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- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
- Herman Philipse
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5 - Science and Democracy
- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
- Herman Philipse
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- 15 May 2002, pp 153-220
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ABSTRACT. From the seventeenth century onwards, there has been a spectacular growth of scientific knowledge. Should we expect this growth to continue at the same pace? Would that be possible without an equally spectacular increase in expenditure? How should politicians in a democratic state rationally determine the appropriate level of public investment in scientific research? This prize essay provides tentative answers to these burning issues.
In Section One, an attempt is made to characterise at a meta-level all branches of science and scholarship, not individually, but collectively. Epistemic growth turns out to be an essential characteristic of science. In Section Two, the growth of science is analysed from a historical perspective. What are the prospects of scientific growth in a saturation economy of science? Possible opportunities for, and obstacles to, the future growth of science are explored. The third section is concerned with the rationality of investments in science. Pertinent issues are discussed within the conceptual framework of rational decision theory. What kinds of benefits from science should we distinguish, and how should we value them? Is it possible to predict specific outcomes of investments in research? If this is not feasible, how can it be rational to invest in scientific research at all? The traditional “public good” justification for state investments in basic research turns out to be defective. Are we able to give a better justification? And if so, with which model of rationality can we determine the right level of investments in a specific country? By way of an example, the Dutch policy with regard to publicly funded research is analysed. Finally, it is argued that there is an intrinsic relation between democracy and the scientific attitude. Democracies function better to the extent that voters and politicians make up their minds according to minimal standards of scientific rationality.
INTRODUCTION
The oldest learned society in The Netherlands, the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen, was founded on 21 May 1752 in the city of Haarlem. According to the preamble to its first proceedings, it came into existence because some citizens sought entertainment in performing, imitating, and discussing scientific experiments. Headed by the Lutheran minister Van der Aa, they had formed a small scientific collegium, which now obtained official status, consciously imitating “in the Netherlands the admirable diligence of other Kingdoms and Republics in their support and encouragement of the Sciences and Arts”.
Does A New Kind of Science Require a New Kind of Scholar or a New Kind of University?
- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
- Herman Philipse
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- 15 May 2002, pp 91-98
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Professor van Benthem suggests that the scientific study of cognition and information flow lies outside any of the existing sciences, or indeed any of the generally recognized academic disciplines. This has certainly been my experience after my own research interests moved into that area (from mainstream mathematical logic) in the mid-1980s. Since making that shift, I have not held a regular faculty position at any college or university. My interests simply did not fully accord with my discipline of training, namely mathematics.
For the period 1987-89, I had a research appointment at CSLI, the interdisciplinary research center at Stanford that I now direct. I then took a position as a mathematics department chair at a leading US liberal arts college – a wonderful type of interdisciplinary educational institution not found in Europe. Next, I tried my hand as a dean. And now I find myself back at CSLI, this time as its Executive Director. Throughout this 14-year period, I have regularly taught some mathematics courses and written various books on mathematical topics, but my main scholastic interests have been elsewhere, occupying a hitherto unnamed and almost unacknowledged nether-region having connections to mathematics, logic, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, communications, cognitive science, management science, and engineering, and which in the near future will, I believe, involve biology as well. In other words, I have been living for some time now in the scientific world Professor van Benthem describes.
The fact that I have been able to do this for so long indicates that the existing university framework does at least allow some individuals to pursue the kind of scholastic agenda he outlines – at least, for a limited number of such scholars. Of course, the approach I have followed only works for senior academics, already well established in their original disciplines, who can barter experience and administrative skills in exchange for the freedom to pursue such a risky research agenda. On the other hand, the area we are focussing on is not sufficiently well developed to offer a career path for younger scholars; there simply is not yet enough scholarly depth, nor the scholarly metrics and associated publication outlets, for a young scientist to establish her-or himself as an “information and cognition scientist.”
Frontmatter
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Preface
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Ghosts of Plato and Aristotle, of Descartes, Newton, Kant and Wittgenstein speak to us, benevolent and admonishing. About natural sciences, liberal arts, the humanities and philosophy. Reminding us of our cultural heritage and social history. So what of the future?
The sciences and humanities evolve in two different and not always easily reconcilable ways: by specialisation and broadening of their scopes. Those dedicated to specialisation often accuse the ‘broadeners’ of fundamental shallowness. However, in many instances, innovation results from unusual combinations of views and techniques originating in widely different domains. The essential breakthrough usually consists in the recognition and solution of some (‘deep’) integration problem. From time to time, a new area emerges and takes on a life of its own, as a truly independent discipline.
In the 21st century, both approaches will continue to be productive. Unfortunately, ‘broadening’ research may be hampered by ‘traditional’ views and too rigid a set-up of research regimes. Among other things, one may rightly question the customary distinction: humanities, natural sciences, social sciences (sometimes referred to as the alpha, beta and gamma disciplines). Such strictly compartmentalized nomenclature will always lead to confusion in cases of more detailed interdisciplinary research. Irrespective of the names associated with emerging disciplines, the organizational links with established institutions may well have to differ radically from current arrangements.
New departures require new views. That applies to research approaches in general and to governmental and institutional policies in particular. All need open dialogues and critical self-assessment. In this connection, the way we talk about arts and sciences has become of increasing importance.
The four essays in this book present a variety of illuminating and refreshing points of view on the problems in question. Many angles were further developed in the Sciences and Arts Debate held by the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (“Holland Society of Arts and Sciences”) on 16th February 2002, triggered by the presentations of the authors and the reviews by the invited discussants. The editors of this volume discuss the conclusions (and highlights) in the first chapter and add a summary in an epilogue. While not overly important as such, one must admit that the traditional “Arts and Sciences” in the Society's name and in the title of the symposium may have constituted an appropriate label for 18th century practices, but today are more properly covered by “Sciences and Humanities”!
3 - Science and Society in Flux
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ABSTRACT. Science is the search for objective systematic knowledge about any topic outside of, or inside ourselves. It is a major cultural component of our modern society – both for its narrower content and for its general attitudes of free thinking and the values of elightenment which it embodies.
This essay discusses some current problems that threaten the functioning of science, in its broad cultural role. These fall under four heading, two internal, two external.
Architecture: We discuss the need for recalibration of the ancien regime in academia, which the rise of ‘information and cognition’ as a prime example. We make a case for a new matrix organisation making sure that talent and money flow where they do most good for the above functions of science.
Bulk: We discuss the overproduction of scientific information, and the resulting loss of a unified intellectual perspective. Some new mechanisms are proposed for countering this.
Isolation: We discuss the potential interfaces of science and society, making a plea for an activist networking stance, involving more segments of society in intellectual debate.
Ideologies: We point at threats to science arising from current political and religious ideologies, and the need for defending the historical achievements of the Enlightenment.
INTRODUCTION
This piece is not quite the same after the events of September 11th, 2001. How important is the problem as originally set by the Hollandse Maatschappij today, worrying about the optimal internal organization of the sciences – at a time when we are forcibly reminded of the power of obscurantist mentalities opposed to the central things that science has stood for historically? Some years ago, I met a Kurdish colleague, a Muslim from northern Iraq, who told me about the profound experience of entering the world of science. It was as if he described my own personal history. Entering the world of learning is like a benign religious conversion. It involves learning to think for yourself, rather than accepting things on faith, being confronted with universal truths that transcend cherished national or religious myths, and entering a community not bound in space and time of people of any race, religion, or national background who think likewise. Becoming a scientist is truly acquiring a second, non-parochial identity and joining the world, based on respect for the insights and achievements of others.
Redrawing Disciplinar Boundaries – but to What Degree?
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- By Aant Elzinga
- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
- Herman Philipse
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First of all, let me say that I agree with the main point of Prof. Rip's contribution, viz., the need to keep an open mind and affirm the plurality of forms of production of knowledge. Science as socially contingent but protected institutional space generates both awe and envy. Indeed, in the balance between search and authority, primacy to the serendipitous nature of the former has to be upheld in the sometimes stifling face of the latter. His demonstration of the historically situated and contingent character of the traditionally dominant image of science, the one that has tended to extrapolate and totalize a small physics-oriented segment in existing knowledge landscapes, is both perceptive and appreciated.
The dominant academic image, as he points out, was largely a projection of a very specific set of conditions and features in particular historical circumstances, reinforced in the 20th century by the advent of logical empiricist philosophers. Later it was found that not even physics lived up to its ideals (cf. N.R. Hanson, P. Feyerabend, S. Toulmin, T. Kuhn). With the emergence of a new (cognitive) sociology of science, combined with interest in policy, attention has been drawn to many other modes of science, among them medical and agricultural, engineering and not least chemical research, where trajectories have involved constant interfoliation with practical pursuits, in so-called contexts of application.
As a counterpoint today to the mainstream image of autonomous academic science traditionally celebrated in the epistemological lens of the analytic philosophy of science, sociologists and policy analysts have come up with the notion of Mode 2 and university-industry-governmental triplehelix complexes. Likewise, interdisciplinarity is played up in retrospective contrast to so-called Mode 1 monodisciplinary academic science, which in the polemics of the situation is highly schematized, thus paradoxically lending force to the earlier particularism that is to be rejected.
Arie Rip argues that also these new images of scientific knowledge production have a social epistemology that is rather limited in scope. They are ideologically coloured totalizations of another segment of the knowledge production landscape.
Science and Democracy: a Difficult Relationship: ‘An enlightened and elitist essay on an unresolvable problem’
- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
- Herman Philipse
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The ability to provide such inescapable answers in such penetrating and clear English to questions which the author himself says can barely be comprehended is given to but a few. Herman Philipse is one such, and I read his essay with great admiration and generally agreed with it, but sometimes also with a feeling of unease and even irritation. He resolves the typical 18th century contest question of the Hollandsche Maatschappij in a series of steps, ending in a notable Wahlverwandschaft of good politics, real democracy and modern science. That is almost too good to be true and leaves one feeling suspicious. The reality can only be less smooth than suggested here. Is what appears here as a perfect outcome of logical reasoning not in fact this infamous piece of soap that slips from one's grasp when one tries to get hold of it?
The opening starts as an elegant bow to the long history of the Maatschappij, turns soon into a harsh blow to the Dutch self-esteem. When the Hollandsche Maatschappij was set up as a learned society, the Republic of the Seven United Provinces was still wealthy but no longer powerful. The economy was in a drawn-out recession, and Philipse establishes a link here with the failure of the Republic in the field of science policy. In contrast to Britain and France, no investment was made in research and development. While that may be true, as an argument is it not an example of Whig history? In the Low Countries there was no question of a central government; science was the pastime of wealthy citizens, who in 1752 were not yet a leisure class in the traditional sense of the word. The first national institutions were established in French times by Louis Napoleon. Without him there would be no Rijksmuseum and no Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. What was missing in the ‘Netherlands’ was a powerful national government. I do not share Philipse's thesis that the Maatschappij was founded 100 years too late. In my opinion, it was the national state and a central government that was long overdue. .
2 - Historical and Structural Approaches in the Natural and Human Sciences .
- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
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ABSTRACT. In developing their models of the world, the sciences have traditionally drawn on two general approaches. One regards the world as the result of historical events and contingencies, whereas the other portrays it as the consequence of systematic constraints and regularities. The comparative merits of these approaches have been the subject of a long debate in intellectual history. This debate has been conducted in different contexts and terms, however, so its unity has hitherto not been appreciated. The debate was pursued in one form in the nineteenth-century German discussion of the methods of the human sciences; in another form, it has been pursued in recent controversies about the role of natural laws and historical contingency in the life sciences. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate the continuity of the debate between the two approaches over the past 150 years, to study its evolution, and to draw lessons from it for new resolutions of the outstanding issues.
INTRODUCTION
How does the world come to have the structure that it has? Answering this question is traditionally regarded as a central aim of the sciences. To tackle it, the sciences have developed two fundamental and general approaches which suggest the form that the answer should take. In one approach, the structure of the world is a result of contingent historical events and processes. In the other approach, it is a consequence of constraints and regularities that are general and necessary. I shall call these the historical and the structural approach, respectively.
Each of these approaches has impressive achievements to its credit. Each appears natural and compelling in certain domains of inquiry. Our view of art, for example, is based largely on the premise that artworks spring from unpredictable human creativity, and that they can be fully understood only by retracing the contingent evolution of the artist and of society. Our modern understanding of the cosmos, by contrast, rests largely on the assumption that laws of nature provide an invariant framework within which the universe unfolds.
The two approaches have a long history. They can be discerned in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. They are even more clearly visible in the two world views that have most shaped modern Western culture: the Enlightenment notion of a rationally ordered world and the Romantic ideal of the Promethean self-development of the individual.
1 - The Sciences and Arts Debate A review and some conclusions
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The 1999 Prize Competition of the Holland Society1 challenged participants to express innovative views of the Sciences and Arts. Formally, they were asked to provide a meta-description such that newly emerging disciplines might be accommodated without the rigid categorization imposed by traditional nomenclature schemes. This overall objective was paraphrased as “indicating which elements might be helpful or, by contrast, obstructive in guiding scholarly endeavour in the 21st century”, possibly including “a reasoned rejection of the classical distinction sciences/humanities and other restrictive classifications, replacing these by a more effective taxonomy”. Simply put, how can we talk about esoteric or unexpected developments in constructive ways? How may scholars, administrators and politicians really understand each other when entering largely unknown domains?
A well-known example of the nomenclature dilemma is the borderline between physics and chemistry. Where do we position fundamental research on chemical compounds? Are ‘quantum chemical’ studies physics (because of their quantum mechanical formalisms), chemistry (because one investigates chemical structures) or even applied mathematics (when the study essentially depends on the ability to compute results mathematically)? Fortunately, the physicist active in this area will be able to publish results in a journal on ‘chemical physics’, whereas the chemist will refer to the subject as ‘physical chemistry’. Yet, in an era when all research is to be justified financially, a chemistry department may – and often does – object to new proposals if they cannot be classified strictly as ‘chemistry’, thus stifling innovation from within.
More problematic are the options for naming various applications of ‘computing’ (or ‘computation’, using these terms in the general sense of structuring abstractions such that they are capable of manipulation by computing machinery). Should research into ways of documenting art historical subjects such that subject-characteristic searches may be performed be called ‘art-historical informatics’ or ‘computational art history’? Is it a special branch of ‘artificial intelligence’ or of ‘information science’? Does it belong to the ‘humanities’, or is it a form of ‘software engineering’ normally positioned in the ‘sciences’?
The last example illustrates two further problems associated with one's natural desire for clear subdivisions.
7 - Appendix
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THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
The “Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen” (Holland Society of Arts and Sciences) was established in 1752 by seven distinguished burghers of the city of Haarlem, in the then Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, in order “to promote science”. It is the oldest learned society in the country today and is constituted as a dual body comprising approximately 275 “science promoters” (known as “directors”) and about 325 active scholars (known as “members”), drawn from the natural sciences, the humanities and the social sciences. It has always maintained relationships with scholars in other countries (the “foreign members”, currently numbering about 25).
Thanks to its unusual structure, the Society can act as an effective meeting place for leading persons from within and outside academia. It is also in an unique position to provide independent judgement in many fields and does this by serving in the review process for a number of prestigious awards and fellowships.
Since 1841, the Holland Society has resided in a majestic town house, designed and built in 1794 by the municipal architect of Amsterdam, Abraham van der Hart (1747-1820), for the young and immensely rich Cornelia Catharina Hodshon (1768-1829), daughter of a linen merchant of English descent. Information about the Society is available by access to its website “www.hollmij.nl”, including a virtual visit to the Hodshon House.
Apart from serving as a forum for the dissemination and discussion of scientific discoveries, the Society set out to promote the sciences and arts by prize competitions. In the spirit of the mid-18th century, the themes often concerned application of (useful) knowledge rather than challenges to broaden theoretical insight. Over a period of 154 years, 1206 competition questions were set, but only 169 responses were ever considered worthy of the gold medal of honour. In fact, after the rush of the early years, the interest in prize competitions waned. Other vehicles for promoting the arts and sciences presented themselves. First, the universities took over the role of the learned societies as centres of research and dissemination of knowledge. Next, specialized journals replaced the societies’ transactions. Finally, research began being sponsored and supervised by national councils and publicly funded academies.
6 - Epilogue
- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
- Herman Philipse
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- 15 May 2002, pp 227-230
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When attempting to sum up the essays, the comments of the discussants and the exchanges in the Debate itself, two major themes would seem to dominate today's thinking and concerns:
– the blurring of disciplinary boundaries
– the need for social embedding of ‘science’
They become manifest in different disguises, such as:
– the need to rethink the organization of our universities and other scientific research institutions;
– the evolution of and the increasing connection between the approaches to investigation in the sciences and humanities;
– the financial needs of science on the one hand, and the business opportunities created by science, on the other;
– the many areas and activities in our societies in which education and understanding of the sciences are crucial, including the limitations of their claims to socially useful and relevant knowledge.
If we should like to draw some conclusions at this stage, it may be done by fleshing out these last four points into broader statements:
– After two centuries of largely university-centred, monodisciplinary institutions, the future ‘scientific enterprise’ will comprise a fluid mix of scholars with varying backgrounds. Compared to the past it will be conducted much more outside, although often in close cooperation with, academic and the other traditional centres of education, research and development. Engineering and design activities may well constitute the primary tasks of new entities concerned with both physical production and non-physical services, but these will be intertwined inextricably with fundamental research.
– The area of information and cognition beautifully illustrates that to arrive at ‘relevant’ knowledge – not just aiming at short-term economic or political gains, but appropriate to this uniquely human endeavour – one cannot stick to separate disciplinary approaches or narrow research traditions. This is not saying that anything goes, to paraphrase Paul Feyerabend, but just continuing our ways from the past and in isolation certainly will not do.
– Funding of ‘scientific’ activity will become ever more complex as innovation and knowledge become broader and more widespread phenomena. The traditional national GDP-related indicator for public and traditional enterprise financing of R&D will come to hide a much more varied reality. There is the entrepreneurial nature of research in the context of innovative organizations that will generate its own remuneration. There is the increasing difficulty of defining and measuring innovative activities.
The Role of Laws and Contingency in History
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It was a great pleasure to study James McAllister's essay, not in the least because he discusses the development of the sciences from the perspective of their internal dynamics. Moreover, as a matter of fact, I found myself largely in agreement with his conclusions. But it is my task to start a critical debate, so that is what I will set out now to do by focussing on three main points.
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT DETERMINES THE ACTUAL WORLD NOT ONLY BY CONTINGENT EVENTS AND PROCESSES BUT BY INSTANTIATION OF LAWS AS WELL
The conclusion of McAllister is that
“The structural element determines the set of physically possible worlds within which the actual universe finds itself; the historical element determines which of these physically possible worlds, and in what order of succession, the universe comes to instantiate in its development.”
I support the image of the actual universe as one instantiated out of the many possible universes, but it is not clear how this historical element determines it. In the introduction, McAllister states that in the historical approach “the world comes to have the structure that it has as a result of contingent historical events and processes”. But it is not true that all historical events and processes are contingent. While general laws (McAllister's structural element) are not bound to time and space, the events and processes that they determine (instantiations of laws, as we call them) most certainly are. Let us take two examples.
On 1 January 2002 we witnessed the introduction of the euro. This historical event took place on the organizational level of societies. In their account of this phenomenon, sociologists, economists and political scientists can refer only to a limited number of generalized patterns, because their disciplines have been unable to discover many. Most of their account will contain descriptions of contingent events and processes. The generalized patterns that are available are not powerful enough to predict with any plausibility the date of the next international currency transition.
Our second example concerns the total solar eclipse of 11 August |1999. This historical event took place on the organizational level of planetary systems. In their account of this phenomenon, astronomers need to refer simply to the law of gravitation of which this event is an instantiation.
4 - Science for the 21st Century
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- By Arie Rip
- Edited by P. A. J. Tindemans, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart, R. P. W. Visser
- Herman Philipse
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ABSTRACT. Science, in its interest in searching for knowledge and trying to make its products robust, can be contrasted with science as an authority, which often relies on traditional ways of knowledge production and disciplinary controls of quality. If authority as such, disciplinary or otherwise, rules, science becomes its own worst enemy. While this is an “essential tension”, it becomes tractable in practice, and in a variety of ways.
Science as a mosaic of search practices and a range of modes of knowledge production, embedded in institutions and in society in general, is evolving. Disciplinary boundaries become less important in genomics and nanotechnology, but also in earth and environmental sciences. And the interactions between science and society are changing: relevance to economic and social issues is important, expertise is needed but also contested. Science-as-weknow-it cannot be the final word.
But science-as-we-know-it is itself a product of a long-term sociocognitive evolution, in which some attempts to produce robust knowledge (as in the natural-history mode) were backgrounded and others (as in the experimental and/or controlled-conditions mode) were foregrounded. A historical and philosophical detour allows us to put science-as-we-know-it in perspective.
The important question then is what the further evolution might be. Gibbons et al. have put up a strong diagnosis, of a disciplinary and university-based Mode 1 of knowledge production being overtaken by a transdisciplinary, multi-site and fluid Mode 2 of knowledge production. Their diagnosis must be nuanced (Mode 2 search practices were around all the time), but also shifted. It is not just a matter of discovery in the context of application (in industry, and with economic goals). The complexities of the natural world are striking back, and this requires a renewed natural-history approach.
Already for this reason, indigenous (and local) knowledge has become important, and creates a challenge to Western-science-aswe-know-it. Underlying world-views are now being articulated, and this raises the question about the world view embedded in Western science. Multi-culturalism is not the answer to this question, but is definitely the site to explore possible answers. The African Renaissance movement, and the official recognition, in New Zealand, of Maori approaches to knowledge production are two of such sites.
Clearly, science in the 21st century will not be like science-as-weknow-it.
The Future of the Sciences and Humanities
- Four Analytical Essays and a Critical Debate on the Future of Scholastic Endeavor
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- Herman Philipse
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The arts and sciences evolve by specialisation and broadening of their scopes. Much innovation results from unusual combinations of views and techniques originating in widely different domains. However, stepping outside an established discipline entails the danger of ‘shallowness’, even if the primary challenge was a ‘deep’ integration problem. Acceptance of new departures requires recognition and understanding of what is involved, and this depends, among other things, on the adopted nomenclature of the insiders and the resulting perception by outsiders. Thus, current ways of referring to varieties of research and study - say, 'sciences' vs 'humanities' - often form obstacles to the appreciation of novel approaches. New views are necessary. But which angles must be considered?
Notes
- William van der Heide
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Conclusion
- William van der Heide
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Summary
‘These parallelisms… suppose the existence of a secret form of time, a pattern of repeated lines’
(Jorge Luis Borges, 1979: 103).‘What is important, what has meaning, is the journey… [and] journeys are through history as well as through a landscape’
(Theo Angelopoulos, quoted in Horton, 1997: 98).The previous chapters have been a series of interrupted journeys or forays into and around Malaysian film culture, with each chapter approaching its subject increasingly more specifically, until a selection of films made in Malaysia were examined in detail in chapter 4 in order to illustrate the arguments presented throughout the book. The metaphor of the journey is important and relevant, because it suggests a movement through time and space. Movement has been the prime characteristic of the theoretical and cultural perspectives employed in the argument: the movement of ideas and the movement of peoples through place and history, defined as transtextuality and transmigration. The two are intimately linked by those ‘lines of connectedness’ frequently referred to in the book, and each chapter is structured as a series of ‘border crossings’ that highlight the cross-cultural nature of the enterprise. Journeys have also been central to the histories and stories of the cultures examined in this book: the journeys of the sojourners to the Archipelago, whether as elite or mass migrants; the fearful journeys across the kaala pani by Indian laborers; the journeys from the kampung to the city and back to the kampung; the journeys of the exiled Rama and Pandavas in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata; the journeys of the Chinese knight-errant men and women; the journeys of Hang Tuah. This chapter recaps and summarizes the complex and detailed arguments of the previous chapters, before presenting the major conclusions of the book.
The introduction considered the location of the analyst in relation to the book's argument, represented as literal and cultural journeys between Australia and Malaysia. The encounters with Malaysian cultural products attested to the difficulties and the creative possibilities of cross-cultural analysis, irrespective of the linguistic/cultural origin of the product. The films discussed indicate the heterogeneity and cultural complexity of film distribution and exhibition in Malaysia, where Malay, Chinese, Hong Kong, Indian and Ameri can films are all shown in ‘mainstream’ cinemas and the phenomenon of specialist or ‘art’ cinemas does not exist.
Acknowledgments
- William van der Heide
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- Malaysian Cinema, Asian Film
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- Amsterdam University Press
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Bibliography
- William van der Heide
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- Malaysian Cinema, Asian Film
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Chapter 1 - Border Crossings
- William van der Heide
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- Malaysian Cinema, Asian Film
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 14 January 2021
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- 07 May 2002, pp 25-56
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Summary
‘[The exotic is] when you travel the world as a foreigner, looking at each country as something exotic, then when you go back home, that becomes the most exotic place there is. It's a way of becoming foreign to yourself’
(Raul Ruiz, quoted in Romney, 1992: 15).‘The person who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his’
(Hugo of St Victor – a twelfth-century Saxon monk, quoted in Said, 1993: 407).‘I’m a stranger here myself’
(quoted in JOHNNY GUITAR, 1954).Introduction
This book is primarily concerned with the analysis of Malaysian film culture and films produced in Malaysia over the past fifty years. Prior to tackling the films themselves, it is necessary to examine some fundamental theoretical issues that are central to the argument, particularly cross-cultural analysis and transtextuality. There are certain other issues that also need discussing, but this will be done at the relevant stages of the overall argument: national and cultural analysis in the chapter on Malaysian society and culture (chapter 2) and national cinema in the chapter on film in Malaysia (chapter 3), while other, more specific issues will be raised during the textual analyses in the chapter on Malaysian cinema (chapter 4). Rather than dealing with cross-cultural analysis and transtextuality in abstract terms, this chapter strives to demonstrate their importance and relevance to the argument by applying them to a case study that starts off in ‘familiar territory.’
One of the major challenges facing this book is the lack of familiarity with or interest in Malaysian film worldwide and even within Malaysia itself. Furthermore, most of the films that will be analyzed are only available without subtitles. Consequently, this book will need to present material that would be assumed in the discussion of most other film cultures.