About Us
The Two Cultures Initiative (TCI) is an interdisciplinary forum for scholars from the natural & social sciences, engineering, and the humanities to explore points of intersection between science, society, and culture with the goal of collaborative inquiry into the university’s core concerns as they relate to science and engineering education in the Muslim world.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the following two points are quite evident:
- The curriculum and course of study in the university is characterized by rigid disciplinary boundaries—predicated on a clear divide between the hard sciences and the soft sciences.
- No single discipline (nor any predefined group of disciplines) is capable of adequately addressing the core concerns that underpin all inquiry. These core concerns include but are not limited to questions such as: What is life, intelligence, consciousness, agency, authority, morality, authority, etc. and what is the relationship among them?
When we put these two points together, the outcome is as clear as it is unsettling: Rigid boundaries between the disciplines inevitably lead to a fragmented understanding of the core concerns. As the increasingly fragmented understanding of the core concerns continues to shape the knowledge produced by the university, academic scholarship becomes progressively disconnected from the social needs and cultural aspirations of the world outside the ivory towers. C.P. Snow used the term “the two cultures” to describe the condition where scholars in the humanities and social sciences go about their work without regard for developments in the “hard” sciences—and we may add where scientists and engineers go about their work without due regard for the “soft” issues that are invariably embedded in their discipline. It cannot be denied that the setting of disciplinary boundaries (and the resultant emphasis on specialization and specialized knowledge) played a critical role in the progress of knowledge in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In hindsight, distinction between “the two cultures” appears to have been a necessary step in the historical evolution of science (and by extension, of the university). But at the present stage of history the distinction between “the two cultures” has metastasized into a division and the limitations of specialized knowledge have become glaringly obvious. Developments within and outside the university make it almost self-evident that:
- There is no topic in science and engineering totally devoid of a social or humanistic dimension, such as ethics, history or philosophy.
- There is hardly a topic in the social sciences or the humanities such as authority, identity, meaning, significance etc. which is not touched upon by some development or other in the hard sciences.
These developments have not gone unnoticed by scholars since the middle of the 20th century. As a result, an ever increasing number of educators across disciplines have begun to rethink and reimagine the rigid disciplinary boundaries that have turned the distinction between “the two cultures” into a division. These educators are calling for a more integrated holistic curriculum that incorporates learning outcomes that have been traditionally the domain of the humanities and social sciences: ethics; sustainable development; a recognition of the world outside the laboratory that includes both natural elements and human factors; and a knowledge base informed by a non-reductionist conception of the scientific method. This directly impacts the way various university disciplines understand themselves and their relationship with other disciplines.
In addition to the issues that afflict the university as a whole, another set of issues are germane to the Pakistani context. The science and engineering education curriculum in Muslim societies and the Global South continues to be impacted by the legacy of colonialism. “Indigenous development” in post-colonial Muslim societies continues to be led by western-trained engineers and economists. As a result the development of infrastructures such as railways, roads, telegraph, electricity and irrigation canals, and the industrial-scale exploitation of natural resources has been shaped by policies and procedures developed in a radically different setting. There has been severe criticism of many such development programs that focus on only technical issues and ignore the cultural, social, and religious context of the program. The development of the water and irrigation infrastructure in the sub-continental India and Pakistan is a prime example of such a project. While the engineering profession struggles to correct the course of its past mistakes, the newer challenges of AI, climate change, and big data reinforce the need for the epistemological reform of the science and engineering disciplines and the methodological reform of the humanities and social science disciplines. Today’s students are tomorrow’s scientists, engineers, thought leaders and policy makers: What they study now determines how they will understand the epistemological boundaries between scientific advancements, ethical practices, legal positions and religious/philosophical views. Given the multi-faceted challenges that they will face, a culturally informed/sensitive and interdisciplinary education is needed to equip them.
From the foregoing discussion, it is clear that there is an acute need for interaction among and across university disciplines. At the same time, this need exists within a university structure underpinned by rigid disciplinary boundaries which has room for only sporadic and fleeting interaction among scholars from the different disciplines. This disconnect cannot be bridged by holding periodic lectures and seminars. It requires a space where scholars from the hard and soft sciences come together regularly with the purpose of undertaking systematic and sustained inquiry into the university’s core concerns. In other words, developments within and outside the university point to the urgent need to generate a more holistic understanding of questions such as: What is life, intelligence, consciousness, agency, authority, morality, authority, etc. and what is the relationship among them? The Two Cultures Initiative aspires to be a first step towards meeting this need.