In my previous post I mentioned the MacTaggart lecture delivered in Edinburgh last week by Eric Schmidt who is the chairman of Google, in the same breath that I expressed my individual questions and distress in response to the rioting we have witnessed in Britain so recently.
It may seem strange to link the two things but I hope it will become clear why I am.
As reported in The Guardian last Saturday Mr. Schmidt said, “Over the past century the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths. You need to bring art and science back together.”
My deepest sense of where we are – as a scholar and a human being – is that we need to renew our ability to make connections.
I write this blog to make connections with people I would never have the chance to communicate with otherwise.
Maybe the riots would not have happened if we had been better at talking to each other.
Maybe this is our chance to stop them from happening again.
Art and science. The working and the not working. The very educated and the less educated.
I don’t know when the idea that life and the world can best be described in binaries took such strong hold of us.
Can we soften and expand and shape our categories – instead of allowing them to control us?
How else can we make our work – and play – relevant and enduring?
What are the binary ideas you would like to change? Are you going to let your inner polymath out?
