About Me | Week 1

My name is Andrew Ho and I'm a technically-graduated senior majoring in Biology -- currently wrapping up my degree with a few last courses over summer!  I'm also in the process of applying to work at various nonprofit foundations focused on global children's health and plan on applying for Public Health MPH programs in a few years.  Public Health is a hallmark example of a service sector (albeit a general one) that must effectively communicate and utilize science, art, and culture together in order to combat the world's largest community and population health epidemics, so this course is very interesting and applicable to my future career aspirations.

At UCLA, the most evident, physical separation of arts and sciences is the North vs. South campus divide.  The oftentimes competitive, comparative nature of these two sides of campus leads to an ongoing debate of which end of campus is more important or influential to society as a whole.  

I've been fortunate in taking classes from both ends of campus that collectively bridge this physical and intellectual divide.  My experiences at UCLA have without a doubt affirmed my belief that collaboration and effective communication between arts, cultures, and humanities is necessary for the advancement of societies and is the core component that must form the base in a solution to any worldwide issue.

Hour 26 at DM 2014 -- April 5-6, 2014

This perspective has changed how I view the sciences and how medical advancements are applied, specifically in my experience with the pediatric HIV/AIDS pandemic.  While at UCLA, I was involved in the Pediatric AIDS Coalition (PAC), a student group that runs monthly mentorships for HIV-affected youth, coordinates a weekend-long Life Skills Retreat for HIV-affected adolescents, and also plans and executes UCLA's annual Dance Marathon.  Dance Marathon is the largest student-run fundraiser west of the Mississippi and my experience with PAC is the foremost motivator of my desire to continue work in Public Health.

The one fact about pediatric HIV/AIDS that was drilled into my brain is that the pandemic is entirely preventable. With proper education, treatment, and healthcare infrastructure, it's scientifically possible to completely eliminate the incidence of new cases of HIV/AIDS within a generation.  However, what's preventing the application of this science is culture.  HIV/AIDS, particularly in developing nations where incidence levels are highest, often comes with debilitating, shameful social stigmas. Across the world, HIV carries a wealth of negative stereotypes that are overwhelmingly inaccurate for youth who are most commonly infected via mother-to-child transmission.  To stop this pandemic, there needs to be a paradigm shift in the social culture surrounding this disease, carried out via arts and education.  I've learned that art and culture must be the mechanisms through which the already-present science is applied, and only together will there come a solution to this worldwide epidemic.

Bohm's "On Creativity" draws on the pursuit of new knowledge and differing facets of thought as the core of creativity.  His definition of creativity and the creative process is equally applicable to both the arts and the sciences, simply though differing mechanisms.  Much like RSA Animate's "Changing Education Paradigms" motion-graphic, Bohm agrees that the systematic, one-right-answer nature of structured society often acts as a damper on the pure creativity that each human is capable of. This perspective is exemplified even in the outset of the paper, when Bohm acknowledges that creativity is an abstract concept that cannot be wholly encapsulated in the structured context of words and language.  Ultimately, the divide between the "creative and the mechanical", though they are conceptually equal processes, is what Bohm finds to be the core of divides between arts and science.

C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" also concludes that creative collaboration between both the arts and sciences is necessary for true innovation to occurs.  He argues that "the clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures -- ought to produce creative chances. ... The chances are there now.  But they are there, as it were, in a vacuum, because those in the two cultures can't talk to each other." [17].  Relative to education paradigms, Snow also argues that reform is needed, as the American focus on specialization and individual compartmentalization does not lead to a society where two cultures can freely interact. [40].

Stephen Wilson's "Myths and Confusions in Thinking about Art/Science/Technology" provides evidence of an emerging third culture through modernist practice, critical practice, and art as research.   As in the HIV/AIDS example I discussed above, Wilson cites the importance of using art to clarify and deconstruct the misunderstandings that may come along with technological verbiage.  However, Wilson does note that this third-culture relationship is "not a 2-way street", as it seems that technology is much more strongly directing the path of arts, than arts are directing the futures of technological advances.

Finally, Kevin Kelly's "The Third Culture" highlights a cultural shift as the starting point for the emergence of a third culture.  Kelly states that increasing globalization of society and  having "nerds [become] cool" are core reasons why products, innovators, and designers that combine art and science are at the forefront of both artistic and technological fields.  However, much like Wilson, Kelly also acknowledges that this emergent third culture is much more strongly influenced by technology than it is by art, saying that "the culture of science, so long in the shadow of the culture of art, now has another orientation to contend with".

Sources:

J. Brockman, The Third Culture (1996).
F. Dyson, Imagined Worlds (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997).
K. Kelly, The Third Culture (Science, Vol. 279 no. 5353, 1998).
C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1959).
S. Wilson, Myths and Confusion in Thinking about Art/Science/Technology (College Art Association Meetings, NYC, 2000).