{"id":530,"date":"2021-12-06T11:57:22","date_gmt":"2021-12-06T11:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/?p=530"},"modified":"2021-12-06T11:57:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T11:57:22","slug":"corrina-readioff-on-pursuing-the-love-of-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/2021\/12\/06\/corrina-readioff-on-pursuing-the-love-of-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Corrina Readioff on pursuing ‘the love of Knowledge’"},"content":{"rendered":"

All the different branches of knowledge have assisted each other. And like different instruments of music, the sounds of which combine in Harmony, they have all cooperated in enlightening the mind in extending its enjoyments and in exalting the state of social Life. (RI MS HD\/19\/E, p. 58)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Davy lived and worked, the division between science and art was much less accentuated than it is today. In Davy\u2019s \u2018Introductory Lecture\u2019 for courses offered by the Royal Institution in 1805, he actually began with a justification of the value of scientific inquiry via an explanation of the interdependency of all species of knowledge. Like the white light of Newton\u2019s refracting prism, his text begins with \u2018the love of Knowledge and of intellectual power\u2019 before separating this knowledge out into the rainbow strands of the different specialisms of science and art. For Davy, this \u2018love of Knowledge\u2019 was a fundamental human characteristic and \u2018one the most worthy of being cultivated and extended\u2019 (RI MS HD\/19\/E, p. 81). For Davy, there was no need to justify the usefulness of any academic subject, it already naturally and implicitly held value.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a point that\u2019s worth thinking about when we consider our own relationship to academic knowledge today. In 2020, a coalition of the British Academy, the Arts Council England, and the London School of Economics established the acronym SHAPE (social sciences, humanities, and the arts for people and the economy) in order \u2018to emulate the success of the educational term STEM \u2013 which stands for science, technology, engineering and maths \u2013 in emphasising the importance of the core subjects it represents\u2019.[1]<\/a> It was a bold plan that aimed to counter a rising societal dismissal of the arts as easy subjects lacking in value, and to encourage students \u2018to view these subjects as positive steps towards a high-status career\u2019.[2]<\/a> Yet despite these worthy aims, the new acronym faced heavy criticism on social media, with one key problem identified as the apparent need for the new term to justify the existence of arts-based subjects by referencing their usefulness to \u2018people and the economy\u2019. Today, society has a tendency to ascribe intrinsic worth to scientific subjects \u2013 the STEM acronym features no such agenda \u2013 yet the worthiness of arts and humanities subjects must be continually explained and restated. Where funding is concerned, art is not valued for its own sake in the way that science is, but must continually justify its relevance in measurable, often financial, terms. Davy\u2019s conviction of the value of all forms of intellectual inquiry would seem to have little place in our modern world \u2013 but why should this be the case?<\/p>\n

In the development of human knowledge, art and science have always gone hand in hand. A study of the Chauvet cave paintings in France in 2012 determined that the 30,000 year old artwork was created not as a static frieze, but as a pattern of flat animations that only come to life when seen by the flickering light of a torch \u2013 a symbiotic harmony between art and the early technology of fire.[3]<\/a> During the Jonathan Swift 350 conference at Trinity College Dublin in 2017, delegates were taken on a sensitively arranged visit to St Patrick\u2019s Hospital, a mental health hospital that owes its original existence to a generous bequest from Swift. Today St Patrick\u2019s provides a range of treatments, both medicinal and therapeutic, and its walls are decorated with the most beautiful, often poignant, paintings and collages created by patients as part of a programme of art therapy. It served as a powerful reminder that humans are not simply organic robots \u2013 science alone can neither establish a civilization nor enable it to flourish.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/p>\n

Museum replica of part of the Chauvet cave paintings (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Creative self-expression and the stimulation of the mind through the arts is a vital component of our humanity. When Davy wrote verse about his experiments with and experience of inhaling nitrous oxide gas, he was not simply indulging in a flight of fancy. He was exploring other ways of interpreting and understanding his intellectual inquiries. In the same lecture in which he wrote of the \u2018love of Knowledge\u2019, he also noted that \u2018all truths in nature\u2026 are worthy of our study for their own sake rather than with any idea of profit or interest\u2019 (RI MS HD\/19\/E, p. 54) \u2013 powerful words coming from someone who at the time did not have a personal fortune to fund his research, but who was instead still earning his own income as a professor and lecturer. \u2018All the different branches of knowledge have assisted each other\u2019, Davy writes, and \u2018they have all cooperated in enlightening the mind\u2019 (RI MS HD\/19\/E, p. 58). The message is clear: all knowledge has value, if only we have the wisdom to see it.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Vanessa Thorpe, \u2018University and Arts Council in drive to re-brand \u2018soft\u2019 academic subjects\u2019, https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2020\/jun\/21\/university-and-arts-council-in-drive-to-re-brand-soft-academic-subjects<\/a> [accessed 27\/08\/2021].<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Marc Azema and Florent Rivere, \u2018Animation in Palaeolithic art: a pre-echo of cinema \/ L’animation dans l’art pal\u00e9olithique: un pr\u00e9-\u00e9cho au cin\u00e9ma\u2019, Antiquity<\/em>, 86 (2012), 316-24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the different branches of knowledge have assisted each other. And like different instruments of music, the sounds of which combine in Harmony, they have all cooperated in enlightening the mind in extending its enjoyments and in exalting the state… Continue Reading Corrina Readioff on pursuing ‘the love of Knowledge’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dnp-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":539,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}