BENCHMARKS
|
In
considering
Belief, The
Penn Humanities
Forum seeks
to probe
the non-material
dimensions
of human
existence,
and the
places
where the
physical
and metaphysical
intersect.
This 2003-2004
Forum provides
a contrasting
topic for
humanistic
exploration
to its
forerunner:
the Penn
Humanities
Forum on
The Book,
the fully
material,
omnipresent
objective
form. |
Belief
Carol
Ann Muller
"Seeing
is Believing" is
the phrase that perhaps
best sums up twentieth
century scientific rationalism.
Materiality has formed
the basis of much scientific
and, indeed, humanist
analysis. The binaries
of twentieth century modernity such
as science versus art,
rationality vs. irrationality,
truth versus belief, objectivity
versus subjectivity, materiality
vs. non-materiality, masculinity
vs. femininity have shaped
regimes of value inside
and outside of
the academy. The visual
has been privileged over
the aural, writing over
sound, logic over the
seemingly inexplicable.
Belief
is most conventionally
examined within the realm
of religion, theology,
or anthropology, where
the sacred remains separate
from the "secular." In
the academy, belief as
a cultural practice has
been construed as the
leap of faith individuals
make to join religious
communities. So defined
it has remained marginal,
or feminized, in humanistic
and scientific examination.
Despite this position,
recent post-colonial scholarship
has begun to examine ways
in which colonized peoples
have incorporated the
world of the spirits in
battles against colonial
powers and industrial
regimes. Similarly, subaltern
studies remind us that
in communities in India,
Malaysia, and
Africa and elsewhere,
large sectors of urban
and rural communities,
peasant and elite, continue
to assume that gods and
spirits are coeval and
co-present with human beings.
In these contexts, being
human is inextricably
tied to the question of
being with gods/God and
spirits, indeed to the
matter of belief.
Furthermore,
the September 11, 2001
terrorist attack on the
United States has shaken
a core belief in mainstream
America: that US citizenship
provided a space of sanctuary
from war and international
terrorism. The attack
has been constructed by
the media as a jihad or
holy war of Muslim fundamentalists
against American belief
in capitalism and the
superpower force of the
US in the global economy.
In
contrast to the terror
instigated by the beliefs
of some, religious belief
has performed a more positive,
though certainly contested,
function in the nation-building project
of South Africa's Truth
and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) led by Nobel Peace
Prize winner and Anglican
Archbishop Desmond Tutu in
the mid-1990s. Some might
argue that in cultures
where belief in individual
rights supercedes belief
in the collective good,
in places
where retributive justice
is privileged over restorative/
rehabilitative justice,
the process of national
and individual healing
desired by the TRC
might not have been attainable.
Rather, in the South African
context, a juridical and
political process was
shaped out of the
core of a locally embodied
but globally present belief
system that translated
into a moral guide in
the TRC context.
These
three examples suggest
that however much we would
like to assume that believing
is a cultural practice
peculiar to religion,
or that belief is the
residual practice of pre-modern
peoples, it is nonetheless
ever present as a force
that has to be considered
and reckoned with in contemporary
global politics and struggle.
In
this Forum we hope to
create a conversation
about the nature of belief
as it shapes, and is integral
to, both humanistic and
scientific research and
investigation. This inevitably
raises the question of
how we define "belief." What
is the relation between
belief and truth, between
belief and experience,
belief and history, between
belief and theory, or
beliefs and hypotheses?
Science may have traditionally
been uncomfortable with
the non-material dimensions
of human existence, dismissing
the realm of spiritual
belief for its lack of "objective
evidence." Without
doubt all scientific engagement
clearly operates on a
set of beliefs or hypotheses
verified through experimentation,
and through "seeing" the
results. Moreover, those
who are members of religious
communities may well posit
that their belief system
is indeed systematic;
that belief is based on
what they have experienced,
on their own
empirical evidence, individually
and collectively witnessed.
We
might then ask quite simply,
what are the beliefs,
the core assumptions that
constitute the epistemological
foundations of our disciplines,
and how have we come to
these beliefs? The
philosophical critique
of belief has played a
major role in examining
the objective underpinnings
of logic, and of the sciences
more generally. Natural
scientists believe for example,
that all natural laws/assertions/beliefs
can only be explained
by testing hypotheses
through controlled experimentation:
that scientific knowledge
is the result of the interplay
between ideas
and observation. Statisticians
believe that the natural
world can never be fully
known, that one can only
know the world in all
probability. Geneticists
believe that the cell
is the basic unit of life;
astronomers that the earth
revolves around the sun;
economists that the capitalist
market operates on the
humanly driven principles of
supply and demand. Some
linguists insist on the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
that language shapes reality.
Geologists believe in
the idea of continental
drift; cultural anthropologists in
cultural relativism; archeologists
and historians of the
ancient world in the uninterrupted
continuity of cultural
forms and practices through
time; ethnomusicologists
that all musics have
equal value; political
scientists in the essential
goodness of democratic
government, in "one
person one vote";
and cognitive psychologists
that the human mind operates
most efficiently in known
systems. Central to modern
physics is belief in the
theories of relativity
and quantum mechanics.
Finally,
we might consider the
relation between histories
of belief and developments
in new technologies. New
technologies have tended
to distance the role of
the human body and the
senses in understanding
the natural world by privileging
more object-ive mechanisms
of discovery: ever more
powerful microscopes,
telescopes, and high performance
computers. How are these
new technologies reshaping
belief in human inquiry?
How might they be used
to bridge the divide between
science and humanity?
Pioneering work in neuroscience
on religious experience
and the brain is one way.
There may be others.
Clearly,
belief can no longer be
sidelined as irrelevant
to the humanistic agenda
of the academy. We are
hoping that by unraveling
discourses on the subject
of belief in the sciences
and humanities we might
present a new possibility
for creating intellectual
links between these two
sectors in the academy,
and indeed the communities
within which we live.
This Forum on Belief is
thus timely and relevant
both to humanists in the
academy and to the world
at large.
Carol
Ann Muller, Associate
Professor of Music,
is the Penn Humanities
Forum Faculty Topic
Director for 2003-2004.
For
more information
about the Penn Humanities
Forum,
see http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu. |