Big Research Questions about the Human Condition

Arne Jarrick

Description

My basic message can be put in a straightforward way: humanities scholars should improve their way of asking questions. Their questions about the human condition need to be as clear and simple as possible in order to enable unambiguous answers. Simple without being simplistic, nuanced without being embroiled – that is the ideal. Unambiguous answers (not to be confused with irrefutable answers) are much wanted, although not always possible to attain. Moreover, if one wants the questions to be highly significant for the understanding of the human condition, there should not be too many questions. Even in this respect, there is much to be wanted in today’s humanities research. Instead of gathering around a limited set of profound questions and holding on to them until the answers begin to appear, generally the humanist guild scatters its scientific energy on too many disparate things – replacing them far too often with hundreds of new questions, ‘perspectives’ and ‘problematisations’. In its turn, such a research culture may hamper a cumulative growth of knowledge, the possibility of which, moreover, is regrettably often denied or even viewed with suspicion.

In this book, I am doing two things to redress the current problems in the humanities world-wide. Firstly, I present and discuss a set of big but still insufficiently addressed topics that humanities researchers should focus over a sustained period of time, such as what explains that some kinds of knowledge are widely accepted whereas other kinds of knowledge are rejected, or what explains the widespread diffusion of inequality paralleled by a gradual emergence of egalitarianism over the centuries, et cetera. Secondly, I discuss in general terms what the humanities are or should be, as well as what they are not or should not be. Basically, humanities researchers should consider their field as an integral part of science, although uniquely dealing with humans a decision making, meaning seeking and self-reflecting agents.

List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; I: Questions and Answers – Background, Motivations and Aims; Ii: Suggested Questions; 1: What Explains That Some Kinds of Knowledge Are Widely Accepted Whereas Other Kinds of Knowledge Are Rejected?; 2: Why Do Some Societal Processes and Phenomena Develop in a Circular or Repetitive Way Whereas Other Processes Evolve Along a Cumulative Trajectory?; 3: Why Do Social Norms Change, Despite the Fact that their Mission is to be Sustained? What Role Do Non-Conformist Individuals and Minority Groups Play in Cultural, Cognitive and Normative Change?; 4: Does a Gradual Extension of Our Lifespan (and the Rise of Welfare) Imply a Growing or Declining Ability to Postpone the Satisfaction of Our Needs and Desires?; 5: What Explains the Widespread Diffusion of Inequality and the Gradual Emergence of Egalitarianism Over the Centuries?; 6. Why Do People Appropriate Aesthetic Experience (Both as Producers and Consumers of Cultural Manifestations), and What Are the Individual and Societal Functions of Such Experiences?; What Lies Ahead?; Appendices; Notes; References; Index.

Sujets

• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• General officer
• Philosophy of science
• General
• History
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785275692
• Langue: English

Extrait

Big Research Questions about the Human Condition
Big Research Questions about the Human Condition
A Historian’s Will
Arne Jarrick
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2021
by ANTHEM PRESS
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Copyright © Arne Jarrick 2021
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-567-8 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-567-4 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
I. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS – BACKGROUND, MOTIVATIONS AND AIMS
II. SUGGESTED QUESTIONS
1. What Explains That Some Kinds of Knowledge Are Widely Accepted Whereas Other Kinds of Knowledge Are Rejected?
The question
A knowledge society – what is one and are we in one?
The decisive criterion: A knowledge-affirming attitude
The state of the art and suggested steps forward
2. Why Do Some Societal Processes and Phenomena Develop in a Circular or Repetitive Way Whereas Other Processes Evolve along a Cumulative Trajectory?
Cultural evolution
Cumulativeness
Non-cumulativeness
What explains the difference?
3. Why Do Social Norms Change, Despite the Fact That Their Mission Is to Be Sustained? What Role Do Non-Conformist Individuals and Minority Groups Play in Cultural, Cognitive and Normative Change?
A: Why do social norms change, despite the fact that their mission is to be sustained?
B: What role do non-conformist individuals and minority groups play for cultural, cognitive and normative change?
The question – an introduction
State of art
The significance of outsiders for cultural evolution
A possible design
4. Does a Gradual Extension of Our Lifespan (and the Rise of Welfare) Imply a Growing or Declining Ability to Postpone the Satisfaction of Our Needs and Desires?
The relevance and importance of the question
The state of the art
What can be done?
5. What Explains the Widespread Diffusion of Inequality and the Gradual Emergence of Egalitarianism Over the Centuries?
Introduction
The equality–inequality gradient
The trajectory of egalitarianism
6. Why Do People Appropriate Aesthetic Experience (Both as Producers and Consumers of Cultural Manifestations), and What Are the Individual and Societal Functions of Such Experiences?
The issue
The essential questions
The state of the art
Ideas
III. WHAT LIES AHEAD?
Thematic clusters
The omitted questions
What the humanities are and what they are not
APPENDICES
A: Five Thematic Clusters Summarising a Workshop on Big Questions
B: Translated Highlights from an Article on the Big Research Questions
Notes
References
Index
Illustrations
Figures
1. Complexity as a function of coordination and differentiation
2. A Lorenz diagram
3. Inequality trends in Europe in the long run
Pictures
1. Intellectual innovations
2. Bicycle technology from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century
3. Striptease, by Marie-Louise Ekman
4. Shoes with red laces
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study was done at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University, founded in 2007 by ethologist Magnus Enquist and me. It is a truly interdisciplinary milieu, hosting researchers from very different disciplines and faculties, such as biology, mathematics, archaeology, linguistics, history and so on. My long-term interaction with people at the Centre has had a great impact on my intellectual orientation and has been essential for the progress of my treatise. I am especially thankful to Magnus, first of all for the profoundly thought-provoking discussions we have had ever since 2000 when we started a project on theories of culture, funded by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), and second for the extra money, granted by the Wallenberg foundation, he has provided for the final funding of this publication.
Also other colleagues and friends have contributed with substantially useful comments and suggestions on numerous aspects of the project. My most important interlocutor has been historian Janken Myrdal, my friend and colleague since the early 1970s. I have learnt immensely from my never-ending conversations with him, an impressively learned as well as a uniquely ingenious mind – and I am still learning from his reflections, often coming from completely unexpected angles.
The project started as a joint initiative between us, aimed at overcoming the fragmentation characterising the humanities today – in Sweden as elsewhere. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the first thing we did was to organise a workshop where each of the about 15 humanities scholars were invited to suggest 2–5 profound but insufficiently addressed research questions about the human condition. The workshop, generously funded by RJ and The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, was very fruitful. It resulted in 50–60 suggestions from the participants. I am very grateful for the collection of innovative suggestions they offered – it has been crucial for the continuation of the project. From this rich intellectual repertoire Myrdal and I condensed 15 overarching questions which we presented in the Swedish academic journal Respons . This would not have been possible without the thorough and adequate minutes taken by the classical archaeologist Lena Johansson de Chateau, as well as by archaeologist Kerstin Lidén.
Business economist Kerstin Sahlin and historian Poul Holm have read the entire manuscript. They have given very different but equally useful comments and suggestions. Writer Per Molander, with a background in mathematics, shared his distinct thoughts on my presentation of his and other researchers’ analyses and discussions on equality and egalitarianism. Theatre historian Karin Helander delivered friendly but clear-cut critical views on my discussion of aesthetics in Chapter 6 . I am also grateful to linguist Marianne Gullberg for very inspiring feedback to the section on the humanities in the last chapter, and to psychologist Torun Lindholm for very good comments on an early version of the second part of Chapter 3 .
Some years ago Myrdal and I presented our thoughts on the big research issues to historians at Lund University. Their sceptical but thoughtful reactions have been built into the present study. The same applies to the mostly positive reactions from historians discussing our presentation on a seminar at Åbo University. I have also presented our mission at various international occasions: the global humanities conference, Hanover, 2014; a seminar at the University of Campinas, Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2016; the UNESCO conference on humanities, Liège, 2017; and an international SIDA (Swedish International Development Authority) conference on the humanities, Stockholm, 2018. On the whole I have received reassuringly positive feedback from all these events, but also some criticism that has forced me to reconsider some of my thoughts. I am grateful to all these critical interventions, which I hope contributed to improve the study, whose remaining shortcomings I am of course exclusively accountable for.
I also want to thank Dag Retsö, Department of Economic History, Stockholm University, for the permission to republish free of charge ‘The Pressure to Conform, the Need to Rebel: A Historical Project on Resisting Group Pressure’ (see reference list) as one part of Chapter 3 . I am also grateful to the GUNi network in Barcelona for their permission to reuse for free a few paragraphs of ‘Knowledge Resistance: A Global Challenge – in Research and Education, in the Humanities and Elsewhere’ (see reference list) appearing in Chapter 1 .
At a late stage The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities generously decided to grant money for an open-access edition of my book, which I think is key to the spread of my message.
Last, but absolutely not least, I want to express my warmest gratitude to Anna-Lena Löfberg for indispensable and very generous help with all sorts of practical and legal issues, such as copy rights et cetera, but also for very good advice on numerous pressing matters at the very last minutes of this project.
I. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS – BACKGROUND, MOTIVATIONS AND AIMS
I have long pleaded that humanities scholars should intensify and improve their efforts to try and find distinct answers to their research questions. They need to sincerely crave real results, that is to say, to advance knowledge. If they are successful in their endeavours, it means that they manage to learn something about the phenomenal world that they did not know in advance. I think that humanists should regard such new pieces of knowledge as findings , since this is just what they are. Well