern medical research falls into this category [2].
Patent-seeking research, by contrast, is a kind of risky investment – un-funded in the short term but intended to have a good chance of paying for itself and making a profit in the long term. The aim is to generate a patentable product (something novel, non-obvious and useful), then make money from the patent. Patent-seeking research is usually more like applied science or R&D than pure science, and includes most of pharmaceutical and much technological research.
Prizes are different both from process-funded and patent-seeking research. Prizes are essentially a way of funding research to solve specified problems in situations where the process of development is more a matter of R&D than pure science, but when the aimed-at product is unlikely to be patentable. Researchers have a strong incentive to solve the specified problem because receiving the prize is contingent upon achieving a solution. But prize-seeking researchers are free to solve the specified problem using ideas and approaches that may be scientifically mundane, technologies that are un-patentable, or technologies for which patents have expired.
Prizes tend to generate solutions which are incremental extensions, new applications or novel combinations of already existing technologies. The most famous example is the 1714 Royal Society of London 20 000 pounds Sterling prize for measurement of longitude to within five tenths of a degree [3]. This was eventually awarded to John Harrison in 1773, for designing a sufficiently accurate and robust clock. The delay in awarding the prize came from the fact that the Royal Society was looking for a ‘pure science’ answer to the longitude problem, while Harrison’s method was based on old science implemented by vastly-improved technology.
Indeed, this seems to be the usual way in which prizes are won. The general rule seems to be that prizes stimulate technology rather than science, accelerate R&D rather than generate paradigm-shifting breakthroughs. The prize winners for motorized flight, human powered flight, energy-efficient refrigerators and the ‘X prize’ for cheap space flight seem to confirm this pattern [4].
The main use of mega-prizes in medicine would be to accelerate therapeutic progress in stagnant fields of research, to address urgent problems, and to do so even when effective solutions are neither scientifically ‘sexy’ nor necessarily money-making. Useful therapies for a disease may be even duller than Harrison’s clock appeared to the Royal Society, and may not be patent-protect-able, yet nonetheless extremely valuable to suffers from the disease.
My suggestion is that those medical charities who concentrate on helping patients with specific diseases should not be plowing all their assets into research grants to support ‘pure science’ – which may or-may-not have a therapeutic payoff. Funding the process of research produces a measurable output which can, in the short term, be ‘spun’ into an illusion of therapeutic progress, yet progress in much of medical research remains sluggish or non-existent [2]. Such disease-focused charities should instead consider accumulating their resources until they can offer a mega-prize for solving a clinical problem of specific concern to their patients. The prize money should be big enough to pay for the research and development, the evaluation of the new treatment in a clinical trial, and with a large profit left over to compensate for the intrinsic risk of competing for a prize which may not be won. Mega-prizes would therefore need to range from tens of millions of dollars up to billions of dollars, according to the size of the problem.
For example, many specific types of cancer might be suitable for offering prizes. Shortly before he died of lymphoma, David Horrobin wrote an article in the Lancet calling for a more urgent and pragmatic approach to cancer therapy [5]. He speculated that there might already exist a variety of potentially beneficial (and non-toxic) nutritional and pharmaceutical interventions – supported by biochemical and animal experiments or case studies, but not yet refined or checked by clinical trials. Specific types of lifestyle advice and nursing care might also make a difference. Such interventions, if properly combined and sequenced, and tested in small and well-controlled trials, could rapidly and significantly help people with various malignancies. Yet such potentially beneficial treatments would probably not be patentable, and would also be regarded as scientifically mundane, so would be unlikely to be discovered with current mainstream research incentives. Mega-prizes might make the difference.
Perhaps sufficiently large amounts of money, and the prestige and publicity which would derive from winning a mega-prize, could mobilize research efforts to discover a whole range of scientifically un-glamorous but clinically-useful therapeutic breakthroughs. Such a strategy could provide realistic hope of speeding-up therapeutic advances for patients suffering from diseases for which, at present, little can be done.
References
[1] D.F. Horrobin, Glittering prizes for research support, Nature 324 (1986), p. 221. Full Text via CrossRef
[2] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Medical research funding may have over-expanded and be due for collapse, QJM 98 (2005), pp. 53–55. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[3] Davis LN. Should we consider alternative incentives for basic research? Patents vs prizes. Paper from DRUID Summer Conference 2002. Available from: http://www.druid.dk/conferences.
[4] Davis LN. How effective are prizes as incentive to innovation? Evidence from three 20th century contests. Paper from DRUID Summer Conference 2004. Available from: http://www.druid.dk/conferences.
[5] D.F. Horrobin, Are large clinical trials in rapidly lethal diseases usually unethical?, Lancet 361 (2003), pp. 695–697.
Lectures - a highly effective teaching method
Editorial
Lectures are such an effective teaching method because they exploit evolved human psychology to improve learning
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 1261-1265.
Summary
Lectures are probably the best teaching method for many students in many circumstances; especially for communicating conceptual knowledge, and where there is a significant knowledge gap between lecturer and audience. However, the lack of a convincing rationale has been a factor in under-estimating the importance of lectures, and there are many who advocate their replacement with written communications or electronic media. I suggest that lectures are so effective because they exploit the spontaneous human aptitude for learning from spoken (rather than written) information. Literacy is a recent cultural artefact, and for most of their evolutionary history humans communicated by direct speech. By contrast with speech, all communication technologies – whether reading a book or a computer monitor – are artificial and unnatural. Furthermore, learning is easier during formal, quiet, real-time social events. The structure of a lecture artificially manipulates human psychology to increase vigilance, focus attention, and generate authority for the lecturer – all of which make communications more memorable for the student. Instead of trying to phase-out lectures, we should strive to make them better by understanding that lectures are essentially formal, spoken, social events.
***
Despite the lecture method being so unpopular among professional educational advisers, reformers and intellectuals generally – and almost annual declarations that information technology is just about to render lectures obsolete – many scientists continue to give lectures and students continue voluntarily to attend them. The fact that lectures have survived so much official opprobrium suggests that they are a much more effective teaching method than they are given credit for.
Indeed, existing practice suggests that properly structured lecture series may be the best teaching method for many subjects and many students, and lectures may be especially well-suited to the transmission of conceptual and systematic knowledge [1]. Lectures are therefore usually the standard medium for teaching science up to the point where the student begins to specialize and train as a practicing scientist, at which point a more individualized and skill-orientated training becomes necessary.
In itself, the greater ease of learning from lectures may indeed account for some of the disdain with which many intellectuals regard lectures, since intellectuals are experts at the cognitively-challenging business of learning by solitary reading. For example, intellectuals may deride clear, comprehensible and enjoyable lectures as ‘spoon-feeding’ students; with the implication that students should be forced to work hard to find their basic knowledge in the same way that intellectuals do for their advanced knowledge. This was perhaps appropriate when science teaching was mainly for training future professional scientists; but now that science is taught mainly as a ‘general education’, the acquisition of knowledge is more important than the process by which it is attained [2].
Lectures are also criticized as inculcating a ‘passive’ attitude to learning; and any passive tendency is encouraged by the mistaken practice of giving students handouts or written summaries of the lecture contents, so that students are implicitly expected just to sit and listen, and neither organize nor write-down the information supplied by the lecturer. But we need to be clearer that making learning easier is an admirable educational objective, assuming that what is being learned is worthwhile (as it is in the sciences). Making learning easier is especially important for the less-naturally gifted proportion of the population who make up an increasingly large number of higher education students in advanced societies due to the massive recent and continuing expansion of colleges and universities [3]. If knowledge is valuable, then we should embrace effective methods of inculcating knowledge: the easier the better.
I suggest that there are many advantages to lectures which seem obvious yet are seldom noted or acted-upon. The first is that it is easier for most people to learn conceptual information from spoken communications than from reading – and the essentially aural nature of information has important implications for lecture organization. The second is that the real-time, human-presence of a lecturer and the social context of a formal lecture makes it easier for most students to remain alert, focus attention and remember what is said than when students are required to work alone. A third factor which deserves recognition is that the proper unit of educationally valuable lectures is a course of lectures (i.e. repeated interactions between the same teacher and the same class), not an one-off talk.
I conclude that lectures are ‘spontaneously’ easier to learn-from than are written or electronic media, and the reason is probably that they exploit evolved human psychology. In this sense it is ‘human nature’ to learn by hearing information in social situations, because this was the medium and context in which ancestral hunter-gatherers did most of their learning.
The effectiveness of lectures
Lectures work, but nobody seems to know why. The lack of an accepted rationale for the method seems to make people feel guilty about using lectures. At best lectures are taken for granted (which makes it unlikely that they will be improved), at worst attempts are made to replace lectures with almost anything else.
We must first accept that it is completely impractical and unaffordable to replace lectures with individual or small-group teaching in modern mass higher education systems [3], and attempts to do so (in any more than a token or symbolic fashion) will probably merely lead to less teaching of students. More usually ‘distance learning’ methods are introduced, such as teaching by e-mail and internet; but this brings attendance-based universities into competition with cheaper, more convenient and (probably) better-quality distance learning institutions. In the mania to replace lectures, absurd gestures may be made such as abandoning real teaching altogether, and instead getting groups of students to ‘teach-each-other’. (Student-led education might arguably be valuable among the cleverest and best-educated students, but is a totally misguided strategy for mass higher education.)
Perhaps the most convincing evidence of lectures’ effectiveness comes from what people actually do, rather than what people say. I find it highly significant that lectures are especially used in teaching the most quantitative and systematic sciences, and for intensive professional training courses such as medicine, engineering and law. In other words, lectures are a focus of teaching in exactly the situations where transmission of knowledge is most vital, and in subjects where learning is most easily and validly measurable. Of course, lectures will only get you so far, and individual teaching by ‘apprenticeship’ supported by self-directed study remain necessary for learning specialized and high level skills.
It is striking that, despite increasing choice of alternatives, the great majority of students continue to enrol in attendance-based and residential universities where lectures are a primary mode of instruction. And, when at university, they usually show-up for lectures, even when the lectures are not compulsory. So, students still choose lecture-based teaching despite the ready availability of more convenient alternative qualifications from highly-reputable ‘distance learning’ institutions which have grown-up to exploit new communication technologies [4]; such as the UK Open University or the University of Phoenix in the USA. But although such distance-learning is often both high in quality and much cheaper, it has added to, rather than displaced, the demand for attendance-based, lecture-focused educational institutions. Apparently, many students experience difficulties in learning in solitude even from the finest written or audio–visual media.
Taking all these observations together, there seems to be ample prima facie evidence that lectures are probably the best practicable teaching method in many circumstances and for many students. However, it is not generally understood why lectures are useful, and because this rationale is not understood, the conduct of lectures has often been changed in ways that make them less effective – usually by undermining the focus upon spoken communication by inappropriate use of visual aids or excessive emphasis on written support material.
Lectures are essentially spoken – written handouts undermine lectures
The specific reason for their effectiveness is that lectures are essentially a form of spoken communication which is delivered to an audience by an actually present and visible person through a series of repeated social interactions. A lecture therefore constitutes a formally structured social event which fits evolved ‘human nature’ and artificially manipulates human psychology to improve learning.
It is easy for educated people in advanced societies to forget that literacy and solitude are both relatively-recent cultural artefacts. In the hunter-gatherer societies in which our (neuro-anatomically identical) ancestors dwelled for many tens of thousands of years, information was communicated mainly face-to-face and by direct speech, and individuals were almost never alone [5]. By contrast, all communication technologies – whether reading a book, audio–visual media, or a computer monitor – are artificial and contrived; and studying alone is a difficult skill with widely varying levels of attainment. This is probably the major reason why so many people find it easier to learn from a spoken lecture and in groups.
Attending a course of lectures requires a long-term commitment to be in the necessary place at the proper time. Because the main medium of communication in a lecture is the spoken word, what is spoken should be regarded as the essence. The only way to make lecture attendance unimportant is to diminish the effectiveness of the lecture. Only if lectures are sub-optimal can students miss them without incurring some disadvantage. If a student is not present and listening, he or she will not obtain the advantage of attending a lecture; and will have to make-do with solitary personal study. This is undeniably inconvenient, but it is intrinsic to the medium.
Therefore, when a lecture course is the focus of teaching, care should be taken not to sacrifice the essence of lectures by confusing students over the core learning activity which is expected of them. In lecture-based course, students should understand that one major expectation is that they should attend lectures or be prepared to take the consequences of disadvantaged learning. In order to make the most of their natural strengths, lectures need to maintain their proper focus on speaking as the primary form of communication.
But students may miss lectures through no fault of their own, as well as for less admirable reasons. So it is tempting to try and ameliorate the inevitable educational disadvantages to students who cannot (or prefer not to) attend lectures by providing identical or more-detailed material as handout – perhaps distributed by the internet. Once such handouts are established as an element of the teaching, it is tempting to distribute them, or make them available online, in advance of spoken lectures. But these temptations should be resisted, because handouts will – by their abstract objectivity – usurp the primacy of the spoken lecture.
It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which hand-outs can damage the effectiveness of lectures. A lecture is compelling substantially because it is here-and-now, a situation in which the student must concentrate, listen, understand – and these activities cannot be put-off until later. The intensity of a lecture depends on this necessity for the student to focus.
And in order to have a record of information for understanding and revision, the student must record the lecture in their own words, and they must do it now. But the existence of hand-outs or transcriptions usurps this fundamental responsibility of the student. A handout stands-between the student and the real-time lecture in the same way that a video-camera stands between a tourist and landscape in which they are standing. To see a lecture through the lens of a hand-out is as impoverished a perspective as seeing the Alps through the viewfinder of a camera.
As well as increasing immediate attentiveness, lecture notes also make the lecture into an active mode of learning because note-taking requires ‘deep-processing’ forms of learning, by imposing a requirement to understand, abbreviate and re-organize in-coming information. Deep-processed information is better remembered.
More generally, lecture teaching methods should not allow verbal information to become subordinated to ‘visual aids’. It is tempting to make lectures more entertaining by adding attention-grabbing graphics. But complex visual material is usually distracting rather than educational. TV, video, animations and the like are so attention-grabbing that they break the conceptual thread of spoken discourse. Switching back-and-forth between audio–visual technology and the spoken voice involves a repeated cognitive ‘gearchange’ that relatively disadvantages speech.
The primary visual aid should be the lecturer him- or her-self – the effective lecturer is an actor or orator. In particular, the audience should clearly see the lecturer’s face, and eye-contact with the lecturer is vital. A lecture which takes place in the dark while viewing slides, where a disembodied voice intones sentences, can hardly be described as a lecture at all since it lacks the basis of a social event. Attending a lecture in the dark is more like visiting the cinema than participating in a social event.
A lecture is a means to an end, which is learning. Methods to attract attention and entertain the audience should therefore be subordinated to the over-arching educational imperative.
Lectures as social events
As well as being spoken communications, lectures are properly delivered by an actually present individual. This creates a here-and-now social situation which unfolds in real time. Humans are social animals, who are naturally more alert and vigilant in actual social situations.
What makes the lecture a social event is the potential for two-way communication – mainly the visual link of eye-contact between lecturer and audience. The situation of real time social communication makes students spontaneously more vigilant than when alone with a book or computer, because a student’s failure to pay attention can be observed. By contrast, in a very large lecture auditorium (or when electronic media are used to transmit a lecture remotely) the lecturer cannot maintain eye-contact with all members of the audience. Remote students are not participating in the here-and-now social event: they are excluded from the lecture situation – they might as well be watching TV.
A properly-conducted lecture also exploits the psychological disposition to attend to persons of authority in social situations [6]. In effect, the formal lecture is a mutually beneficial ‘collusion’ between class and lecturer. The structure of a lecture theatre enables a situation in which a group’s attention is focused on the lecturer, and this artificially generates authority in the lecturer. Humans have evolved to attend and remember the words of authoritative individuals. The collusion is that a class of students implicitly, by their silent attention, awards temporary authority to the lecturer (authority which happens to be gratifying for the lecturer) for the purpose of making learning more effective (which is gratifying for the students – and is the aim of the exercise).
A further aspect is that lectures should where possible be given as a whole course – not as one-off events – and by a single lecturer – rather than by a team. It needs repeated interactions for a relationship of trust to build up between lecturer and class – and only when trust is established (if it is established) will students learn effectively.
It is precisely because the authority structure of a formal lecture is so powerful an instrument for focusing attention and improving learning that the lecture medium can be abused for propaganda purposes – for example by political or religious orators who orchestrate mass-meetings or rallies. Because they so effectively exploit human psychology, lectures are intrinsically a form of imposition by one upon the many. There may need to be safeguards, such as an explicit and externally approved curriculum, to prevent the lecture situation being used to pursue non-educational goals.
Conclusion
Scientists, who usually have something to teach which is worth learning, should feel more confident about the value of lecturing and the appropriateness of the method. Students are not being fobbed-off with an inferior medium when lectures are the focus of teaching, nor should the spoken lecture be seen as secondary to the provision of written handouts or transcripts.
So, lectures should not be perceived as redundant elaborations on a text. On the contrary, good lectures cannot be missed without loss, texts are there to support what is spoken, and it should be a clear educational advantage for students to attend lectures.
Furthermore, lecturers should resist the temptation to make lectures more entertaining by over-using ‘visual aids’. Since lectures are primarily ‘aural’, the visual material should generally be appropriate for students’ to record in lecture notes during the actual lecture period – which usually means simple summary sentences, tables and diagrams.
Lectures should be enjoyable, but should not strive to be entertaining as their major goal; lectures ought to be compelling and memorable rather than amusing and diverting. And – because students learn to trust their teachers only gradually – to be educationally effective, lectures should be delivered as a course, not as one-off interactions.
Lectures retain a major educational role because they exploit evolved human psychology to make learning easier and more effective compared with electronic and textual media. Instead of trying to phase-out lectures, we should strive to make them better. And, if the university teaching of science as a general education is to expand in the future [2], it is important to make learning science as easy as possible.
References
[1] B.G. Charlton, Science school and culture school: improving the efficiency of high school science teaching in a system of mass science education, Med Hypotheses 67 (2006), pp. 1–5. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (75 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[2] B.G. Charlton, Science as a general education: conceptual science should constitute the compulsory core of multi-disciplinary undergraduate degrees, Med Hypotheses 66 (2006), pp. 451–453. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (63 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[3] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Universities and social progress in modernizing societies: how educational expansion has replaced socialism as an instrument of political reform, Crit Quart 47 (2005), pp. 30–39. Full Text via CrossRef
[4] M. Trow, Some consequences of the new information and communication technologies for higher education. In: K. Roberts and F. Webster, Editors, The virtual university? Information, markets and managements, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002), pp. 301–317.
[5] H. Brody, The other side of Eden: hunter-gatherers, farmers and the shaping of the world, Faber, London (2002).
[6] J.H. Barkow, Prestige and culture: a biosocial interpretation, Curr Anthropol 16 (1975), pp. 553–572.
Lectures are such an effective teaching method because they exploit evolved human psychology to improve learning
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 1261-1265.
Summary
Lectures are probably the best teaching method for many students in many circumstances; especially for communicating conceptual knowledge, and where there is a significant knowledge gap between lecturer and audience. However, the lack of a convincing rationale has been a factor in under-estimating the importance of lectures, and there are many who advocate their replacement with written communications or electronic media. I suggest that lectures are so effective because they exploit the spontaneous human aptitude for learning from spoken (rather than written) information. Literacy is a recent cultural artefact, and for most of their evolutionary history humans communicated by direct speech. By contrast with speech, all communication technologies – whether reading a book or a computer monitor – are artificial and unnatural. Furthermore, learning is easier during formal, quiet, real-time social events. The structure of a lecture artificially manipulates human psychology to increase vigilance, focus attention, and generate authority for the lecturer – all of which make communications more memorable for the student. Instead of trying to phase-out lectures, we should strive to make them better by understanding that lectures are essentially formal, spoken, social events.
***
Despite the lecture method being so unpopular among professional educational advisers, reformers and intellectuals generally – and almost annual declarations that information technology is just about to render lectures obsolete – many scientists continue to give lectures and students continue voluntarily to attend them. The fact that lectures have survived so much official opprobrium suggests that they are a much more effective teaching method than they are given credit for.
Indeed, existing practice suggests that properly structured lecture series may be the best teaching method for many subjects and many students, and lectures may be especially well-suited to the transmission of conceptual and systematic knowledge [1]. Lectures are therefore usually the standard medium for teaching science up to the point where the student begins to specialize and train as a practicing scientist, at which point a more individualized and skill-orientated training becomes necessary.
In itself, the greater ease of learning from lectures may indeed account for some of the disdain with which many intellectuals regard lectures, since intellectuals are experts at the cognitively-challenging business of learning by solitary reading. For example, intellectuals may deride clear, comprehensible and enjoyable lectures as ‘spoon-feeding’ students; with the implication that students should be forced to work hard to find their basic knowledge in the same way that intellectuals do for their advanced knowledge. This was perhaps appropriate when science teaching was mainly for training future professional scientists; but now that science is taught mainly as a ‘general education’, the acquisition of knowledge is more important than the process by which it is attained [2].
Lectures are also criticized as inculcating a ‘passive’ attitude to learning; and any passive tendency is encouraged by the mistaken practice of giving students handouts or written summaries of the lecture contents, so that students are implicitly expected just to sit and listen, and neither organize nor write-down the information supplied by the lecturer. But we need to be clearer that making learning easier is an admirable educational objective, assuming that what is being learned is worthwhile (as it is in the sciences). Making learning easier is especially important for the less-naturally gifted proportion of the population who make up an increasingly large number of higher education students in advanced societies due to the massive recent and continuing expansion of colleges and universities [3]. If knowledge is valuable, then we should embrace effective methods of inculcating knowledge: the easier the better.
I suggest that there are many advantages to lectures which seem obvious yet are seldom noted or acted-upon. The first is that it is easier for most people to learn conceptual information from spoken communications than from reading – and the essentially aural nature of information has important implications for lecture organization. The second is that the real-time, human-presence of a lecturer and the social context of a formal lecture makes it easier for most students to remain alert, focus attention and remember what is said than when students are required to work alone. A third factor which deserves recognition is that the proper unit of educationally valuable lectures is a course of lectures (i.e. repeated interactions between the same teacher and the same class), not an one-off talk.
I conclude that lectures are ‘spontaneously’ easier to learn-from than are written or electronic media, and the reason is probably that they exploit evolved human psychology. In this sense it is ‘human nature’ to learn by hearing information in social situations, because this was the medium and context in which ancestral hunter-gatherers did most of their learning.
The effectiveness of lectures
Lectures work, but nobody seems to know why. The lack of an accepted rationale for the method seems to make people feel guilty about using lectures. At best lectures are taken for granted (which makes it unlikely that they will be improved), at worst attempts are made to replace lectures with almost anything else.
We must first accept that it is completely impractical and unaffordable to replace lectures with individual or small-group teaching in modern mass higher education systems [3], and attempts to do so (in any more than a token or symbolic fashion) will probably merely lead to less teaching of students. More usually ‘distance learning’ methods are introduced, such as teaching by e-mail and internet; but this brings attendance-based universities into competition with cheaper, more convenient and (probably) better-quality distance learning institutions. In the mania to replace lectures, absurd gestures may be made such as abandoning real teaching altogether, and instead getting groups of students to ‘teach-each-other’. (Student-led education might arguably be valuable among the cleverest and best-educated students, but is a totally misguided strategy for mass higher education.)
Perhaps the most convincing evidence of lectures’ effectiveness comes from what people actually do, rather than what people say. I find it highly significant that lectures are especially used in teaching the most quantitative and systematic sciences, and for intensive professional training courses such as medicine, engineering and law. In other words, lectures are a focus of teaching in exactly the situations where transmission of knowledge is most vital, and in subjects where learning is most easily and validly measurable. Of course, lectures will only get you so far, and individual teaching by ‘apprenticeship’ supported by self-directed study remain necessary for learning specialized and high level skills.
It is striking that, despite increasing choice of alternatives, the great majority of students continue to enrol in attendance-based and residential universities where lectures are a primary mode of instruction. And, when at university, they usually show-up for lectures, even when the lectures are not compulsory. So, students still choose lecture-based teaching despite the ready availability of more convenient alternative qualifications from highly-reputable ‘distance learning’ institutions which have grown-up to exploit new communication technologies [4]; such as the UK Open University or the University of Phoenix in the USA. But although such distance-learning is often both high in quality and much cheaper, it has added to, rather than displaced, the demand for attendance-based, lecture-focused educational institutions. Apparently, many students experience difficulties in learning in solitude even from the finest written or audio–visual media.
Taking all these observations together, there seems to be ample prima facie evidence that lectures are probably the best practicable teaching method in many circumstances and for many students. However, it is not generally understood why lectures are useful, and because this rationale is not understood, the conduct of lectures has often been changed in ways that make them less effective – usually by undermining the focus upon spoken communication by inappropriate use of visual aids or excessive emphasis on written support material.
Lectures are essentially spoken – written handouts undermine lectures
The specific reason for their effectiveness is that lectures are essentially a form of spoken communication which is delivered to an audience by an actually present and visible person through a series of repeated social interactions. A lecture therefore constitutes a formally structured social event which fits evolved ‘human nature’ and artificially manipulates human psychology to improve learning.
It is easy for educated people in advanced societies to forget that literacy and solitude are both relatively-recent cultural artefacts. In the hunter-gatherer societies in which our (neuro-anatomically identical) ancestors dwelled for many tens of thousands of years, information was communicated mainly face-to-face and by direct speech, and individuals were almost never alone [5]. By contrast, all communication technologies – whether reading a book, audio–visual media, or a computer monitor – are artificial and contrived; and studying alone is a difficult skill with widely varying levels of attainment. This is probably the major reason why so many people find it easier to learn from a spoken lecture and in groups.
Attending a course of lectures requires a long-term commitment to be in the necessary place at the proper time. Because the main medium of communication in a lecture is the spoken word, what is spoken should be regarded as the essence. The only way to make lecture attendance unimportant is to diminish the effectiveness of the lecture. Only if lectures are sub-optimal can students miss them without incurring some disadvantage. If a student is not present and listening, he or she will not obtain the advantage of attending a lecture; and will have to make-do with solitary personal study. This is undeniably inconvenient, but it is intrinsic to the medium.
Therefore, when a lecture course is the focus of teaching, care should be taken not to sacrifice the essence of lectures by confusing students over the core learning activity which is expected of them. In lecture-based course, students should understand that one major expectation is that they should attend lectures or be prepared to take the consequences of disadvantaged learning. In order to make the most of their natural strengths, lectures need to maintain their proper focus on speaking as the primary form of communication.
But students may miss lectures through no fault of their own, as well as for less admirable reasons. So it is tempting to try and ameliorate the inevitable educational disadvantages to students who cannot (or prefer not to) attend lectures by providing identical or more-detailed material as handout – perhaps distributed by the internet. Once such handouts are established as an element of the teaching, it is tempting to distribute them, or make them available online, in advance of spoken lectures. But these temptations should be resisted, because handouts will – by their abstract objectivity – usurp the primacy of the spoken lecture.
It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which hand-outs can damage the effectiveness of lectures. A lecture is compelling substantially because it is here-and-now, a situation in which the student must concentrate, listen, understand – and these activities cannot be put-off until later. The intensity of a lecture depends on this necessity for the student to focus.
And in order to have a record of information for understanding and revision, the student must record the lecture in their own words, and they must do it now. But the existence of hand-outs or transcriptions usurps this fundamental responsibility of the student. A handout stands-between the student and the real-time lecture in the same way that a video-camera stands between a tourist and landscape in which they are standing. To see a lecture through the lens of a hand-out is as impoverished a perspective as seeing the Alps through the viewfinder of a camera.
As well as increasing immediate attentiveness, lecture notes also make the lecture into an active mode of learning because note-taking requires ‘deep-processing’ forms of learning, by imposing a requirement to understand, abbreviate and re-organize in-coming information. Deep-processed information is better remembered.
More generally, lecture teaching methods should not allow verbal information to become subordinated to ‘visual aids’. It is tempting to make lectures more entertaining by adding attention-grabbing graphics. But complex visual material is usually distracting rather than educational. TV, video, animations and the like are so attention-grabbing that they break the conceptual thread of spoken discourse. Switching back-and-forth between audio–visual technology and the spoken voice involves a repeated cognitive ‘gearchange’ that relatively disadvantages speech.
The primary visual aid should be the lecturer him- or her-self – the effective lecturer is an actor or orator. In particular, the audience should clearly see the lecturer’s face, and eye-contact with the lecturer is vital. A lecture which takes place in the dark while viewing slides, where a disembodied voice intones sentences, can hardly be described as a lecture at all since it lacks the basis of a social event. Attending a lecture in the dark is more like visiting the cinema than participating in a social event.
A lecture is a means to an end, which is learning. Methods to attract attention and entertain the audience should therefore be subordinated to the over-arching educational imperative.
Lectures as social events
As well as being spoken communications, lectures are properly delivered by an actually present individual. This creates a here-and-now social situation which unfolds in real time. Humans are social animals, who are naturally more alert and vigilant in actual social situations.
What makes the lecture a social event is the potential for two-way communication – mainly the visual link of eye-contact between lecturer and audience. The situation of real time social communication makes students spontaneously more vigilant than when alone with a book or computer, because a student’s failure to pay attention can be observed. By contrast, in a very large lecture auditorium (or when electronic media are used to transmit a lecture remotely) the lecturer cannot maintain eye-contact with all members of the audience. Remote students are not participating in the here-and-now social event: they are excluded from the lecture situation – they might as well be watching TV.
A properly-conducted lecture also exploits the psychological disposition to attend to persons of authority in social situations [6]. In effect, the formal lecture is a mutually beneficial ‘collusion’ between class and lecturer. The structure of a lecture theatre enables a situation in which a group’s attention is focused on the lecturer, and this artificially generates authority in the lecturer. Humans have evolved to attend and remember the words of authoritative individuals. The collusion is that a class of students implicitly, by their silent attention, awards temporary authority to the lecturer (authority which happens to be gratifying for the lecturer) for the purpose of making learning more effective (which is gratifying for the students – and is the aim of the exercise).
A further aspect is that lectures should where possible be given as a whole course – not as one-off events – and by a single lecturer – rather than by a team. It needs repeated interactions for a relationship of trust to build up between lecturer and class – and only when trust is established (if it is established) will students learn effectively.
It is precisely because the authority structure of a formal lecture is so powerful an instrument for focusing attention and improving learning that the lecture medium can be abused for propaganda purposes – for example by political or religious orators who orchestrate mass-meetings or rallies. Because they so effectively exploit human psychology, lectures are intrinsically a form of imposition by one upon the many. There may need to be safeguards, such as an explicit and externally approved curriculum, to prevent the lecture situation being used to pursue non-educational goals.
Conclusion
Scientists, who usually have something to teach which is worth learning, should feel more confident about the value of lecturing and the appropriateness of the method. Students are not being fobbed-off with an inferior medium when lectures are the focus of teaching, nor should the spoken lecture be seen as secondary to the provision of written handouts or transcripts.
So, lectures should not be perceived as redundant elaborations on a text. On the contrary, good lectures cannot be missed without loss, texts are there to support what is spoken, and it should be a clear educational advantage for students to attend lectures.
Furthermore, lecturers should resist the temptation to make lectures more entertaining by over-using ‘visual aids’. Since lectures are primarily ‘aural’, the visual material should generally be appropriate for students’ to record in lecture notes during the actual lecture period – which usually means simple summary sentences, tables and diagrams.
Lectures should be enjoyable, but should not strive to be entertaining as their major goal; lectures ought to be compelling and memorable rather than amusing and diverting. And – because students learn to trust their teachers only gradually – to be educationally effective, lectures should be delivered as a course, not as one-off interactions.
Lectures retain a major educational role because they exploit evolved human psychology to make learning easier and more effective compared with electronic and textual media. Instead of trying to phase-out lectures, we should strive to make them better. And, if the university teaching of science as a general education is to expand in the future [2], it is important to make learning science as easy as possible.
References
[1] B.G. Charlton, Science school and culture school: improving the efficiency of high school science teaching in a system of mass science education, Med Hypotheses 67 (2006), pp. 1–5. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (75 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[2] B.G. Charlton, Science as a general education: conceptual science should constitute the compulsory core of multi-disciplinary undergraduate degrees, Med Hypotheses 66 (2006), pp. 451–453. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (63 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[3] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Universities and social progress in modernizing societies: how educational expansion has replaced socialism as an instrument of political reform, Crit Quart 47 (2005), pp. 30–39. Full Text via CrossRef
[4] M. Trow, Some consequences of the new information and communication technologies for higher education. In: K. Roberts and F. Webster, Editors, The virtual university? Information, markets and managements, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002), pp. 301–317.
[5] H. Brody, The other side of Eden: hunter-gatherers, farmers and the shaping of the world, Faber, London (2002).
[6] J.H. Barkow, Prestige and culture: a biosocial interpretation, Curr Anthropol 16 (1975), pp. 553–572.
Busy-ness in modern society
Editorial
The busy shall inherit the earth: The evolution from ‘hard work’ to ‘busyness’ in modern science and society
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 1003-1005
Summary
Although ‘hard work’ and ‘busyness’ are somewhat similar terms, there seem to be significant differences in the way that they are used. While hard work has always been a feature of complex societies, modern society can be seen as evolving toward being dominated by jobs characterized by busyness. Busyness refers to multi-tasking – having many sequential jobs to perform and switching frequently between them on an externally-imposed schedule. Traditionally, the individual gifts of a successful scientist were mainly in terms of knowledge, theoretical or technical aptitude. But nowadays the successful scientist is often one who has been promoted from hard-work to busyness: an expert in synthesizing a sufficient degree of scientific ability with a broad range of managerial and political skills. It is psychologically tough to be busy, because busyness is a consequence of human beings being constrained by the functioning of abstract social systems. In a complex modern organization, individual psychology is subordinated to inflexible programs of being in specific places at specific times doing specific things – this is both tricky to do well and demanding to do at all. Since people are paid (mainly) to do difficult but necessary things they would prefer not to do, busyness has become a major reason why people are paid a premium salary. In the long-term, many straightforward jobs will be analyzed and routinized out of existence, with the narrowly-skilled worker being replaced by teams, machines or computers. But busy jobs are hard to eliminate because they are those in which it is optimal for a variety of disparate and unpredictable tasks to be done by a single person. Consequently, those individuals who can cope with, even thrive-upon, busyness are becoming indispensable. In future ‘the busy shall inherit the earth’ (or, at least, the most powerful and highest paid jobs), not just in science but in all major social domains.
***
Although ‘hard work’ and ‘busyness’ are somewhat similar terms, there seem to be significant differences in the way that they are used. Modern society can be seen as evolving from an ethos of hard work to being dominated by jobs characterized by busyness. In other words, people are increasingly paid to be busy rather than work hard in the traditional sense.
Hard work may refer to high productivity of a fairly narrow and clearly defined sort: such as making lots of things, or prolonged performance of a process or task. By contrast, busyness usually seems to refer to multi-tasking – having many jobs to perform and switching frequently between them.
Hard work in modern society is therefore usually associated with specialist technical labour – in science this might be a diligent PhD student or post-doctoral researcher putting in long hours reading papers and doing experiments. But busyness is more characteristic of a manager than a technical specialist. For example, the successful scientific grant-holder who divides their time between writing funding applications and papers, presenting at conferences, sitting on committees, teaching at a university, and running a large research team is much ‘busier’ than a PhD student, even when the grant-holder does not work any ‘harder’.
In this sense, the successful scientist is often one who is promoted from hard-work to busyness. For instance, James D. Watson worked hard while he was a post-doc discovering the structure of DNA (hard work which nonetheless famously allowed considerable time for relaxation [1]). But when Watson later became a professor, director and research administrator in the USA his life became much busier than it had been in 1950s Cambridge, UK. Interestingly, Francis Crick – the other DNA discoverer – seemed to resist the usual career of increasing busyness, retaining through his long life many of the vocational patterns of a hard-working post-doc. Significantly, Crick was critical of many features of the ‘busy’ life which characterized modern scientists [2].
The sociology of this shift from scientific hard work to busyness is closely-related to the shift from ‘academic’ to ‘post-academic’ science which was analyzed and described by the late John Ziman (a member of the editorial advisory board of Medical Hypotheses) [3]. In traditional academic science, the individual gifts of a successful academic scientist were mainly in terms of theoretical or technical aptitude – e.g. knowing more, having better ideas or doing better experiments than the competition. But these are the days of Big Science in which the social structures of research are much more complex. The successful scientist is now more likely to be someone who is an expert multi-tasker, synthesising scientific abilities with a broad range of managerial and political skills. The critical aptitude involves juggling the many competing demands entailed by running a large research team on a mega budget.
Most creative people – such as scientists – enjoy their jobs, so that even hard work can be a fulfilling activity. But busyness is psychologically-tougher than hard work, because it involves being subordinated to elaborate schedules, multiple deadlines, time-management and all the rest of it. The recent evolution of science is therefore a principal cause of diminished job satisfaction [3], and this probably leads in turn to a need for higher pay for top scientists, to compensate for reduced intrinsic rewards.
The ultimate reason why busyness is stressful is that it is a consequence of human beings having-to fit themselves into the functioning of complex abstract systems [4]. A large organization cannot function predictably when taking into account a multitude of individual wishes, so the human being must fit around the needs of the organization for them sequentially to be in specific places at specific times doing specific things – whatever they may happen to feel about it. Since people are paid (mainly) to do necessary but difficult things they would prefer not to do [5], busyness is becoming a major reason why people are paid a premium on their salary.
Both hard work and busyness are typical of complex modernizing societies. The successful, hard-working but-not-busy individual, is usually a high level technical expert of some kind – perhaps an ace computer programmer, financial whiz kid or best-selling author. However, in the long-term these jobs tend to be analyzed and routinized out of existence – and the hard-working but-not-busy specialist worker is replaced by a cheaper and more reliable team, machine or computer [6].
But busyness is – almost by definition – that which cannot be reduced to a routine. Busy jobs are those in which it is essential (or optimal) for a variety of disparate and unpredictable tasks to be done by a single person. The ability to be busy is (still) a very human ability, hard to replace with computers, machines or teams. Indeed, it is possible to envisage the evolution of a world in which almost all high status and well-paid jobs are busy ones. For instance, busyness is characteristic of managers – especially senior managers; and the managerial role is expanding in modern economic life to the extent that being some kind of manager is probably the largest ‘middle class’ job category in liberal democracies [6].
And what of those – like Francis Crick - who hate busyness and avoid a management role? What of the talented young post doc who contemplates with horror the prospect of a career in Big Science research administration? Well, if an individual has special, necessary and currently-irreplaceable human expertise, then they can probably avoid busyness – at least for a while – albeit at some cost of foregoing potentially significant salary and status.
But in the longer term, my hunch is that the future belongs to the busy; not just in science but in all major social domains. Those individuals who are best-able and best-trained to cope with, even thrive-upon, busyness will be increasingly valued. The busy shall inherit the earth! And, given the inevitable stress of tightly-regulated multi-tasking, they will probably deserve it.
References
[1] V.K. McElheny, Watson and DNA: making a scientific revolution, John Wiley, Chichester, UK (2003).
[2] F. Crick, What mad pursuit: a personal view of scientific discovery, Penguin, London (1990).
[3] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK) (2000).
[4] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
[5] W. Farrell, Why men earn more, Amacom, New York (2005).
[6] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, What is management and what do managers do? A systems theory account, Philos Manage 3 (2003), pp. 3–15.
The busy shall inherit the earth: The evolution from ‘hard work’ to ‘busyness’ in modern science and society
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 1003-1005
Summary
Although ‘hard work’ and ‘busyness’ are somewhat similar terms, there seem to be significant differences in the way that they are used. While hard work has always been a feature of complex societies, modern society can be seen as evolving toward being dominated by jobs characterized by busyness. Busyness refers to multi-tasking – having many sequential jobs to perform and switching frequently between them on an externally-imposed schedule. Traditionally, the individual gifts of a successful scientist were mainly in terms of knowledge, theoretical or technical aptitude. But nowadays the successful scientist is often one who has been promoted from hard-work to busyness: an expert in synthesizing a sufficient degree of scientific ability with a broad range of managerial and political skills. It is psychologically tough to be busy, because busyness is a consequence of human beings being constrained by the functioning of abstract social systems. In a complex modern organization, individual psychology is subordinated to inflexible programs of being in specific places at specific times doing specific things – this is both tricky to do well and demanding to do at all. Since people are paid (mainly) to do difficult but necessary things they would prefer not to do, busyness has become a major reason why people are paid a premium salary. In the long-term, many straightforward jobs will be analyzed and routinized out of existence, with the narrowly-skilled worker being replaced by teams, machines or computers. But busy jobs are hard to eliminate because they are those in which it is optimal for a variety of disparate and unpredictable tasks to be done by a single person. Consequently, those individuals who can cope with, even thrive-upon, busyness are becoming indispensable. In future ‘the busy shall inherit the earth’ (or, at least, the most powerful and highest paid jobs), not just in science but in all major social domains.
***
Although ‘hard work’ and ‘busyness’ are somewhat similar terms, there seem to be significant differences in the way that they are used. Modern society can be seen as evolving from an ethos of hard work to being dominated by jobs characterized by busyness. In other words, people are increasingly paid to be busy rather than work hard in the traditional sense.
Hard work may refer to high productivity of a fairly narrow and clearly defined sort: such as making lots of things, or prolonged performance of a process or task. By contrast, busyness usually seems to refer to multi-tasking – having many jobs to perform and switching frequently between them.
Hard work in modern society is therefore usually associated with specialist technical labour – in science this might be a diligent PhD student or post-doctoral researcher putting in long hours reading papers and doing experiments. But busyness is more characteristic of a manager than a technical specialist. For example, the successful scientific grant-holder who divides their time between writing funding applications and papers, presenting at conferences, sitting on committees, teaching at a university, and running a large research team is much ‘busier’ than a PhD student, even when the grant-holder does not work any ‘harder’.
In this sense, the successful scientist is often one who is promoted from hard-work to busyness. For instance, James D. Watson worked hard while he was a post-doc discovering the structure of DNA (hard work which nonetheless famously allowed considerable time for relaxation [1]). But when Watson later became a professor, director and research administrator in the USA his life became much busier than it had been in 1950s Cambridge, UK. Interestingly, Francis Crick – the other DNA discoverer – seemed to resist the usual career of increasing busyness, retaining through his long life many of the vocational patterns of a hard-working post-doc. Significantly, Crick was critical of many features of the ‘busy’ life which characterized modern scientists [2].
The sociology of this shift from scientific hard work to busyness is closely-related to the shift from ‘academic’ to ‘post-academic’ science which was analyzed and described by the late John Ziman (a member of the editorial advisory board of Medical Hypotheses) [3]. In traditional academic science, the individual gifts of a successful academic scientist were mainly in terms of theoretical or technical aptitude – e.g. knowing more, having better ideas or doing better experiments than the competition. But these are the days of Big Science in which the social structures of research are much more complex. The successful scientist is now more likely to be someone who is an expert multi-tasker, synthesising scientific abilities with a broad range of managerial and political skills. The critical aptitude involves juggling the many competing demands entailed by running a large research team on a mega budget.
Most creative people – such as scientists – enjoy their jobs, so that even hard work can be a fulfilling activity. But busyness is psychologically-tougher than hard work, because it involves being subordinated to elaborate schedules, multiple deadlines, time-management and all the rest of it. The recent evolution of science is therefore a principal cause of diminished job satisfaction [3], and this probably leads in turn to a need for higher pay for top scientists, to compensate for reduced intrinsic rewards.
The ultimate reason why busyness is stressful is that it is a consequence of human beings having-to fit themselves into the functioning of complex abstract systems [4]. A large organization cannot function predictably when taking into account a multitude of individual wishes, so the human being must fit around the needs of the organization for them sequentially to be in specific places at specific times doing specific things – whatever they may happen to feel about it. Since people are paid (mainly) to do necessary but difficult things they would prefer not to do [5], busyness is becoming a major reason why people are paid a premium on their salary.
Both hard work and busyness are typical of complex modernizing societies. The successful, hard-working but-not-busy individual, is usually a high level technical expert of some kind – perhaps an ace computer programmer, financial whiz kid or best-selling author. However, in the long-term these jobs tend to be analyzed and routinized out of existence – and the hard-working but-not-busy specialist worker is replaced by a cheaper and more reliable team, machine or computer [6].
But busyness is – almost by definition – that which cannot be reduced to a routine. Busy jobs are those in which it is essential (or optimal) for a variety of disparate and unpredictable tasks to be done by a single person. The ability to be busy is (still) a very human ability, hard to replace with computers, machines or teams. Indeed, it is possible to envisage the evolution of a world in which almost all high status and well-paid jobs are busy ones. For instance, busyness is characteristic of managers – especially senior managers; and the managerial role is expanding in modern economic life to the extent that being some kind of manager is probably the largest ‘middle class’ job category in liberal democracies [6].
And what of those – like Francis Crick - who hate busyness and avoid a management role? What of the talented young post doc who contemplates with horror the prospect of a career in Big Science research administration? Well, if an individual has special, necessary and currently-irreplaceable human expertise, then they can probably avoid busyness – at least for a while – albeit at some cost of foregoing potentially significant salary and status.
But in the longer term, my hunch is that the future belongs to the busy; not just in science but in all major social domains. Those individuals who are best-able and best-trained to cope with, even thrive-upon, busyness will be increasingly valued. The busy shall inherit the earth! And, given the inevitable stress of tightly-regulated multi-tasking, they will probably deserve it.
References
[1] V.K. McElheny, Watson and DNA: making a scientific revolution, John Wiley, Chichester, UK (2003).
[2] F. Crick, What mad pursuit: a personal view of scientific discovery, Penguin, London (1990).
[3] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK) (2000).
[4] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
[5] W. Farrell, Why men earn more, Amacom, New York (2005).
[6] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, What is management and what do managers do? A systems theory account, Philos Manage 3 (2003), pp. 3–15.
Psychological neoteny - defined
*Since writing this piece my understanding has changed and I now believe it contains fundamental flaws. Anyone who would like further clarification is welcome to e-mail me at hklaxnessat- yahoo.com*
Editorial
The rise of the boy-genius: Psychological neoteny, science and modern life
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 679-681
Summary
The mid-20th century saw the rise of the boy-genius, probably because a personality type characterized by prolonged youthfulness is advantageous both in science and modern life generally. This is the evolution of ‘psychological neoteny’, in which ever-more people retain for ever-longer the characteristic behaviours and attitudes of earlier developmental stages. Whereas traditional societies are characterized by initiation ceremonies marking the advent of adulthood, these have now dwindled and disappeared. In a psychological sense, some contemporary individuals never actually become adults. A child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviours and knowledge is probably adaptive in modern society because people need repeatedly to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends. It seems that this adaptation is achieved by the expedient of postponing cognitive maturation – a process that could be termed psychological neoteny. (‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity.) Psychological neoteny is probably caused by the prolonged average duration of formal education, since students’ minds are in a significant sense ‘unfinished’. Since modern cultures favour cognitive flexibility, ‘immature’ people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone of contemporary life: the greatest praise of an elderly person is to state that they retain the characteristics of youth. But the faults of youth are retained with well as its virtues: short attention span, sensation- and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness. Nonetheless, as health gets better and cosmetic technologies improve, future humans may become somewhat like an axolotl – the cave-dwelling salamander which retains its larval form until death.
***
The mid-20th century saw the rise of mathematicians and physicists who looked and behaved in a markedly youthful style, and this boy-genius stereotype spread to include most other branches of science. My suspicion is that a personality type characterized by prolonged youthfulness is advantageous not just in science, but in most areas of modern life due to its need for flexible specialization. We are witnessing the evolution of ‘psychological neoteny’, in which ever-more people retain for ever-longer the characteristic behaviours and attitudes of earlier developmental stages.
Perhaps the most famous boy-genius was James Watson around the time he co-discovered DNA. Iconic is the famous 1953 publicity photograph of a gangly, shock-haired Watson gazing-up in wide-eyed wonder as a balding, middle-aged-looking Crick points at a big molecular model [1]. But surveying photos of the discoverers of molecular biology in Judson’s The eighth day of creation [1] the reader sees a parade of youthful enthusiasts. What a contrast between the skinny, bespectacled Max Delbruck (who often wore short trousers) and Victorian images of the bearded-ancient Darwin or the mutton-chop whiskered TH Huxley.
In physics, too, there is a world of difference between the sage wisdom of Einstein and the perpetual youthfulness of his best-known successor Richard Feynman. And despite chronic illness, their popular heir Steven Hawkins even now retains a distinctly ‘schoolboyish’ quality. There are also boy-genius types among scientists like Bill Gates who have become both rich and powerful.
In science, medicine, and most of modern life there has been a powerful and progressive trend toward specialization [2]. Originally science arose by differentiating itself from philosophy, which budded-off theology. Then science broke into physics, chemistry and biology – which have super-specialized into many thousands of sub-disciplines. Consequently, the scientist stereotype has transformed from an omniscient sage, with encyclopaedic knowledge of his whole general subject area, who worked essentially alone; to the current scientific research situation comprising (mostly) teams of super-specialized whiz-kids each of whom know only what is necessary to solve the problem at hand.
It should also be noted in passing that the phrase ‘boy-genius’ must now be taken to include women – since in modern science the whiz-kids are quite frequently female.
Traditional tribal and agricultural societies are characterized by ’initiation ceremonies’ marking very clear-cut transitions between the stages of life: especially the advent of formal adulthood [3]. Indeed, some traditional societies are ‘gerontocracies’ in which age accumulates prestige. But over recent decades in liberal democracies, these transitional ceremonies have dwindled in importance, and often disappeared altogether. The ‘coming of age’ now serves only as an excuse for a party. The reason is that, in an important psychological sense, some modern people never actually become adults – or, if they do, the process is delayed into late middle age when loss of youthful appearance and vitality becomes impossible to deny.
The timing of significant marker points of maturity – such as graduation from college, marriage, first child – which used-to occur at almost fixed ages, are in modern cultures stretched across a much larger time span than in the past, mainly by increasing delays in some individuals. This has been very obvious among educated people, where both marriage and childbearing now quite commonly occur over a span of more than two decades. With such a chronological spread of events, each individual’s experience is now probably unique in its specific combination and timing of such significant events – which further erodes the predictable progress through formal stages of maturity characteristic of traditional societies.
The gradual diminution of initiation ceremonies and indefinite postponement of adopting a stable, integrated adult personality is no accident: these facts recognize that modern societies are characterized by a continual requirement, throughout life, for a child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviours and knowledge [2] and [4]. People need repeatedly to change jobs, to learn new skills and information, to move to new places and cultures, to make new friends – all of these are a cultural novelty for human animals evolved to cope with small hunter gatherer societies of just a few hundred people [1] and [4]. Since mature adults have not evolved to manage these challenges, it seems that people have adapted by postponing their psychological maturation – a process that could be termed psychological neoteny.
The boy-genius can be seen as a specific instance of psychological neoteny which is apparently adaptive in modernizing cultures, and it occurred early in science because science is one of the most ‘modern’ and advanced social systems [2]. ‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity. It represents a relatively fast and simple way of evolving adaptations – for instance modern humans in Western Europe have evolved the ability for adults to digest dairy products (which were not a part of the hunter gatherer diet) by the simple method (presumably by a single gene mutation) of neotenously perpetuating the activity of the milk sugar-digesting enzyme lactase from the breast-fed infant throughout mature life.
Probably, the main proximate cause of psychological neoteny in modernizing societies is the prolonged duration of formal education – which may be why the boy-genius arose in an American context where mass higher education and extended schooling was first established [5]. So long as a person is in formal education, or is open to the possibility of returning for more formal education, their minds are in a significant sense ‘unfinished’. Perhaps this could be one reason why scientists so often strike other people as ‘immature’ in their manners and behaviour? Scientists need to be somewhat child-like in order to keep learning and developing. As mass higher education becomes a feature of all liberal democracies, and as the average number of years spent in formal education progressively increases [6], we may expect to accumulate ever-more chronologically middle-aged and elderly people who remain youthfully-minded.
Since modern cultures favour cognitive flexibility, such people tend to thrive and succeed and now set the tone of contemporary life. The biggest praise that can be given to an elderly person is that they have retained the characteristics of youth – not just a youthful appearance, but also the youthful vitality and drive. The modern exemplary geriatric should continue to compete for high status, remain actively interested in love and sex, show themselves adaptive to change, and continually seek new experiences and challenges. Because such attributes are highly valued, they seem to have become much more common.
But of course there is a downside to psychological neoteny, in that the faults of youth are retained as well as its virtues. Modern society is characterized by a short attention span, frenetic sensation- and novelty-seeking, ever-shorter cycles of arbitrary fashion, and (so cultural intellectuals would argue) a pervasive emotional and spiritual shallowness. There are a lot of divorces and broken families. Modern people – it seems fair to say – also lack a profundity of character which seemed commoner in the past. The personality difference between Einstein and Feynman shows this clearly: Einstein had a mature and harmonious personality of great wisdom [7]; while Feynman was vital, protean, witty and life-enhancing – but he was certainly not a sage, and was quicksilver-clever rather than deeply wise [8].
I would expect that this trend to maintain flexible immaturity through adulthood will continue. Psychological neoteny will be matched by perpetuation of youthful appearance: partly natural due to improved health and social conditions, and partly artificial due to continued advance in cosmetic technologies. In future, the most successfully adapted humans may become something like the axolotl – a cave-dwelling salamander which retains its larval form through sexual maturity and until death.
But even as whiz-kids dominate mainstream culture, the popularity in modern societies of traditional sources of insight and integration – from Rembrandt and JS Bach to Einstein and Tolkien – implies that a niche will surely remain for the profound repositories of ancient wisdom.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Martin Trow, of the University of California at Berkeley, whose wise and deep comments sparked-off this line of thought.
References
[1] H.F. Judson, The eighth day of creation: makers of the revolution in biology, Jonathan Cape, London (1979).
[2] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
[3] J. Campbell, The masks of god: primitive mythology, Penguin, New York, USA (1991).
[4] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Universities and social progress in modernizing societies: how educational expansion has replaced socialism as an instrument of political reform, Crit Quart 47 (2005), pp. 30–39. Full Text via CrossRef
[5] M. Trow, Comparative perspectives on American higher education. In: Martin A. Trow and Thorsten Nybom, Editors, University and society: essays on the social role of research and higher education, Kingsley Publishers, London (1991).
[6] M. Trow, From mass higher education to universal access: the American advantage, Minerva 37 (2000), pp. 1–26.
[7] C.P. Snow, Variety of men, Macmillan, London, UK (1967).
[8] J. Gleick, Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics, Abacus, London, UK (1994).
Editorial
The rise of the boy-genius: Psychological neoteny, science and modern life
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 679-681
Summary
The mid-20th century saw the rise of the boy-genius, probably because a personality type characterized by prolonged youthfulness is advantageous both in science and modern life generally. This is the evolution of ‘psychological neoteny’, in which ever-more people retain for ever-longer the characteristic behaviours and attitudes of earlier developmental stages. Whereas traditional societies are characterized by initiation ceremonies marking the advent of adulthood, these have now dwindled and disappeared. In a psychological sense, some contemporary individuals never actually become adults. A child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviours and knowledge is probably adaptive in modern society because people need repeatedly to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends. It seems that this adaptation is achieved by the expedient of postponing cognitive maturation – a process that could be termed psychological neoteny. (‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity.) Psychological neoteny is probably caused by the prolonged average duration of formal education, since students’ minds are in a significant sense ‘unfinished’. Since modern cultures favour cognitive flexibility, ‘immature’ people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone of contemporary life: the greatest praise of an elderly person is to state that they retain the characteristics of youth. But the faults of youth are retained with well as its virtues: short attention span, sensation- and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness. Nonetheless, as health gets better and cosmetic technologies improve, future humans may become somewhat like an axolotl – the cave-dwelling salamander which retains its larval form until death.
***
The mid-20th century saw the rise of mathematicians and physicists who looked and behaved in a markedly youthful style, and this boy-genius stereotype spread to include most other branches of science. My suspicion is that a personality type characterized by prolonged youthfulness is advantageous not just in science, but in most areas of modern life due to its need for flexible specialization. We are witnessing the evolution of ‘psychological neoteny’, in which ever-more people retain for ever-longer the characteristic behaviours and attitudes of earlier developmental stages.
Perhaps the most famous boy-genius was James Watson around the time he co-discovered DNA. Iconic is the famous 1953 publicity photograph of a gangly, shock-haired Watson gazing-up in wide-eyed wonder as a balding, middle-aged-looking Crick points at a big molecular model [1]. But surveying photos of the discoverers of molecular biology in Judson’s The eighth day of creation [1] the reader sees a parade of youthful enthusiasts. What a contrast between the skinny, bespectacled Max Delbruck (who often wore short trousers) and Victorian images of the bearded-ancient Darwin or the mutton-chop whiskered TH Huxley.
In physics, too, there is a world of difference between the sage wisdom of Einstein and the perpetual youthfulness of his best-known successor Richard Feynman. And despite chronic illness, their popular heir Steven Hawkins even now retains a distinctly ‘schoolboyish’ quality. There are also boy-genius types among scientists like Bill Gates who have become both rich and powerful.
In science, medicine, and most of modern life there has been a powerful and progressive trend toward specialization [2]. Originally science arose by differentiating itself from philosophy, which budded-off theology. Then science broke into physics, chemistry and biology – which have super-specialized into many thousands of sub-disciplines. Consequently, the scientist stereotype has transformed from an omniscient sage, with encyclopaedic knowledge of his whole general subject area, who worked essentially alone; to the current scientific research situation comprising (mostly) teams of super-specialized whiz-kids each of whom know only what is necessary to solve the problem at hand.
It should also be noted in passing that the phrase ‘boy-genius’ must now be taken to include women – since in modern science the whiz-kids are quite frequently female.
Traditional tribal and agricultural societies are characterized by ’initiation ceremonies’ marking very clear-cut transitions between the stages of life: especially the advent of formal adulthood [3]. Indeed, some traditional societies are ‘gerontocracies’ in which age accumulates prestige. But over recent decades in liberal democracies, these transitional ceremonies have dwindled in importance, and often disappeared altogether. The ‘coming of age’ now serves only as an excuse for a party. The reason is that, in an important psychological sense, some modern people never actually become adults – or, if they do, the process is delayed into late middle age when loss of youthful appearance and vitality becomes impossible to deny.
The timing of significant marker points of maturity – such as graduation from college, marriage, first child – which used-to occur at almost fixed ages, are in modern cultures stretched across a much larger time span than in the past, mainly by increasing delays in some individuals. This has been very obvious among educated people, where both marriage and childbearing now quite commonly occur over a span of more than two decades. With such a chronological spread of events, each individual’s experience is now probably unique in its specific combination and timing of such significant events – which further erodes the predictable progress through formal stages of maturity characteristic of traditional societies.
The gradual diminution of initiation ceremonies and indefinite postponement of adopting a stable, integrated adult personality is no accident: these facts recognize that modern societies are characterized by a continual requirement, throughout life, for a child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviours and knowledge [2] and [4]. People need repeatedly to change jobs, to learn new skills and information, to move to new places and cultures, to make new friends – all of these are a cultural novelty for human animals evolved to cope with small hunter gatherer societies of just a few hundred people [1] and [4]. Since mature adults have not evolved to manage these challenges, it seems that people have adapted by postponing their psychological maturation – a process that could be termed psychological neoteny.
The boy-genius can be seen as a specific instance of psychological neoteny which is apparently adaptive in modernizing cultures, and it occurred early in science because science is one of the most ‘modern’ and advanced social systems [2]. ‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity. It represents a relatively fast and simple way of evolving adaptations – for instance modern humans in Western Europe have evolved the ability for adults to digest dairy products (which were not a part of the hunter gatherer diet) by the simple method (presumably by a single gene mutation) of neotenously perpetuating the activity of the milk sugar-digesting enzyme lactase from the breast-fed infant throughout mature life.
Probably, the main proximate cause of psychological neoteny in modernizing societies is the prolonged duration of formal education – which may be why the boy-genius arose in an American context where mass higher education and extended schooling was first established [5]. So long as a person is in formal education, or is open to the possibility of returning for more formal education, their minds are in a significant sense ‘unfinished’. Perhaps this could be one reason why scientists so often strike other people as ‘immature’ in their manners and behaviour? Scientists need to be somewhat child-like in order to keep learning and developing. As mass higher education becomes a feature of all liberal democracies, and as the average number of years spent in formal education progressively increases [6], we may expect to accumulate ever-more chronologically middle-aged and elderly people who remain youthfully-minded.
Since modern cultures favour cognitive flexibility, such people tend to thrive and succeed and now set the tone of contemporary life. The biggest praise that can be given to an elderly person is that they have retained the characteristics of youth – not just a youthful appearance, but also the youthful vitality and drive. The modern exemplary geriatric should continue to compete for high status, remain actively interested in love and sex, show themselves adaptive to change, and continually seek new experiences and challenges. Because such attributes are highly valued, they seem to have become much more common.
But of course there is a downside to psychological neoteny, in that the faults of youth are retained as well as its virtues. Modern society is characterized by a short attention span, frenetic sensation- and novelty-seeking, ever-shorter cycles of arbitrary fashion, and (so cultural intellectuals would argue) a pervasive emotional and spiritual shallowness. There are a lot of divorces and broken families. Modern people – it seems fair to say – also lack a profundity of character which seemed commoner in the past. The personality difference between Einstein and Feynman shows this clearly: Einstein had a mature and harmonious personality of great wisdom [7]; while Feynman was vital, protean, witty and life-enhancing – but he was certainly not a sage, and was quicksilver-clever rather than deeply wise [8].
I would expect that this trend to maintain flexible immaturity through adulthood will continue. Psychological neoteny will be matched by perpetuation of youthful appearance: partly natural due to improved health and social conditions, and partly artificial due to continued advance in cosmetic technologies. In future, the most successfully adapted humans may become something like the axolotl – a cave-dwelling salamander which retains its larval form through sexual maturity and until death.
But even as whiz-kids dominate mainstream culture, the popularity in modern societies of traditional sources of insight and integration – from Rembrandt and JS Bach to Einstein and Tolkien – implies that a niche will surely remain for the profound repositories of ancient wisdom.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Martin Trow, of the University of California at Berkeley, whose wise and deep comments sparked-off this line of thought.
References
[1] H.F. Judson, The eighth day of creation: makers of the revolution in biology, Jonathan Cape, London (1979).
[2] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
[3] J. Campbell, The masks of god: primitive mythology, Penguin, New York, USA (1991).
[4] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Universities and social progress in modernizing societies: how educational expansion has replaced socialism as an instrument of political reform, Crit Quart 47 (2005), pp. 30–39. Full Text via CrossRef
[5] M. Trow, Comparative perspectives on American higher education. In: Martin A. Trow and Thorsten Nybom, Editors, University and society: essays on the social role of research and higher education, Kingsley Publishers, London (1991).
[6] M. Trow, From mass higher education to universal access: the American advantage, Minerva 37 (2000), pp. 1–26.
[7] C.P. Snow, Variety of men, Macmillan, London, UK (1967).
[8] J. Gleick, Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics, Abacus, London, UK (1994).
Science, religion & spirituality are complementary
*Since writing this piece my understanding has changed and I now believe it contains fundamental flaws. Anyone who would like further clarification is welcome to e-mail me at hklaxnessat- yahoo.com*
Editorial
Despite their inevitable conflicts – Science, religion and New Age spirituality are essentially compatible and complementary activities
Bruce G Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 433-436.
Summary
Until recently it seemed that the continued expansion of scientific ways of thinking was destined to render religion extinct and spirituality unfeasible. But the example of the United States disproves this, since America is the most successful scientific nation of this era, church-going remains strong and New Age spiritualities are thriving. Therefore, despite the obvious conflicts; science, religion and spirituality are essentially compatible. Future science will continue to win territory from religion since its validation procedures are more objective and reliable. However, churches can survive and grow by dropping those aspects of doctrine which clash with science, and expanding their social functions. The fast-growing US ‘mega-church’ movement shows the way – since these organizations are minimally dogmatic but instead provide a family-orientated and morally-cohesive social milieu. Like organized religion, New Age spirituality comes into conflict with science when it makes incredible or bizarre factual claims. However, in practice modern spirituality is based on subjective evaluations which do not clash with the procedures of science. Indeed, the reliance upon individual, emotion-based evaluations (e.g., ‘my truth’, ‘whatever works for you’) renders New Age spirituality ‘science-proof’, and has enabled it to expand massively in an age of science. Science, religion and spirituality perform different functions in the modern world, and their relationship is therefore one of mutual-dependence. Borderline disputes will inevitably occur, but as part of a broader context of complementarity. Science, ‘social’ churches and New Age spirituality all have a bright future.
***
Introduction
Until recently it seemed that the continued expansion of scientific ways of thinking was going to render religion extinct and spirituality unfeasible. But the example of the United States disproves this. America is, by a large margin, the most successful scientific nation of this era; yet church-going remains strong and New Age spiritualities (such as Zen, alternative healing, horoscopes, belief in ghosts and UFOs, etc.) have been thriving since the 1960s. Apparently – and despite the obvious conflicts between them – science, religion and spirituality are essentially compatible, probably even mutually-reinforcing.
Science and religion
Science was originally a part of theology, and controlled by the Church. Conflicts between science and religion date back at least to the trial of Galileo [1], after which science gradually separated to become a distinct social system with its own practices and procedures [2].
Since the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of species there have been periodic ‘Evolution Wars’ between biology and religion. Most recently some US churches have come into conflict by their advocacy of ‘Intelligent Design’ as an alternative explanation for biological evolution by natural selection [3]. There is also a strong church-based lobby against medical research involving the human genome or human embryos.
However, the idea of Intelligent Design – which is agnostic concerning the causes of biological complexity – itself represents a religious retreat from Creationism which explicitly ascribes complexity to divine causes. Over time, science will decisively win the evolution wars, and human evolution will become generally regarded as a matter for biology, rather than religion. This outcome is almost certain because natural selection is the core theory in biology (“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” as Dobzhansky stated [4]); and biology (including medical science) is currently the dominant science in the most powerful societies.
Science will surely continue to take territory from religion since its validation procedures [2], although slow, are more objective and reliable – hence more universal. For example, medical considerations will progressively displace religious objections to human genetic engineering and the clinical exploitation of human embryos. In other words health will trump theology because health benefits are more urgent and tangible and there is a stronger social consensus on what constitutes good health than on the boundaries of the morally-permissible.
But natural selection is not a trivial matter for religion. In the first place, natural selection renders many creation myths un-necessary. More fundamentally, the increasingly detailed account of the evolution of the human brain and behaviour seems to allow little scope for a cosmic purpose for humankind, or a relationship with the divine. Many current systems of theology cannot internalize the validity of natural selection without fatal damage to the coherence of their belief systems. However, future churches must (somehow) devise theological systems which do not depend on the falsity of natural selection. Religious beliefs which contradict modern science will need to be downplayed, de-emphasized, and eventually dropped.
This is already happening. Church membership in the USA (albeit not in European countries with established churches) is expanding [5]. This example demonstrates that those Christian churches are thriving which best avoid head-on conflicts with science while retaining social engagement through a powerful but simple theology with a smaller explanatory scope. Modern churches survive and grow mainly on the basis of performing valuable social functions. Freed from the need to enforce a detailed and specific faith upon their congregation, minimally-doctrinaire churches can increasingly focus upon satisfying the hunger for social cohesion based on a moral community, by providing a widening range of social amenities and activities. This has been the pattern in the rapidly growing, family-oriented ‘mega-church’ movement in the USA, where social provision includes clubs, entertainments, catering, child care and schooling; and where complex and controversial dogmas are eschewed [6]. In the church of the future, proper behaviour will count for more than prescribed belief.
Science and New Age spirituality
Spirituality can be conceptualized as the psychological function of religion, which – for many people in modern societies – has become separated from the social function of religion that continues in the organized churches. Nowadays, even regular church-goers probably find much of their spiritual sustenance outside of the context of institutional religion and of their own specific denomination, selecting what they find most personally valuable from the vast choice of material on offer in books, magazines, television, the internet and other mass media.
The conflict between science and spirituality is lower profile than that between science and churches, but nonetheless this hostility has been sustained for more than 200 years since the beginnings of the ‘romantic movement’ in Germany and Britain. Spiritual people often find science profoundly alienating in its theories and potentially catastrophic in its actions. Reciprocally, scientists often regard New Age spirituality [7] (including alternative healing systems [8]) as ludicrously un-scientific at best and dangerously irrational at their extreme.
The major source of clashes between science and spirituality arises from claims which purport to be factual but are scientifically incredible. The dilemma is that in the short-term a modicum of science (or pseudo-science) may serve to increase the status of New Age practitioners, and perhaps to persuade clients of the validity of their activities. Yet in the longer term the attempt to subordinate science to spirituality will lead to a conflict which science will win.
For example, contemporary alternative healing is a variable mixture of science and spirituality [8]. But this seems contradictory hence unstable, and probably these incompatible elements will sooner or later separate-out. For example, alternative medical professionals in well-established systems – such as homeopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy and acupuncture – have often undergone biological and medical training. However, the attempts to explain and justify these therapies in biological terms usually strike informed scientists as unconvincing. And at the further fringes of New Age healing – using crystals, colours, Feng Shui, etc., to promote healing – the scientific rationale for these activities may become ludicrous.
However, over time, the ‘science’ will probably be discarded and subjective psychology will take centre stage. In practice, alternative therapies are not based on objective knowledge such as science, but on subjective and emotional evaluations. New Age spirituality in general is essentially about inducing a positive psychological state [7]. Diagnosing and treating diseases according to a biomedical framework has very little to do with the subjective benefits of ‘healing’ therapies [9].
The lack of scientific validation should not be interpreted as implying that New Age spirituality is either invalid or worthless. Rather, the value and effectiveness of spiritual practices are properly judged by each individual for themselves with reference to their own subjective state [7] and [8]. This is emphasized by phrases such as ‘my truth’ or ‘whatever works for you’ – which indicate that the validation of New Age beliefs is essentially psychological. Hence modern spirituality may be based on explicitly fictional material such as Star Wars [10], Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Indeed, reliance upon idiosyncratic evaluations is precisely what characterizes modern spirituality and renders it ‘science-proof’. It is therefore no coincidence that New Age spirituality has been able to expand rapidly in the age of science.
This implies that alternative medicine will survive and grow by dropping its scientific pretensions, and becoming candidly fictive, symbolic, metaphorical and fantasy-based [8]. This process is already well advanced in other aspects of New Age spirituality. Some influential authors and texts have turned-out to be of dubious provenance. For instance, the ‘don Juan’ books of Carlos Castaneda were supposed to be accounts of scholarly fieldwork, but these claims are now believed to be fraudulent, and the books should be considered as novels [11]. Nonetheless, these fictions began the modern fascination with shamanism, practices which people all around the world have found spiritually valuable. Modern ‘pagan’ spiritualities are also a recent creation [12].
So, New Age spirituality is indeed irrational, just as scientists allege, because it is built upon emotional validations which are personal. Such idiosyncratic evaluations make New Age thinking inappropriate (indeed dangerous) when applied to matters such as science, technology, law or economics. New Age spirituality is a smorgasbord of mass media stimuli designed to manipulate subjective emotional states, and of lifestyle choices which are expressive of these psychological conditions. Seemingly, such a spiritual practice affords a highly appropriate basis for matters concerned with personal fulfilment and meaning in life – where Joseph Campbell’s exhortation to ‘follow your Bliss’ is perhaps the only truly ‘rational’ guidance [10].
Conclusions
The relationship between science, religion and spirituality is exactly what we would expect in modernizing societies; in which functions are increasingly specialized and separate, so they are all able simultaneously to grow in complexity, efficiency and effectiveness [13]. Although science continues to expand its scope, it is based around progressively narrower truth evaluations and therefore leaves-out many social and individual functions – aesthetic, economic, legal and so on. Science also leaves-out those religious functions which are well-served by ‘social’ churches and personal spiritualities. Therefore, science will never take-over the whole of human life.
Indeed, as science becomes increasingly professionalized it probably provides less social support and personal satisfaction than it once did: for most scientists, science has become less of a ‘vocation’ and more ‘just a job’. Modern scientists, as individuals, arguably have more to gain from church membership and personal spirituality than scientists did in the past.
The situation of science, religion and spirituality is best considered as one of mutual dependence: each system performing a vital but distinct role which is valuable either to society or to individuals [13]. Borderline disputes will inevitably occur, as they do between all social systems: after all, science frequently clashes with politics, economics and the mass media. But such conflicts should be seen as part of a broader context of compatibility and complementarity; and science, social churches and New Age spirituality all have a bright future.
References
[1] J. Bronowski, The ascent of man, BBC, London (1973).
[2] D.L. Hull, Science as a process, Chicago University Press, Chicago (1988).
[3] Wikipedia. Intelligent design,; 2006 [accessed 6.04.2006].
[4] Dobzhansky T. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. The American Biology Teacher 35:125–29.
[5] The Economist. Therapy of the masses,; November 6 2003 [accessed 6.04.2006].
[6] The Economist. Churches as businesses.; December 20 2005 [accessed 6.04.2006].
[7] P. Heelas, The New Age movement, Blackwell, Oxford (1996).
[8] B.G. Charlton, Why medical hypotheses does not publish papers from the field of alternative healing, Med Hypotheses 63 (2004), pp. 557–559. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (219 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[9] B.G. Charlton, Randomized trials in alternative/complementary medicine, QJM 95 (2002), pp. 643–645. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[10] J. Campbell and B. Moyers, The power of myth, Doubleday, New York (1988).
[11] D.C. Noel, The soul of shamanism, Continuum, New York (1999).
[12] R. Hutton, The pagan religions of the ancient British Isles, Blackwell, Oxford (1993).
[13] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
Editorial
Despite their inevitable conflicts – Science, religion and New Age spirituality are essentially compatible and complementary activities
Bruce G Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 433-436.
Summary
Until recently it seemed that the continued expansion of scientific ways of thinking was destined to render religion extinct and spirituality unfeasible. But the example of the United States disproves this, since America is the most successful scientific nation of this era, church-going remains strong and New Age spiritualities are thriving. Therefore, despite the obvious conflicts; science, religion and spirituality are essentially compatible. Future science will continue to win territory from religion since its validation procedures are more objective and reliable. However, churches can survive and grow by dropping those aspects of doctrine which clash with science, and expanding their social functions. The fast-growing US ‘mega-church’ movement shows the way – since these organizations are minimally dogmatic but instead provide a family-orientated and morally-cohesive social milieu. Like organized religion, New Age spirituality comes into conflict with science when it makes incredible or bizarre factual claims. However, in practice modern spirituality is based on subjective evaluations which do not clash with the procedures of science. Indeed, the reliance upon individual, emotion-based evaluations (e.g., ‘my truth’, ‘whatever works for you’) renders New Age spirituality ‘science-proof’, and has enabled it to expand massively in an age of science. Science, religion and spirituality perform different functions in the modern world, and their relationship is therefore one of mutual-dependence. Borderline disputes will inevitably occur, but as part of a broader context of complementarity. Science, ‘social’ churches and New Age spirituality all have a bright future.
***
Introduction
Until recently it seemed that the continued expansion of scientific ways of thinking was going to render religion extinct and spirituality unfeasible. But the example of the United States disproves this. America is, by a large margin, the most successful scientific nation of this era; yet church-going remains strong and New Age spiritualities (such as Zen, alternative healing, horoscopes, belief in ghosts and UFOs, etc.) have been thriving since the 1960s. Apparently – and despite the obvious conflicts between them – science, religion and spirituality are essentially compatible, probably even mutually-reinforcing.
Science and religion
Science was originally a part of theology, and controlled by the Church. Conflicts between science and religion date back at least to the trial of Galileo [1], after which science gradually separated to become a distinct social system with its own practices and procedures [2].
Since the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of species there have been periodic ‘Evolution Wars’ between biology and religion. Most recently some US churches have come into conflict by their advocacy of ‘Intelligent Design’ as an alternative explanation for biological evolution by natural selection [3]. There is also a strong church-based lobby against medical research involving the human genome or human embryos.
However, the idea of Intelligent Design – which is agnostic concerning the causes of biological complexity – itself represents a religious retreat from Creationism which explicitly ascribes complexity to divine causes. Over time, science will decisively win the evolution wars, and human evolution will become generally regarded as a matter for biology, rather than religion. This outcome is almost certain because natural selection is the core theory in biology (“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” as Dobzhansky stated [4]); and biology (including medical science) is currently the dominant science in the most powerful societies.
Science will surely continue to take territory from religion since its validation procedures [2], although slow, are more objective and reliable – hence more universal. For example, medical considerations will progressively displace religious objections to human genetic engineering and the clinical exploitation of human embryos. In other words health will trump theology because health benefits are more urgent and tangible and there is a stronger social consensus on what constitutes good health than on the boundaries of the morally-permissible.
But natural selection is not a trivial matter for religion. In the first place, natural selection renders many creation myths un-necessary. More fundamentally, the increasingly detailed account of the evolution of the human brain and behaviour seems to allow little scope for a cosmic purpose for humankind, or a relationship with the divine. Many current systems of theology cannot internalize the validity of natural selection without fatal damage to the coherence of their belief systems. However, future churches must (somehow) devise theological systems which do not depend on the falsity of natural selection. Religious beliefs which contradict modern science will need to be downplayed, de-emphasized, and eventually dropped.
This is already happening. Church membership in the USA (albeit not in European countries with established churches) is expanding [5]. This example demonstrates that those Christian churches are thriving which best avoid head-on conflicts with science while retaining social engagement through a powerful but simple theology with a smaller explanatory scope. Modern churches survive and grow mainly on the basis of performing valuable social functions. Freed from the need to enforce a detailed and specific faith upon their congregation, minimally-doctrinaire churches can increasingly focus upon satisfying the hunger for social cohesion based on a moral community, by providing a widening range of social amenities and activities. This has been the pattern in the rapidly growing, family-oriented ‘mega-church’ movement in the USA, where social provision includes clubs, entertainments, catering, child care and schooling; and where complex and controversial dogmas are eschewed [6]. In the church of the future, proper behaviour will count for more than prescribed belief.
Science and New Age spirituality
Spirituality can be conceptualized as the psychological function of religion, which – for many people in modern societies – has become separated from the social function of religion that continues in the organized churches. Nowadays, even regular church-goers probably find much of their spiritual sustenance outside of the context of institutional religion and of their own specific denomination, selecting what they find most personally valuable from the vast choice of material on offer in books, magazines, television, the internet and other mass media.
The conflict between science and spirituality is lower profile than that between science and churches, but nonetheless this hostility has been sustained for more than 200 years since the beginnings of the ‘romantic movement’ in Germany and Britain. Spiritual people often find science profoundly alienating in its theories and potentially catastrophic in its actions. Reciprocally, scientists often regard New Age spirituality [7] (including alternative healing systems [8]) as ludicrously un-scientific at best and dangerously irrational at their extreme.
The major source of clashes between science and spirituality arises from claims which purport to be factual but are scientifically incredible. The dilemma is that in the short-term a modicum of science (or pseudo-science) may serve to increase the status of New Age practitioners, and perhaps to persuade clients of the validity of their activities. Yet in the longer term the attempt to subordinate science to spirituality will lead to a conflict which science will win.
For example, contemporary alternative healing is a variable mixture of science and spirituality [8]. But this seems contradictory hence unstable, and probably these incompatible elements will sooner or later separate-out. For example, alternative medical professionals in well-established systems – such as homeopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy and acupuncture – have often undergone biological and medical training. However, the attempts to explain and justify these therapies in biological terms usually strike informed scientists as unconvincing. And at the further fringes of New Age healing – using crystals, colours, Feng Shui, etc., to promote healing – the scientific rationale for these activities may become ludicrous.
However, over time, the ‘science’ will probably be discarded and subjective psychology will take centre stage. In practice, alternative therapies are not based on objective knowledge such as science, but on subjective and emotional evaluations. New Age spirituality in general is essentially about inducing a positive psychological state [7]. Diagnosing and treating diseases according to a biomedical framework has very little to do with the subjective benefits of ‘healing’ therapies [9].
The lack of scientific validation should not be interpreted as implying that New Age spirituality is either invalid or worthless. Rather, the value and effectiveness of spiritual practices are properly judged by each individual for themselves with reference to their own subjective state [7] and [8]. This is emphasized by phrases such as ‘my truth’ or ‘whatever works for you’ – which indicate that the validation of New Age beliefs is essentially psychological. Hence modern spirituality may be based on explicitly fictional material such as Star Wars [10], Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Indeed, reliance upon idiosyncratic evaluations is precisely what characterizes modern spirituality and renders it ‘science-proof’. It is therefore no coincidence that New Age spirituality has been able to expand rapidly in the age of science.
This implies that alternative medicine will survive and grow by dropping its scientific pretensions, and becoming candidly fictive, symbolic, metaphorical and fantasy-based [8]. This process is already well advanced in other aspects of New Age spirituality. Some influential authors and texts have turned-out to be of dubious provenance. For instance, the ‘don Juan’ books of Carlos Castaneda were supposed to be accounts of scholarly fieldwork, but these claims are now believed to be fraudulent, and the books should be considered as novels [11]. Nonetheless, these fictions began the modern fascination with shamanism, practices which people all around the world have found spiritually valuable. Modern ‘pagan’ spiritualities are also a recent creation [12].
So, New Age spirituality is indeed irrational, just as scientists allege, because it is built upon emotional validations which are personal. Such idiosyncratic evaluations make New Age thinking inappropriate (indeed dangerous) when applied to matters such as science, technology, law or economics. New Age spirituality is a smorgasbord of mass media stimuli designed to manipulate subjective emotional states, and of lifestyle choices which are expressive of these psychological conditions. Seemingly, such a spiritual practice affords a highly appropriate basis for matters concerned with personal fulfilment and meaning in life – where Joseph Campbell’s exhortation to ‘follow your Bliss’ is perhaps the only truly ‘rational’ guidance [10].
Conclusions
The relationship between science, religion and spirituality is exactly what we would expect in modernizing societies; in which functions are increasingly specialized and separate, so they are all able simultaneously to grow in complexity, efficiency and effectiveness [13]. Although science continues to expand its scope, it is based around progressively narrower truth evaluations and therefore leaves-out many social and individual functions – aesthetic, economic, legal and so on. Science also leaves-out those religious functions which are well-served by ‘social’ churches and personal spiritualities. Therefore, science will never take-over the whole of human life.
Indeed, as science becomes increasingly professionalized it probably provides less social support and personal satisfaction than it once did: for most scientists, science has become less of a ‘vocation’ and more ‘just a job’. Modern scientists, as individuals, arguably have more to gain from church membership and personal spirituality than scientists did in the past.
The situation of science, religion and spirituality is best considered as one of mutual dependence: each system performing a vital but distinct role which is valuable either to society or to individuals [13]. Borderline disputes will inevitably occur, as they do between all social systems: after all, science frequently clashes with politics, economics and the mass media. But such conflicts should be seen as part of a broader context of compatibility and complementarity; and science, social churches and New Age spirituality all have a bright future.
References
[1] J. Bronowski, The ascent of man, BBC, London (1973).
[2] D.L. Hull, Science as a process, Chicago University Press, Chicago (1988).
[3] Wikipedia. Intelligent design,
[4] Dobzhansky T. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. The American Biology Teacher 35:125–29.
[5] The Economist. Therapy of the masses,
[6] The Economist. Churches as businesses.
[7] P. Heelas, The New Age movement, Blackwell, Oxford (1996).
[8] B.G. Charlton, Why medical hypotheses does not publish papers from the field of alternative healing, Med Hypotheses 63 (2004), pp. 557–559. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (219 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[9] B.G. Charlton, Randomized trials in alternative/complementary medicine, QJM 95 (2002), pp. 643–645. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[10] J. Campbell and B. Moyers, The power of myth, Doubleday, New York (1988).
[11] D.C. Noel, The soul of shamanism, Continuum, New York (1999).
[12] R. Hutton, The pagan religions of the ancient British Isles, Blackwell, Oxford (1993).
[13] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
Modern mass media - enables social cohesion
*Since writing this piece my understanding has changed and I now believe it contains fundamental flaws. Anyone who would like further clarification is welcome to e-mail me at hklaxnessat- yahoo.com*
Editorial
The paradox of the modern mass media: Probably the major source of social cohesion in liberal democracies, even though its content is often socially divisive
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 205-208
***
Summary
The modern mass media (MM) is often regarded a mixture between a trivial waste of time and resources, and a dangerously subversive system tending to promote social division and community breakdown. But these negative evaluations are difficult to square with the fact that those countries with the largest mass media include the most modernized and powerful nations. It seems more plausible that the MM is serving some useful – perhaps vital – function. I suggest that modern mass media function as the main source of social cohesion in liberal democracies. The paradox is that this cohesive function is sustained in a context of frequently divisive media content. This media function evolved because modern MM produce an excess of media communications in a context of consumer choice which generates competition for public attention both within- and between-media. Competition has led the media to become increasingly specialized at gaining and retaining public attention. Social cohesion is the consequence of the mass media continually drawing public attention to itself, and to the extremely large, internally complex and interconnected nature of the MM system. The means by which attention is attracted are almost arbitrary, encompassing both novelty and familiarity and evoking a wide range of emotions both positive and negative. Driven to seek competitive advantage, modern mass media produce a wide range of material to cater to a vast range of interests; thereby engaging a great variety of individuals and social groupings. The consequence is that media content is typically self-contradictory and includes content which is offensive and potentially divisive; since what grabs the interest of some may offend or repel others. For instance, young men must be socially engaged, since they are potentially the most violent social group, yet the interests of young men include material that the majority of the population would find excessively aggressive, disrespectful, subversive or sexual. If the mass media is effectively to perform its crucial function of enabling social cohesion among a diverse and differentiated population, then modern liberal democracies need a broad margin of toleration and a widespread psychological capacity to endure dissent and disagreement.
***
Doctors and scientists in liberal democracies will be familiar with the experience of mass media (MM) reporting of their subjects being selective, distorted, and sensational [1]. Furthermore, it is not unusual to come across media content which is apparently socially divisive – tending to promote anger, fear, disgust, revenge and other negative emotions. One common view of the mass media is therefore that it is trivial, potentially dangerous, or both. Another view is that the mass media constitute a form of (mostly indirect) ideological propaganda on behalf of the ruling powers [2].
But, I will argue here that the modern mass media has in fact a neglected but vital role in promoting social cohesion. It is probably the modern MM that enables liberal democracies to dispense with a great deal of the coercion, propaganda and censorship which was required to hold-together complex societies in the past [3].
The cohesion induced by the MM is based upon attracting attention, and therefore depends intrinsically upon a wide range of media content to appeal to many social groups and divisions. Since it is inevitable that material which attracts and engages some individuals and groups will repel and offend others, modern liberal democracies depend upon toleration to strengthen social cohesion.
Evolution of the mass media
The mass media have changed their function over the past few centuries, mainly as a consequence of increased competition within-and between-media.
In traditional societies [3] and [4] the MM essentially functioned as an instrument of ideological control, producing heavily censored ‘propaganda’ on behalf of the ruling powers who controlled the media – and this situation continued through the earlier stages of industrialization before the evolution of the modern mass media. This was possible because the MM faced little or no competition: books were expensive and copying text was technically difficult, while early broadcast media comprised only a handful of channels. Therefore, mass media of feudal, totalitarian and theocratic societies were essentially monolithic in their communications and manipulative in their intentions [2] and [3].
But the modern mass media are different. Although printing was invented in the Middle Ages and had a massive impact – allowing much larger and more complex societies to be administered [5] and [6] – the first modern mass media were probably delayed until there was an excess production of printed communications such as cheap newspapers and stories, relative freedom from censorship, a mostly literate population and also effective consumer choice between media. Since that time media-providers have increasingly needed to compete for limited public attention both within media (e.g. competition between radio stations, or between channels on TV) and between media (e.g. competition between the news on TV, radio, newspapers and the internet).
When media-providers need to compete for public attention this greatly limits the effectiveness of propaganda and other forms of centrally controlled indoctrination; because consumers are able to switch their attention to more interesting content elsewhere. Increasing competition also diminishes the role of the earlier MM in providing information that is potentially useful in understanding society in general [7]. Useful information (for example medical information, or explanations of scientific concepts) is still produced by the MM for minority interest groups, but is increasingly swamped by more primarily attention-attracting content.
The effects can also be seen within the professional scientific literature, where a few prestigious journals (including Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet) have over recent decades specialized in publishing top-quality science which is also media-compatible. Consequently, the mass media ignores virtually the whole of the vast medical and scientific literature excepting these few hybrid media-science journals where they can find a pre-selected pool of high status scientific publications, chosen for their potential for grabbing public attention.
Once media are competing to gain attention from an expanding range of people and groups, and have evolved mechanisms to hold this attention over time (such as the ability to generate daily news [7]), then this progressively increases the psychological fascination of the mass media as a whole. More people will devote more attention to the diversifying and growing mass media system.
Mechanism of social cohesion
The modern mass media is a very large, complex, densely interconnected social system which attracts increasing attention from ever more of the individuals and social groups which compose society. My suggestion is that it is precisely this focusing of attention on the MM which generates social cohesion in modern societies. The fact that the modern mass media have evolved to become perhaps the major source of social cohesion is therefore an unintended consequence of increasing competition for public attention.
The MM system in modern democracies now functions as the major source of social cohesion, but this function has evolved due to competition for attention and is therefore unselfconscious, unintended and unplanned. The paradox of modern mass media is that while the media system tends to bind society, the content often appears to promote breakdown and division.
This happens because the means or mechanisms by which public attention is attracted and sustained is almost irrelevant to the modern MM – which is therefore extraordinarily multi-faceted, indeed self-contradictory, in its content. Some media content attracts attention by its familiarity, other content by its novelty. The emotions evoked may likewise involve opposites: both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, positive and negative moods, beauty and horror, socially harmonious and socially divisive impulses. This internal inconsistency arises simply because the specific content of media is subordinated to the guiding necessity to attract and sustain public attention in a competitive media environment.
So, unlike the top-down enforced ideological uniformity of traditional and totalitarian societies [3], modern societies are importantly held together by their arguments and differences. Indeed, in liberal democracies it is often the disputes which provide the attentional-focus around which society coheres.
Toleration strengthens and expands social cohesion
The paradox is that the mass media promotes overall social cohesion by means which often generate social strife. The strength of social cohesion depends upon the strength by which the MM is able to attract attention. Media in competition are continually trying to attract attention more strongly from more people and groups, by generating wider choice. People differ; their preferences vary according to age, sex, region, religion, politics, hobbies and countless other special interests. No two members of the public will attend to precisely the same elements of the MM, and the evaluations of any given media item may be multiple and oppositional.
The modern MM therefore cuts-across and tends to break-up many traditional social groupings (groups which used-to be important for social cohesion) and leads to a society of unique individuals. Indeed, the uniqueness of modern individuals is defined in public terms as their one-off profile of consumption and lifestyle choices from the surplus of possibilities produced by the MM. The modern media therefore simultaneously generates typically modern individuals, and enable these individuals to cohere.
The social cohesion of these unique individuals depends upon their personal toleration of the fact that other individuals will make different choices. Doctors and scientists have to tolerate twisted media portrayals of their activities, just as all citizens must tolerate media content which is legally permitted but of which they disapprove. The MM’s capacity to engage a diverse population requires that attention-grabbing material be produced to cater for a vast range of interests. But the ability of media content to attract and hold attention in one person often entails causing insult or repugnance in another.
For instance, all societies must engage young men, since they are potentially the most violent group. However, the spontaneous mass media interests of young men include material that the majority of the population would find excessively aggressive, disrespectful, subversive or sexual. Such content will seldom find general approval – but probably needs a broad margin of toleration if the mass media is to perform its function of social cohesion.
Of course, if the media generates too much dissent, then this may become an immediate threat to social cohesion – for example leading to riots or revolution. So, the MM cannot be completely free from control and censorship, and limits to toleration must be defined and enforced. On the other hand, the more media provocation that can be tolerated, the better. Because, so long as short-term dissent does not lead to actual breakdown, it will tend to strengthen long-term social cohesion by engaging more people more strongly. For liberal democracies the situation was encapsulated by Nietzsche: ‘What does not kill us will make us stronger’.
The paradox of modern mass media is that divisive content is probably intrinsic to maximizing its effectiveness and inclusiveness. The cohesion of liberal democracies therefore depends on a widespread psychological capacity to endure a permanent state of dissent and disagreement. The presence of endemic media provocation and controversy does not always make for a comfortable life. Yet, the greater the social toleration – the stronger and broader the social cohesion.
Acknowledgement
Thanks are due to Peter Andras whose conversation and comments contributed greatly to these ideas.
References
[1] P. Andras and B.G. Charlton, Democratic deficit and communication hyper-inflation in health care systems, J Eval Clin Pract 8 (2002), pp. 291–297. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[2] N. Chomsky, Necessary illusions: thought control in democratic societies, Pluto, London (1989).
[3] E. Gellner, Plough, sword and book: the structure of human history, Collins Harvill, London (1988).
[4] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter (UK) (2003).
[5] M. McLuhan, The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of typeographic man, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1962).
[6] R. Wright, Nonzero: the logic of human destiny, Pantheon, New York (2000).
[7] N. Luhmann, The reality of the mass media, Polity Press, Cambridge (UK) (2000).
Editorial
The paradox of the modern mass media: Probably the major source of social cohesion in liberal democracies, even though its content is often socially divisive
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 205-208
***
Summary
The modern mass media (MM) is often regarded a mixture between a trivial waste of time and resources, and a dangerously subversive system tending to promote social division and community breakdown. But these negative evaluations are difficult to square with the fact that those countries with the largest mass media include the most modernized and powerful nations. It seems more plausible that the MM is serving some useful – perhaps vital – function. I suggest that modern mass media function as the main source of social cohesion in liberal democracies. The paradox is that this cohesive function is sustained in a context of frequently divisive media content. This media function evolved because modern MM produce an excess of media communications in a context of consumer choice which generates competition for public attention both within- and between-media. Competition has led the media to become increasingly specialized at gaining and retaining public attention. Social cohesion is the consequence of the mass media continually drawing public attention to itself, and to the extremely large, internally complex and interconnected nature of the MM system. The means by which attention is attracted are almost arbitrary, encompassing both novelty and familiarity and evoking a wide range of emotions both positive and negative. Driven to seek competitive advantage, modern mass media produce a wide range of material to cater to a vast range of interests; thereby engaging a great variety of individuals and social groupings. The consequence is that media content is typically self-contradictory and includes content which is offensive and potentially divisive; since what grabs the interest of some may offend or repel others. For instance, young men must be socially engaged, since they are potentially the most violent social group, yet the interests of young men include material that the majority of the population would find excessively aggressive, disrespectful, subversive or sexual. If the mass media is effectively to perform its crucial function of enabling social cohesion among a diverse and differentiated population, then modern liberal democracies need a broad margin of toleration and a widespread psychological capacity to endure dissent and disagreement.
***
Doctors and scientists in liberal democracies will be familiar with the experience of mass media (MM) reporting of their subjects being selective, distorted, and sensational [1]. Furthermore, it is not unusual to come across media content which is apparently socially divisive – tending to promote anger, fear, disgust, revenge and other negative emotions. One common view of the mass media is therefore that it is trivial, potentially dangerous, or both. Another view is that the mass media constitute a form of (mostly indirect) ideological propaganda on behalf of the ruling powers [2].
But, I will argue here that the modern mass media has in fact a neglected but vital role in promoting social cohesion. It is probably the modern MM that enables liberal democracies to dispense with a great deal of the coercion, propaganda and censorship which was required to hold-together complex societies in the past [3].
The cohesion induced by the MM is based upon attracting attention, and therefore depends intrinsically upon a wide range of media content to appeal to many social groups and divisions. Since it is inevitable that material which attracts and engages some individuals and groups will repel and offend others, modern liberal democracies depend upon toleration to strengthen social cohesion.
Evolution of the mass media
The mass media have changed their function over the past few centuries, mainly as a consequence of increased competition within-and between-media.
In traditional societies [3] and [4] the MM essentially functioned as an instrument of ideological control, producing heavily censored ‘propaganda’ on behalf of the ruling powers who controlled the media – and this situation continued through the earlier stages of industrialization before the evolution of the modern mass media. This was possible because the MM faced little or no competition: books were expensive and copying text was technically difficult, while early broadcast media comprised only a handful of channels. Therefore, mass media of feudal, totalitarian and theocratic societies were essentially monolithic in their communications and manipulative in their intentions [2] and [3].
But the modern mass media are different. Although printing was invented in the Middle Ages and had a massive impact – allowing much larger and more complex societies to be administered [5] and [6] – the first modern mass media were probably delayed until there was an excess production of printed communications such as cheap newspapers and stories, relative freedom from censorship, a mostly literate population and also effective consumer choice between media. Since that time media-providers have increasingly needed to compete for limited public attention both within media (e.g. competition between radio stations, or between channels on TV) and between media (e.g. competition between the news on TV, radio, newspapers and the internet).
When media-providers need to compete for public attention this greatly limits the effectiveness of propaganda and other forms of centrally controlled indoctrination; because consumers are able to switch their attention to more interesting content elsewhere. Increasing competition also diminishes the role of the earlier MM in providing information that is potentially useful in understanding society in general [7]. Useful information (for example medical information, or explanations of scientific concepts) is still produced by the MM for minority interest groups, but is increasingly swamped by more primarily attention-attracting content.
The effects can also be seen within the professional scientific literature, where a few prestigious journals (including Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet) have over recent decades specialized in publishing top-quality science which is also media-compatible. Consequently, the mass media ignores virtually the whole of the vast medical and scientific literature excepting these few hybrid media-science journals where they can find a pre-selected pool of high status scientific publications, chosen for their potential for grabbing public attention.
Once media are competing to gain attention from an expanding range of people and groups, and have evolved mechanisms to hold this attention over time (such as the ability to generate daily news [7]), then this progressively increases the psychological fascination of the mass media as a whole. More people will devote more attention to the diversifying and growing mass media system.
Mechanism of social cohesion
The modern mass media is a very large, complex, densely interconnected social system which attracts increasing attention from ever more of the individuals and social groups which compose society. My suggestion is that it is precisely this focusing of attention on the MM which generates social cohesion in modern societies. The fact that the modern mass media have evolved to become perhaps the major source of social cohesion is therefore an unintended consequence of increasing competition for public attention.
The MM system in modern democracies now functions as the major source of social cohesion, but this function has evolved due to competition for attention and is therefore unselfconscious, unintended and unplanned. The paradox of modern mass media is that while the media system tends to bind society, the content often appears to promote breakdown and division.
This happens because the means or mechanisms by which public attention is attracted and sustained is almost irrelevant to the modern MM – which is therefore extraordinarily multi-faceted, indeed self-contradictory, in its content. Some media content attracts attention by its familiarity, other content by its novelty. The emotions evoked may likewise involve opposites: both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, positive and negative moods, beauty and horror, socially harmonious and socially divisive impulses. This internal inconsistency arises simply because the specific content of media is subordinated to the guiding necessity to attract and sustain public attention in a competitive media environment.
So, unlike the top-down enforced ideological uniformity of traditional and totalitarian societies [3], modern societies are importantly held together by their arguments and differences. Indeed, in liberal democracies it is often the disputes which provide the attentional-focus around which society coheres.
Toleration strengthens and expands social cohesion
The paradox is that the mass media promotes overall social cohesion by means which often generate social strife. The strength of social cohesion depends upon the strength by which the MM is able to attract attention. Media in competition are continually trying to attract attention more strongly from more people and groups, by generating wider choice. People differ; their preferences vary according to age, sex, region, religion, politics, hobbies and countless other special interests. No two members of the public will attend to precisely the same elements of the MM, and the evaluations of any given media item may be multiple and oppositional.
The modern MM therefore cuts-across and tends to break-up many traditional social groupings (groups which used-to be important for social cohesion) and leads to a society of unique individuals. Indeed, the uniqueness of modern individuals is defined in public terms as their one-off profile of consumption and lifestyle choices from the surplus of possibilities produced by the MM. The modern media therefore simultaneously generates typically modern individuals, and enable these individuals to cohere.
The social cohesion of these unique individuals depends upon their personal toleration of the fact that other individuals will make different choices. Doctors and scientists have to tolerate twisted media portrayals of their activities, just as all citizens must tolerate media content which is legally permitted but of which they disapprove. The MM’s capacity to engage a diverse population requires that attention-grabbing material be produced to cater for a vast range of interests. But the ability of media content to attract and hold attention in one person often entails causing insult or repugnance in another.
For instance, all societies must engage young men, since they are potentially the most violent group. However, the spontaneous mass media interests of young men include material that the majority of the population would find excessively aggressive, disrespectful, subversive or sexual. Such content will seldom find general approval – but probably needs a broad margin of toleration if the mass media is to perform its function of social cohesion.
Of course, if the media generates too much dissent, then this may become an immediate threat to social cohesion – for example leading to riots or revolution. So, the MM cannot be completely free from control and censorship, and limits to toleration must be defined and enforced. On the other hand, the more media provocation that can be tolerated, the better. Because, so long as short-term dissent does not lead to actual breakdown, it will tend to strengthen long-term social cohesion by engaging more people more strongly. For liberal democracies the situation was encapsulated by Nietzsche: ‘What does not kill us will make us stronger’.
The paradox of modern mass media is that divisive content is probably intrinsic to maximizing its effectiveness and inclusiveness. The cohesion of liberal democracies therefore depends on a widespread psychological capacity to endure a permanent state of dissent and disagreement. The presence of endemic media provocation and controversy does not always make for a comfortable life. Yet, the greater the social toleration – the stronger and broader the social cohesion.
Acknowledgement
Thanks are due to Peter Andras whose conversation and comments contributed greatly to these ideas.
References
[1] P. Andras and B.G. Charlton, Democratic deficit and communication hyper-inflation in health care systems, J Eval Clin Pract 8 (2002), pp. 291–297. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[2] N. Chomsky, Necessary illusions: thought control in democratic societies, Pluto, London (1989).
[3] E. Gellner, Plough, sword and book: the structure of human history, Collins Harvill, London (1988).
[4] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter (UK) (2003).
[5] M. McLuhan, The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of typeographic man, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1962).
[6] R. Wright, Nonzero: the logic of human destiny, Pantheon, New York (2000).
[7] N. Luhmann, The reality of the mass media, Polity Press, Cambridge (UK) (2000).
Science school and culture school
*Since writing this piece my understanding has changed and I now believe it contains fundamental flaws. Anyone who would like further clarification is welcome to e-mail me at hklaxnessat- yahoo.com*
Editorial
Science school and culture school: Improving the efficiency of high school science teaching in a system of mass science education
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 1-5
Summary
Educational expansion in western countries has been achieved mainly by adding years to full-time education; however, this process has probably reduced efficiency. Sooner or later, efficiency must improve, with a greater educational attainment per year. Future societies will probably wish more people to study science throughout high school (aged c. 11–19 years) and the first college degree. ‘Science’ may be defined as any abstract, systematic and research-based discipline: including mathematics, statistics and the natural sciences, economics, music theory, linguistics, and the conceptual or quantitative social sciences. Since formal teaching is usually necessary to learn science, science education should be regarded as the core function of high schools. One standard way to improve efficiency is the ‘division of labour’, with increased specialization of function. Modern schools are already specialized: teachers are specialized according to age-group taught, subject matter expertise, and administrative responsibilities. School students are stratified by age and academic aptitude. I propose a further institutional division of school function between science education, and cultural education (including education in arts, sports, ethics, social interaction and good citizenship). Existing schools might split into ‘science school’ and ‘culture school’, reflected in distinct buildings and zones, separate administrative structures, and the recruitment of differently-specialized teaching personnel. Science school would be distinguished by its focus on education in disciplines which promote abstract systematic cognition. All students would spend some part of each day (how much would depend on their aptitude and motivation) in the ‘science school’; experiencing a traditional-style, didactic, disciplined and rigorous academic education. The remainder of the students’ time at school would be spent in the cultural division, which would focus on broader aspects, and aim to generate a more rounded and social individual. For this to happen depends upon a recognition that science is relatively difficult to teach, requiring non-spontaneous and un-natural cognitive processes from students. Furthermore, it is much easier to learn science when young – if science is missed at school, it can be difficult or impossible to make up the ground later. Modern schools currently try to do too many things, and end-up doing none very well: the one big thing all schools should do for all students is to teach them science. For this to happen, schools need to specialize in their core function.
***
The recent expansion of university education to include around half the age cohort in several Western countries has generated a population which almost certainly has a much higher average educational attainment than 30 years ago [1]. However, educational expansion has been achieved mainly by adding more years to full-time education: in the UK, approximately 30% of the population now have an extra 3–5 years of education. However, if efficiency is (roughly speaking) defined as the amount of educational attainment per year, then educational expansion has also probably significantly reduced the efficiency of the educational process; for example by diluting standards and motivation among both students and their teachers, and in universities by reducing the funding per student [2].
It is probable that most societies will in future wish to educate a greater proportion of their population to a higher level in scientific disciplines. For instance, most of the population will need to study science throughout high school (i.e. schools with student between approximately 11–19 years old) and probably also throughout their first college degree [3]. For present purposes, ‘science’ may be defined to include a range of abstract systematic disciplines [4], which are sufficiently mature and developed to have a tradition of advanced research: most obviously these include mathematics, statistics and the natural sciences; but science is also an appropriate term for economics, music theory, linguistics, and the more conceptual or quantitative branches of social sciences such as management science and sociology [3].
Declining efficiency of science teaching in mass education systems
Despite a greater proportion of the population studying science than in the past, it is likely that both school students and science graduates have a considerably lower age-specific average science attainment than did the smaller and more elite cohort of thirty-plus years ago. This dilution has been disguised by inflation of the value of educational qualifications, so that more people get educational certificates and a higher proportion of certificated students attain higher grades [5]. Nonetheless, the decline in standards is apparent in exact and quantifiable subjects such as mathematics, where remedial courses and extended courses have needed to be introduced at many colleges, or else a decline in the level of degree attainment has simply been accepted. Furthermore many students avoid studying sciences because they are more difficult (both requiring more cognitive effort for most people, and having clearer criteria for failure and a higher percentage of people failing). One very unfortunate response to this decline in the UK has been to make the sciences easier by making them less ‘scientific’ – for example by replacing ‘didactic’ teaching with less-structured class discussions, and replacing tough quantitative and conceptual subject matter with easier and more superficially-interesting debates concerned with social and ethical controversies.
For instance, recently advocates of the ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) idea of evolution have urged that schools should ‘teach the controversy’ concerning the validity of evolution by natural selection [6]. Aside from the lack of scientific credentials of ID, this implies that school students should debate a theory they do not understand, for the simple reason that they have not yet been taught it. This recommendation to ‘teach the controversy’ is therefore either to underestimate the difficulty of teaching the theory of natural selection, or simply designed to ensure that natural selection will not be taught. As anyone who has tried to teach it will know, natural selection is a highly abstract concept that most people find extremely difficult to grasp; indeed some (otherwise intelligent) people apparently find natural selection impossible to grasp, even at a basic level. The same kind of criticism applies to those who (with whatever motivation) attempt to teach science by stimulating what are inevitably un-informed class discussions on media-prominent subjects such as environmentalism, the biographies of famous scientists, or the fallacies of past science. Whatever the non-scientific value of such discussions, from a scientific perspective all this is merely an encouragement to voice ignorant opinions. To teach the controversies of science to school students who do not yet know basic science, simply amounts to not teaching science. Consequently, there is a general feeling among those who wish for more and better science (including mathematics) teaching not only that more science be taught to more people, but that what is being taught really is science – science in more than just the name.
However, despite the faults of current science teaching, it is important to recognize any wholesale attempt to restore the past seems doomed to fail under modern post-expansion conditions. In the past, science was taught to minority elite students who were intending to make science their vocation – either as practitioners or teachers. Typically, such students began studying science in their teens at school, in an academically-selective and specialized educational milieu. These students were able to spend many hours per day in formal classroom settings, focused on rigorous and abstract school work (including, but not necessarily, science). Traditional academic teaching methods which have apparently been effective and relatively efficient in the past include lectures, exercises, catechisms and class quizzes; practical demonstrations; essays and tests of memorized knowledge – such teaching occurring in small classes, each probably containing less than 20 students.
But, what was possible and appropriate for this highly able and motivated vocational elite of a previous generation, is impractical for the vastly larger and more diverse student group who should be studying science as a general education in present and future generations. It is almost inconceivable that the majority of modern high school students (in a modern societal context) could be induced or coerced to spend (say) five hours a day, five days a week for seven years engaged in formal abstract learning. Yet, although this is too great a volume of science teaching to be practical, tolerable or useful; exactly this kind of intellectually-tough education is very probably the best way to teach science. The short answer is that everyone should get some proper science education of this tough kind, but that the amount of such education received needs to be tailored according to ability and attitude.
Improving efficiency – general principles
Assuming that educational expansion should continue, and that educational efficiency has indeed declined, then clearly, the problem cannot forever be tackled by adding more years to the educational process [2]. Sooner or later, there must be efforts to make school education more efficient, to improve the amount of educational attainment per year. Furthermore, it is not clear that science can effectively be taught by the more relaxed, participative, non-judgemental, discussion-based environment which is encouraged in many schools. The fact is that science teachers know science and their students do not (yet), so – at least initially – the information flow must be from teacher to student, and the teaching methods must reflect this.
Changes to improve science teaching, including its efficiency, depend upon a recognition that science is both more difficult to learn and more difficult to teach than ‘culture’. Abstract systematic thinking is (for almost everyone, apart from a few prodigies) non-spontaneous, unnatural and hard toil, when contrasted with most of the activities that come under the umbrella of culture. Furthermore, school is just about the only place where science can be learned for most students; while culture is assimilated or inculcated without specific effort on the part of a child from interactions with family, friends, community and the mass media. Perhaps most conclusively, learning abstract systematic thinking seems to get ever-harder with increasing age, so if this is part of education missed-out at school, it can be difficult or impossible to make up the ground later.
Indeed, it is plausible that the root of the problem with science education is that modern schools are trying to do too many things, and too often end-up by doing none of them very well. In particular, school may be failing to accomplish the one big thing which ought to comprise its core function – i.e. formal, academic education: especially in sciences. Part of the answer is surely that schools need to follow the lead of almost all other institutions in modernizing societies – schools need to specialize in their core function.
Improving the efficiency of science teaching therefore has two elements: the first element is establishing a competitive and selective framework which rewards institutional teaching efficiency and punishes inefficiency; the second is to restructure schools such that they focus more upon their core function – which should be, in broad terms, teaching science.
Increasing competition and selection between schools
A major requirement for improving efficiency in all complex systems – including human organization – is the existence of selection pressures [7]; such that organizations which are more efficient tend to survive and grow while organizations that are less efficient tend to decline and become extinct.
This implies that educational systems which teach more science per unit time or per unit resource should expand, while less efficient ones should contract. Over time there will then be an increasing proportion of students who are being taught science in more efficient ways. This might happen by successful schools expanding and taking more pupils while unsuccessful schools are closed: or by successful ways of organizing science teaching tending to spread through the educational system, because unless the less-efficient schools emulate the more-efficient ones, they will not survive.
Educational efficiency can therefore be seen as a specific instance of the general phenomenon of the selection of systems [7] and [8]. Economic efficiency is improved by economic markets; likewise, educational efficiency is improved by educational markets. The education system and the economy are therefore analogous but they are not identical. Economic efficiency is about maximizing monetary profit per input, while educational efficiency is about maximizing educational attainment per input. Schools must of course operate within a monetary budget, and they are constrained by economic factors, but schools are (or should be) education-maximizing institutions – not profit-maximizing institutions. This is to say no more than that schools are primarily part of the educational system and only secondarily part of the economy.
The difference between economics and education is therefore that educational efficiency is promoted by ‘markets’ but not for money, instead for educational credentials. For example, in the educational marketplace the ‘best schools’ are those which get the best exam results (if exam results are regarded as a reliable proxy measure of educational attainment, and assuming that the data is controlled for the standard of the students etc.). The ‘best schools’ are not the schools with the largest profit, which would be the case if economics were primary. So, parents sending their children to private schools often know which school has the highest exam results; but seldom know which school makes the highest profits (unless profits are so low as to threaten the survival of the school – or when large profits are being ploughed-back into primarily educational improvements, such as smaller classes).
For school science teaching to become more efficient would therefore probably require an educational market, including variation in the organization or methods of teaching science, over-provision of school places, and competition between schools for the best students. Furthermore, schools which attract the most and best students should tend to prosper while those who fail to attract enough students should wane.
But of course, science teaching will only improve if scientific aptitude is valued. Parents would need to make their choice of schools substantially based on each school’s ability to teach science and get good results in science examinations. However it is probable that scientific aptitude will indeed become increasingly valued in the future. Skills in abstract systematic reasoning, such as mathematics and statistics, are always scarce and are increasingly widely required in modernizing societies. As more people learn the long-term pay-off of science education leading to valued skills – in terms such as salary-per-hour, conditions of employment and degree of autonomy at work – the more parents will exert the kind of selection pressure likely to lead to more efficient science teaching [3].
Division and specialization of function – science school and culture school
The intention is to retain traditional methods of teaching science, but to adjust the quantity of this kind of rigorous education to the abilities and attitudes of the student. This implies that it would be more educationally efficient for weaker students to spend just one or two hours per day learning science in a rigorous and ‘didactic’ classroom situation than to spend much longer in less-structured forms of classroom experience. At least, it is known from extensive experience (with elite students) that traditional methods are an effective and efficient way of teaching science.
A general understanding of efficiency in systems suggests some principles which would be likely to lead to greater science education efficiency. Perhaps the most frequent way in which human (and biological) systems are able to increase their efficiency is the principle of ‘division of labour’ which was first articulated by the economist Adam Smith. Division of labour increases the complexity of organization by specialization of function, and coordination of these specialized functions. Smith’s famous example involved a pin factory, in which the procedure for making a pin was broken down into numerous simpler, more-specialized sequential steps; and these steps were coordinated by managers leading to vastly increased efficiency (as measured by the numbers of pins produced per person per day) [8].
When the modern school is examined in this light, it can be seen that there is already considerable specialization. For example teachers are specialized according to age of children taught, subject matter expertise, and administrative responsibilities. Schools are also internally specialized by age stratification and academic aptitude of students (also, sometimes, by the sex or socio-economic class of students). However, logically there is a further possible division of function. My proposal is that the efficiency of science teaching might be increased by introducing a functional division between science education, and what might be termed cultural education – which would include arts, sports, ethics, social aspects of schooling and any other educational objectives such as good citizenship.
Schools might have an internal functional division into ‘science school’ and ‘culture school’. This functional division should be reflected in terms of physical plant, separate administrative structures, and the recruitment of differently-specialized teaching personnel. These divisions would be characterized by the nature of their system-characteristic internal evaluations. For instance, the evaluations within science school would be relatively narrow and more examination-focused than in the culture school. In science school the performance of both teaching staff and students would be judged mainly (although not exclusively) by scientific criteria, including formal examination results. Science school would be distinguished by its academic ethos and scholarly expectations. The focus of science school would be to inculcate the aptitude for abstract systematic cognition.
For example, an existing school might become physically divided between science and cultural parts, each on distinct parts of the campus. Each student would spend some significant part of each day (depending on their aptitude and motivation) in the ‘science school’, experiencing a traditional-style, didactic, disciplined and rigorous academic education which is (so far as we can tell) the best way to teach real science at the basic level. Science school teaching would need to be stratified according to ability and aptitude, since this is more efficient than teaching widely-mixed classes. Different strata of students could be taught from a broadly common curriculum (enabling educational credit accumulation and transfer); but different abilities of student would cover different amounts of subject matter, different specific subjects, and progress at different speeds.
The remainder of the students’ time at school would be spent in the cultural division, which would focus on broader aspects, and aiming to generate a more rounded and social individual. Examinations in culture school would be much more based on participation, sustained effort, attitudes, attendance etc. Inevitably, since it has many aims and a wider focus, culture school would apply many evaluations to its teachers and students. Inevitably, too, these evaluations would be less clear-cut and more contested.
Conclusion
To enhance the efficiency of science teaching requires an education market combined with parental valuation of science teaching. If such a framework is in place, then schools – by trial and error – will eventually find ways to improve the efficiency of science teaching. If specialization of function increases efficiency, then science schools may emerge. By rewarding success and suppressing failure, the education market would tend to spread this discovery throughout the educational system, to benefit an increasing proportion of school students.
References
[1] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Universities and social progress in modernizing societies: how educational expansion has replaced socialism as an instrument of political reform, CQ(Critical Quarterly) 47 (2005), pp. 30–39. Full Text via CrossRef
[2] A. Wolf, Does education matter?: myths about education and economic growth, Penguin, London (2002).
[3] B.G. Charlton, Science as a general education: Conceptual science should constitute the compulsory core of multi-disciplinary undergraduate degrees, Medical Hypotheses 66 (2006), pp. 451–453. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (63 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[4] Charlton BG, Andras P. The educational function and implications for teaching of multi-disciplinary modular (MDM) undergraduate degrees. OxCHEPS Occasional Paper No. 12., http://oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk; 2003 [accessed 9.02.06].
[5] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Auditing as a tool of public policy: the misuse of quality assurance techniques in the UK university expansion, European Political Science 2 (2002), pp. 24–35.
[6] Wikipedia. Intelligent design, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design; [accessed 9.02.06].
[7] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
[8] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, What is management and what do managers do? A systems theory account, Philosophy of Management 3 (2003), pp. 1–15.
Editorial
Science school and culture school: Improving the efficiency of high school science teaching in a system of mass science education
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 1-5
Summary
Educational expansion in western countries has been achieved mainly by adding years to full-time education; however, this process has probably reduced efficiency. Sooner or later, efficiency must improve, with a greater educational attainment per year. Future societies will probably wish more people to study science throughout high school (aged c. 11–19 years) and the first college degree. ‘Science’ may be defined as any abstract, systematic and research-based discipline: including mathematics, statistics and the natural sciences, economics, music theory, linguistics, and the conceptual or quantitative social sciences. Since formal teaching is usually necessary to learn science, science education should be regarded as the core function of high schools. One standard way to improve efficiency is the ‘division of labour’, with increased specialization of function. Modern schools are already specialized: teachers are specialized according to age-group taught, subject matter expertise, and administrative responsibilities. School students are stratified by age and academic aptitude. I propose a further institutional division of school function between science education, and cultural education (including education in arts, sports, ethics, social interaction and good citizenship). Existing schools might split into ‘science school’ and ‘culture school’, reflected in distinct buildings and zones, separate administrative structures, and the recruitment of differently-specialized teaching personnel. Science school would be distinguished by its focus on education in disciplines which promote abstract systematic cognition. All students would spend some part of each day (how much would depend on their aptitude and motivation) in the ‘science school’; experiencing a traditional-style, didactic, disciplined and rigorous academic education. The remainder of the students’ time at school would be spent in the cultural division, which would focus on broader aspects, and aim to generate a more rounded and social individual. For this to happen depends upon a recognition that science is relatively difficult to teach, requiring non-spontaneous and un-natural cognitive processes from students. Furthermore, it is much easier to learn science when young – if science is missed at school, it can be difficult or impossible to make up the ground later. Modern schools currently try to do too many things, and end-up doing none very well: the one big thing all schools should do for all students is to teach them science. For this to happen, schools need to specialize in their core function.
***
The recent expansion of university education to include around half the age cohort in several Western countries has generated a population which almost certainly has a much higher average educational attainment than 30 years ago [1]. However, educational expansion has been achieved mainly by adding more years to full-time education: in the UK, approximately 30% of the population now have an extra 3–5 years of education. However, if efficiency is (roughly speaking) defined as the amount of educational attainment per year, then educational expansion has also probably significantly reduced the efficiency of the educational process; for example by diluting standards and motivation among both students and their teachers, and in universities by reducing the funding per student [2].
It is probable that most societies will in future wish to educate a greater proportion of their population to a higher level in scientific disciplines. For instance, most of the population will need to study science throughout high school (i.e. schools with student between approximately 11–19 years old) and probably also throughout their first college degree [3]. For present purposes, ‘science’ may be defined to include a range of abstract systematic disciplines [4], which are sufficiently mature and developed to have a tradition of advanced research: most obviously these include mathematics, statistics and the natural sciences; but science is also an appropriate term for economics, music theory, linguistics, and the more conceptual or quantitative branches of social sciences such as management science and sociology [3].
Declining efficiency of science teaching in mass education systems
Despite a greater proportion of the population studying science than in the past, it is likely that both school students and science graduates have a considerably lower age-specific average science attainment than did the smaller and more elite cohort of thirty-plus years ago. This dilution has been disguised by inflation of the value of educational qualifications, so that more people get educational certificates and a higher proportion of certificated students attain higher grades [5]. Nonetheless, the decline in standards is apparent in exact and quantifiable subjects such as mathematics, where remedial courses and extended courses have needed to be introduced at many colleges, or else a decline in the level of degree attainment has simply been accepted. Furthermore many students avoid studying sciences because they are more difficult (both requiring more cognitive effort for most people, and having clearer criteria for failure and a higher percentage of people failing). One very unfortunate response to this decline in the UK has been to make the sciences easier by making them less ‘scientific’ – for example by replacing ‘didactic’ teaching with less-structured class discussions, and replacing tough quantitative and conceptual subject matter with easier and more superficially-interesting debates concerned with social and ethical controversies.
For instance, recently advocates of the ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) idea of evolution have urged that schools should ‘teach the controversy’ concerning the validity of evolution by natural selection [6]. Aside from the lack of scientific credentials of ID, this implies that school students should debate a theory they do not understand, for the simple reason that they have not yet been taught it. This recommendation to ‘teach the controversy’ is therefore either to underestimate the difficulty of teaching the theory of natural selection, or simply designed to ensure that natural selection will not be taught. As anyone who has tried to teach it will know, natural selection is a highly abstract concept that most people find extremely difficult to grasp; indeed some (otherwise intelligent) people apparently find natural selection impossible to grasp, even at a basic level. The same kind of criticism applies to those who (with whatever motivation) attempt to teach science by stimulating what are inevitably un-informed class discussions on media-prominent subjects such as environmentalism, the biographies of famous scientists, or the fallacies of past science. Whatever the non-scientific value of such discussions, from a scientific perspective all this is merely an encouragement to voice ignorant opinions. To teach the controversies of science to school students who do not yet know basic science, simply amounts to not teaching science. Consequently, there is a general feeling among those who wish for more and better science (including mathematics) teaching not only that more science be taught to more people, but that what is being taught really is science – science in more than just the name.
However, despite the faults of current science teaching, it is important to recognize any wholesale attempt to restore the past seems doomed to fail under modern post-expansion conditions. In the past, science was taught to minority elite students who were intending to make science their vocation – either as practitioners or teachers. Typically, such students began studying science in their teens at school, in an academically-selective and specialized educational milieu. These students were able to spend many hours per day in formal classroom settings, focused on rigorous and abstract school work (including, but not necessarily, science). Traditional academic teaching methods which have apparently been effective and relatively efficient in the past include lectures, exercises, catechisms and class quizzes; practical demonstrations; essays and tests of memorized knowledge – such teaching occurring in small classes, each probably containing less than 20 students.
But, what was possible and appropriate for this highly able and motivated vocational elite of a previous generation, is impractical for the vastly larger and more diverse student group who should be studying science as a general education in present and future generations. It is almost inconceivable that the majority of modern high school students (in a modern societal context) could be induced or coerced to spend (say) five hours a day, five days a week for seven years engaged in formal abstract learning. Yet, although this is too great a volume of science teaching to be practical, tolerable or useful; exactly this kind of intellectually-tough education is very probably the best way to teach science. The short answer is that everyone should get some proper science education of this tough kind, but that the amount of such education received needs to be tailored according to ability and attitude.
Improving efficiency – general principles
Assuming that educational expansion should continue, and that educational efficiency has indeed declined, then clearly, the problem cannot forever be tackled by adding more years to the educational process [2]. Sooner or later, there must be efforts to make school education more efficient, to improve the amount of educational attainment per year. Furthermore, it is not clear that science can effectively be taught by the more relaxed, participative, non-judgemental, discussion-based environment which is encouraged in many schools. The fact is that science teachers know science and their students do not (yet), so – at least initially – the information flow must be from teacher to student, and the teaching methods must reflect this.
Changes to improve science teaching, including its efficiency, depend upon a recognition that science is both more difficult to learn and more difficult to teach than ‘culture’. Abstract systematic thinking is (for almost everyone, apart from a few prodigies) non-spontaneous, unnatural and hard toil, when contrasted with most of the activities that come under the umbrella of culture. Furthermore, school is just about the only place where science can be learned for most students; while culture is assimilated or inculcated without specific effort on the part of a child from interactions with family, friends, community and the mass media. Perhaps most conclusively, learning abstract systematic thinking seems to get ever-harder with increasing age, so if this is part of education missed-out at school, it can be difficult or impossible to make up the ground later.
Indeed, it is plausible that the root of the problem with science education is that modern schools are trying to do too many things, and too often end-up by doing none of them very well. In particular, school may be failing to accomplish the one big thing which ought to comprise its core function – i.e. formal, academic education: especially in sciences. Part of the answer is surely that schools need to follow the lead of almost all other institutions in modernizing societies – schools need to specialize in their core function.
Improving the efficiency of science teaching therefore has two elements: the first element is establishing a competitive and selective framework which rewards institutional teaching efficiency and punishes inefficiency; the second is to restructure schools such that they focus more upon their core function – which should be, in broad terms, teaching science.
Increasing competition and selection between schools
A major requirement for improving efficiency in all complex systems – including human organization – is the existence of selection pressures [7]; such that organizations which are more efficient tend to survive and grow while organizations that are less efficient tend to decline and become extinct.
This implies that educational systems which teach more science per unit time or per unit resource should expand, while less efficient ones should contract. Over time there will then be an increasing proportion of students who are being taught science in more efficient ways. This might happen by successful schools expanding and taking more pupils while unsuccessful schools are closed: or by successful ways of organizing science teaching tending to spread through the educational system, because unless the less-efficient schools emulate the more-efficient ones, they will not survive.
Educational efficiency can therefore be seen as a specific instance of the general phenomenon of the selection of systems [7] and [8]. Economic efficiency is improved by economic markets; likewise, educational efficiency is improved by educational markets. The education system and the economy are therefore analogous but they are not identical. Economic efficiency is about maximizing monetary profit per input, while educational efficiency is about maximizing educational attainment per input. Schools must of course operate within a monetary budget, and they are constrained by economic factors, but schools are (or should be) education-maximizing institutions – not profit-maximizing institutions. This is to say no more than that schools are primarily part of the educational system and only secondarily part of the economy.
The difference between economics and education is therefore that educational efficiency is promoted by ‘markets’ but not for money, instead for educational credentials. For example, in the educational marketplace the ‘best schools’ are those which get the best exam results (if exam results are regarded as a reliable proxy measure of educational attainment, and assuming that the data is controlled for the standard of the students etc.). The ‘best schools’ are not the schools with the largest profit, which would be the case if economics were primary. So, parents sending their children to private schools often know which school has the highest exam results; but seldom know which school makes the highest profits (unless profits are so low as to threaten the survival of the school – or when large profits are being ploughed-back into primarily educational improvements, such as smaller classes).
For school science teaching to become more efficient would therefore probably require an educational market, including variation in the organization or methods of teaching science, over-provision of school places, and competition between schools for the best students. Furthermore, schools which attract the most and best students should tend to prosper while those who fail to attract enough students should wane.
But of course, science teaching will only improve if scientific aptitude is valued. Parents would need to make their choice of schools substantially based on each school’s ability to teach science and get good results in science examinations. However it is probable that scientific aptitude will indeed become increasingly valued in the future. Skills in abstract systematic reasoning, such as mathematics and statistics, are always scarce and are increasingly widely required in modernizing societies. As more people learn the long-term pay-off of science education leading to valued skills – in terms such as salary-per-hour, conditions of employment and degree of autonomy at work – the more parents will exert the kind of selection pressure likely to lead to more efficient science teaching [3].
Division and specialization of function – science school and culture school
The intention is to retain traditional methods of teaching science, but to adjust the quantity of this kind of rigorous education to the abilities and attitudes of the student. This implies that it would be more educationally efficient for weaker students to spend just one or two hours per day learning science in a rigorous and ‘didactic’ classroom situation than to spend much longer in less-structured forms of classroom experience. At least, it is known from extensive experience (with elite students) that traditional methods are an effective and efficient way of teaching science.
A general understanding of efficiency in systems suggests some principles which would be likely to lead to greater science education efficiency. Perhaps the most frequent way in which human (and biological) systems are able to increase their efficiency is the principle of ‘division of labour’ which was first articulated by the economist Adam Smith. Division of labour increases the complexity of organization by specialization of function, and coordination of these specialized functions. Smith’s famous example involved a pin factory, in which the procedure for making a pin was broken down into numerous simpler, more-specialized sequential steps; and these steps were coordinated by managers leading to vastly increased efficiency (as measured by the numbers of pins produced per person per day) [8].
When the modern school is examined in this light, it can be seen that there is already considerable specialization. For example teachers are specialized according to age of children taught, subject matter expertise, and administrative responsibilities. Schools are also internally specialized by age stratification and academic aptitude of students (also, sometimes, by the sex or socio-economic class of students). However, logically there is a further possible division of function. My proposal is that the efficiency of science teaching might be increased by introducing a functional division between science education, and what might be termed cultural education – which would include arts, sports, ethics, social aspects of schooling and any other educational objectives such as good citizenship.
Schools might have an internal functional division into ‘science school’ and ‘culture school’. This functional division should be reflected in terms of physical plant, separate administrative structures, and the recruitment of differently-specialized teaching personnel. These divisions would be characterized by the nature of their system-characteristic internal evaluations. For instance, the evaluations within science school would be relatively narrow and more examination-focused than in the culture school. In science school the performance of both teaching staff and students would be judged mainly (although not exclusively) by scientific criteria, including formal examination results. Science school would be distinguished by its academic ethos and scholarly expectations. The focus of science school would be to inculcate the aptitude for abstract systematic cognition.
For example, an existing school might become physically divided between science and cultural parts, each on distinct parts of the campus. Each student would spend some significant part of each day (depending on their aptitude and motivation) in the ‘science school’, experiencing a traditional-style, didactic, disciplined and rigorous academic education which is (so far as we can tell) the best way to teach real science at the basic level. Science school teaching would need to be stratified according to ability and aptitude, since this is more efficient than teaching widely-mixed classes. Different strata of students could be taught from a broadly common curriculum (enabling educational credit accumulation and transfer); but different abilities of student would cover different amounts of subject matter, different specific subjects, and progress at different speeds.
The remainder of the students’ time at school would be spent in the cultural division, which would focus on broader aspects, and aiming to generate a more rounded and social individual. Examinations in culture school would be much more based on participation, sustained effort, attitudes, attendance etc. Inevitably, since it has many aims and a wider focus, culture school would apply many evaluations to its teachers and students. Inevitably, too, these evaluations would be less clear-cut and more contested.
Conclusion
To enhance the efficiency of science teaching requires an education market combined with parental valuation of science teaching. If such a framework is in place, then schools – by trial and error – will eventually find ways to improve the efficiency of science teaching. If specialization of function increases efficiency, then science schools may emerge. By rewarding success and suppressing failure, the education market would tend to spread this discovery throughout the educational system, to benefit an increasing proportion of school students.
References
[1] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Universities and social progress in modernizing societies: how educational expansion has replaced socialism as an instrument of political reform, CQ(Critical Quarterly) 47 (2005), pp. 30–39. Full Text via CrossRef
[2] A. Wolf, Does education matter?: myths about education and economic growth, Penguin, London (2002).
[3] B.G. Charlton, Science as a general education: Conceptual science should constitute the compulsory core of multi-disciplinary undergraduate degrees, Medical Hypotheses 66 (2006), pp. 451–453. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (63 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[4] Charlton BG, Andras P. The educational function and implications for teaching of multi-disciplinary modular (MDM) undergraduate degrees. OxCHEPS Occasional Paper No. 12., http://oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk; 2003 [accessed 9.02.06].
[5] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Auditing as a tool of public policy: the misuse of quality assurance techniques in the UK university expansion, European Political Science 2 (2002), pp. 24–35.
[6] Wikipedia. Intelligent design, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design; [accessed 9.02.06].
[7] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
[8] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, What is management and what do managers do? A systems theory account, Philosophy of Management 3 (2003), pp. 1–15.
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