"The humanities should really matter to STEM disciplines"

This is the first episode in a series that explores the intersections of science and the humanities in university life. In today’s conversation, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is joined by artists Yasmín Hernández and Baruch Vergara for a discussion about Herlihy-Mera's article “The humanities should really matter to STEM disciplines.” They explore the relationship that art and the humanities have with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—and consider why that relationship matters more than ever.

The discussion begins with a central question: What can the arts and humanities contribute to STEM education? If art cultivates forms of observation, experimentation, imagination, interpretation, and creative problem-solving that are essential to scientific and technological work, how can educators work within institutions that separate the Humanities from STEM experiences? What might change if scientists used art and visual thinking as approaches to problem solving? How would science change if art became a tool for empirical inquiry? And, looking in the other direction, what can science teach the humanities about the mind, perception and the boundaries of what we know?

These questions become especially urgent in the age of artificial intelligence.

This series asks us to reconsider the boundaries between disciplines. At stake is more than the future of the university. It is what kinds of intelligence we want our universities to cultivate - and also, what kinds of experiences we want students to have as they learn, explore, and make sense of their worlds.

The Instituto Nuevos Horizontes is housed at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.

Quotes, themes, and ideas from this conversation:

• The STEM-ification of the university, expansion of majors and programs

• Decline and elimination of humanities, arts, and language programs

• When engineering is a model for other disciplines

• “STEAM” initiatives that add Arts to STEM

• Emphasis on technical skills over interpretive faculties

• “Career readiness” over “citizenship” as an institutional objective

• The STEM-ification of the university

“Painting is solving a problem on canvas.” -Yasmín Hernández

“Children are conditioned to make that division (between STEM and the Arts) since elementary school.” -Yasmín Hernández 

“Experimentation is what brings curiosity. It is not a precise thing. Art is a new way to look.” -Baruch Vergara

“An image can express a pre-linguistic relationship that we have with the idea.” -Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera

“Play is the first form of experimentation...you free yourself from the expected outcome.” -Yasmín Hernández

“From art comes a new level of awareness, freeing ourselves from the expected outcome to access something that is beyond.” -Yasmín Hernández

“Music is an activity that can access concepts that are beyond consciousness.” -Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera