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Canberra to a Snowbound Warsaw, to Receive, at a Ceremony at the Royal Castle, an Award from the Polish Science Foundation, Know » ANNA WIERZBICKA ‘POLISH SCIENCE FOUNDATION’ something else: the non-equivalence of the ~ #‘FUNDACJA NAUKI POLSKIEJ’$ 1 Polish word nauka and the English word science , )bcpwf* and the different vision of human knowledge Detail from The A month ago, I travelled from a summery in Poland and in English-speaking countries Three Graces by Ra"aello Sanzio, ACanberra to a snowbound Warsaw, to receive, like Australia. If Australia had an institution 1504-1505. at a ceremony at the Royal Castle, an award called the ‘Australian Science Foundation’, THE YORCK PROJECT: from the Polish Science Foundation, known in such a Foundation would be unlikely to award 10.000 MEISTERWERKE DER MALEREI. DISTRIBUTED BY Poland informally as ‘the Polish Nobel’ (in the a prize ‘for the humanities’ (or even ‘the social DIRECTMEDIA PUBLISHING GMBH. SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA plural, ‘Polskie Noble’, see the picture). I was sciences’). This raises a number of questions, COMMONS. one of three laureates for 2010: one received including these two: what is ‘science’? And what the prize for the field of exact sciences (in are ‘the humanities’? Etching from his case, chemistry), one for biological and One thing seems clear: in English, ‘the Regnum Animale by medical sciences, and one (myself, a linguist) for humanities’ are not part of ‘science’, on a par Carl Linnaeus, 1735. SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA humanities and social sciences. with fields like chemistry and biology, whereas COMMONS. The award, which attracts a great deal in Polish, they are part of ‘nauka’. of media interest, reflects the high prestige Portraits of Giambattista Vico, that ‘nauka’ (a word translated into English THE DIFFERENT STATUS OF ‘SCIENCE’ Descartes and as ‘science’) has in Poland. But it also reflects AND ‘THE HUMANITIES’ IN Thomas Reid. CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. In English-speaking countries it is assumed that ‘everyone knows’ what ‘science’ is: the word science is part and parcel of ordinary, colloquial English. The same is not true, however, of the humanities . Judging by the data from the )mfgu* 2 database Cobuild, Bank of English , the word 2010 Polish Science humanities is not common in contemporary Foundation’s award ceremony. English, and in spoken English it is quite rare: PHOTOGRAPH BY MAGDALENA clearly, it belongs to a specialised, academic WIS´NIEWSKA. REPRODUCED register of English. It is not surprising, WITH KIND PERMISSION. therefore, that many speakers of English have no clear idea of what this word really means. Humanities Australia | 53 Admittedly, the phrase the social sciences is which would include both ‘natural sciences’ not part of colloquial English either, but most and ‘the humanities’. people would take it (and rightly so) to be some The modern English concept of ‘science’ kind of extension from science , modified by focuses on empirical and objectively verifiable the adjective social . It is likely, therefore, that knowledge about ‘things’. The expression the phrase social sciences would not appear social sciences , restricted, by and large, to the to many speakers of English as puzzling or academic register, purports to extend the incomprehensible, and that the association empirical method and the requirement of with science would lend the phrase some of this verifiability to the study of ‘people’ rather word’s prestigious glow. This is not the case, than ‘things’, but ‘people’ studied as groups however, with the humanities . rather than individuals. The prestige of ‘social It is particularly important, therefore, that sciences’ derives from their purported analogy the meaning of the phrase the humanities should with ‘science’. be explained – both to various decision-making bodies and to the general public. Without THE ROOTS OF THE CONCEPT OF some such explanations, it might not be clear ‘THE HUMANITIES’ IN THE THOUGHT to many people why ‘the humanities’ should OF GIAMBATTISTA VICO have a claim on any institutional space – or on the public purse – in countries like Australia. The concept of ‘the humanities’ , in contrast For example, it could be asked: why should the to that of ‘the social sciences’, evokes a field of Australian Research Council be as ready to inquiry which is fundamentally different from fund research projects in ‘the humanities’ as ‘science’ and which has its own goals and its those in ‘science’ and in ‘the social sciences’? own methods. What can ‘the humanities’ contribute to human The subject matter of ‘the humanities’ is knowledge and human understanding that ‘people’ – not necessarily groups of people neither ‘science’ nor ‘the social sciences’ can? – and the definition which will be developed here (in deliberately simplified language) ‘SCIENCE’ % A CONCEPTUAL ARTEFACT reflects the assumption inherent in this concept OF MODERN ENGLISH that ‘it is good if people can know things of many kinds about people’. It will also include The English word science , which excludes the assumption that people can only gain not only ‘the humanities’ but also logic access to that knowledge if some people (those and even mathematics, does not have exact engaged in the pursuit of ‘the humanities’) equivalents in other European languages, let do some things for a long time to seek that alone languages further afield, and is saturated, knowledge and if they do it in ways different so to speak, with ‘British empiricism’. 3 For from those in which those who study ‘things’ example, the German word Wissenschaft rather than people can pursue their studies. (from wissen ‘to know’), like the Polish nauka , The fundamental distinction between embraces all systematic research, and its studying things and studying people was two branches – Naturwissenschaften and introduced into European thought by the Geisteswissenschaften (from Natur ‘nature’ and Italian eighteenth-century philosopher Geist ‘mind, spirit’) – do not privilege empirical, Giambattista Vico. 4 Although modern English sense-derived knowledge over any other kind. has since developed its own ways of categorising But in English, knowledge based on knowledge, with its own concepts of ‘science’, ‘experience’ (derived from the senses) achieved ‘social sciences’ and ‘the humanities’, Vico’s such great prestige, and such a privileged status basic idea lives on in the modern English in the edifice of human knowledge, that it concept of ‘the humanities’ (as it does in the shaped the modern concept of ‘science’ itself. German concept of ‘Geisteswissenschaften’, Consequently, in the conceptualisation of the Polish concept of ‘nauki (plural) knowledge embedded in modern English, humanistyczne’ and in other comparable there is no category of ‘science’ or ‘sciences’ concepts in other European languages). 54 ~ Humanities Australia Essentially, the idea is that people can know is based on what the senses report. We things of many kinds about people in a way can classify their contents into regular they can’t know things about anything else (for uniformities, apply mathematical example, rocks, plants, or stars), and that it is techniques, decompose them into smaller extremely important for people to know things parts, re-combine them, but the result of of these kinds about people. Furthermore, our investigations will be no more than a people can know things of these kinds about report of what stands in what spatial relation people imaginatively, ‘from inside’, and they can to what, or what follow, or is simultaneous have a better understanding of them than they with, what else. Yet to say that this is all we can ever have of the ‘natural world’ (the world can know about human beings, and that of ‘things’). the techniques of our ways of apprehending To study people in the way one can study the external world are, therefore, all that ‘things’ would mean (according to Vico) ‘to we can use in learning about each other, ignore the distinction between human beings would be a grave understatement, a denial and non-human nature, between material of what we know to be true. In the case of objects and mental or emotional life’. 5 According human behaviour we can surely ask why men to Vico, it is di'cult but vitally important for act as they do; ask not merely what mental people to pursue knowledge about people that states or events, e.g. feelings or volitions, ACCORDING TO VICO...KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ANIMALS, OR PLANTS, OR THINGS, DERIVES FROM SENSE PERCEPTION, AND IT CANNOT BE COMPARED TO THE INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE THAT WE CAN HAVE ABOUT OURSELVES AND THE THINGS THAT WE HAVE CREATED. is different in kind from knowledge about the are followed by what acts, but also why; not external world. Knowledge about animals, or only whether, but also why persons in this or plants, or things, derives from sense perception, that mental or emotional state are or are not and it cannot be compared to the intimate likely to behave in a given fashion, what is, or knowledge that we can have about ourselves and what would be, rational or desirable or right the things that we have created. for them to do, how and why they decide Taking this contrast between the knowledge between various courses of action, and so on. of the external world and the knowledge In short, we judge human activity in terms of people as human beings as his point of of purposes, motives, acts of will, decisions, departure, Vico set out his vision of the ‘Scienza doubts, hesitations, thoughts, hopes, fears, nuova’ – a phrase whose rendering as ‘the new desires, and so forth; these are among the science’ can be misleading to English readers, ways in which we distinguish human beings given that
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