KMTR
TV 16 EUGENE SPRINGFIELD
Third Eugene station
takes to the air waves
see page 9
Oregon daily
emerald
Tuesday, October 5, 1982
Eugene, Oregon
Volume 84, Number 23
About 1.200 people gathered in the EMU ballroom Monday afternoon for the first-of-this-kind Fall
Science and Culture Convocation.
Fluid prose, large crowd
usher in 'new beginning’
By Debbie Howiett
Of tlw Emerald
The University dressed
up ' the EMU Ballroom with
black ties, full academic
regalia and talk of the con
nections between science and
culture Monday afternoon
"This is a new beginning, a
renewal of the University’s
committment" said Robert
Berdahl, dean of the college of
arts and sciences Berdahl's
remarks ushered in the Fall
Science and Culture Con
vocation, an afternoon of
academia and an assessment
of higher education’s value in
science and culture
"This is an especially proper
time for us to reassert our
belief in academics," Berdahl
said at the first-of-its-kind
convocation
On his way to the University
this morning, Berdahl said he
heard a comment on a radio
broadcast about the University
refusing to cancel classes
during snowstorms but can
celling them for this convoca
tion Berdahl said that al
though classes had been can
celled, "education, of a differ
ent sort, is happening this af
ternoon."
After Berdahl’s opening
remarks, University Pres. Paul
Olum, introduced the guest
lecturer, Stanford University
Pres. Donald Kennedy Olum
spoke of Kennedy's many im
pressive credentials, which in
elude membership in the Na
tional Academy of Scientists
and a two-year stint as the
director of the Food and Drug
Administration
Kennedy, wearing the crim
son gown of Harvard, began
his lecture to the crowded
ballroom with an anecdote
about the trail west in the 19th
century The south fork, the
trail to California, Kennedy
said, was marked with small
piles of gold ore. The trail to
the northwest, the Oregon
Trail, was marked with simple
signs which read “To
Oregon ”
“All who could read and
write went to Oregon,” Ken
nedy said.
Kennedy spoke about the
hand-in-hand attention that
ought to be paid to science
and culture at colleges and
universities and the sig
nificance of the scientific and
cultural evolution of man.
“It is not unreasonable to
suggest that our institutions
ought to pay special attention
to the bridges between the
sciences and humanities,”
Kennedy said “People and
places strong in the scientific
tradition have infrequently un
dertaken that obligation.”
Kennedy asserted three
reasons why the “task” of
bridging science and culture
are important to “all of us,”
and stressed the reintegration
of “the sciences and the rest
of culture.
“The first reason is the
straightforward problem of
scientific and technological
illiteracy," he said
“There are danger signals,
all right, and I agree with those
who say that among the ob
ligations of scientists is the
defeat, through the broadest
kind of general education, of
this vulnerability to scientific
faddism and — even worse —
our predilection for uncritical
scientific judgements and
decisions facing our society."
“Numbers of our fellow ci
tizens can readily be persuad
ed that they can be made more
powerful by pyramids, cured
of cancer by eating apricot
pits, lost forever in something
called the Bermuda Triangle,
able to pick cards or bend
spoons by concentrating hard
enough'and made svelte for
ever by a diet from Scarsdale
this year, or Beverly Hills the
next," Kennedy told the
audience of about 1,200.
“The second reason,” he
said, “is the degree to which
science is separated artificially
from other forms of human
activity and credited with
rules, standards and
procedures that do not apply
to other kinds of thought and
analysis.
“My point is simply that
social policy and science are
much more intertwined than is
commonly thought," Kennedy
said.
The major thrust of Ken
Stanford University Pres. Donald Kennedy called for a renewed
construction of intellectual bridges between the sciences and
humanities.
nedy's argument was the
“isolation between the
sciences and ‘liberal learning’
that may be even more
damaging in the long run.
"... there is a troublesome
tendency to regard science as
providing a seperate stream of
intelligent thought about what
human society is and what it
can become,’’ Kennedy said.
Kennedy used the area of
evolutionary thought, Darwin
ism, to make a case for the
"elision between the sciences
and humanities.
"What Darwin had accom
plished, once and for all, was
the demonstration that a sin
gle way of knowing was no
longer possible.
"We cannot be human and
whole without reference to
both (science and human
ism),” he said. “Uprooting the
humanities from science robs
us of a critical understanding:
that they are joint products of a
co-evolutionary process, just
as surely as the brain and cul
ture are That unity is the
brightest and most exciting
academic vision we could
possibly have.”
After his speech, as he
headed to a seminar, ‘The
Day after Trinity,” Kennedy
said the responsibility for
bridging science and culture
in higher education belongs to
the institutions, faculty and
students.
“Certainly it is our respon
sibility to make it possible,"
Kennedy said. “But in the end,
the students will have to make
most of those decisions."
Top Photo by Mark Pyne*
Bottom Photo by Bob Baker