STEM Follows the Script Written by the Humanities

If civilization and culture were a play, then STEM would be the actors on stage, while the humanities would be the writers behind the scenes

Image by November Wong from Unsplash

Yes that might be a rage-baity title to some. Personally, I loathe the whole debate between the humanities and STEM about which is “better.” Both are necessary cogs in the machine of human civilization and endeavor.

STEM, with all their technical applications, may be the visible actors on the stage, but it is the humanities, behind the scenes directing them, writing the script, and controlling the lighting and curtains. This is not to say you have to be either behind the scenes, or on stage. Many do both. A programmer writing an article to convince people not to fear AI initiatives is using the knowledge and skills developed through the humanities. A science fiction writer who inspires a new generation to go into aerospace engineering is using the humanities to put the spotlight on the sciences. A painter may decide to learn to code to produce a better online sales platform for their work.

We need people who understand and know how to use the tools, knowledge, and skills developed by both. This is obvious with STEM, but not so obvious with the humanities. What tools and skills do they teach that can help you in life? I won’t get into the specifics here but instead I’ll begin at the highest level. The core of the humanities (and when it is at its best) is the teaching of ethics.

Ethics is the examination of good ways of living. Living ethically doesn't just mean doing no unnecessary harm to others for example. It is broader than that. It means living a good life: a life of family and friends and good works and morals and courage is an ethical life. Ethics is how we choose to interact with the world, and how we choose to treat ourselves as a being in the world. You are not living ethically if you treat others poorly, but you are also not living ethically if you treat yourself poorly.

The humanities is the study of the human condition and our ways of being, and the way human beings have always explored this is through a universal language that has existed, likely since at least as far back as the birth of spoken language: stories.

Stories As A Language of Ethics

A story is an exploration of what happens when choices and fate interact. Sometimes the choices will be bad and we learn something, or they’ll be good and we learn something. We are naturally drawn to good stories that exemplify this structure.

Good storytelling doesn’t just tell audiences what happened in a life. It gives them the experience of that life. It is the essential life, just the crucial thoughts and events, but it is conveyed with such freshness and newness that it feels part of the audience’s essential life too.

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Theme is the author’s view of how to act in the world. It is your moral vision. Whenever you present a character using means to reach an end, you are presenting a moral predicament, exploring the question of right action, and making a moral argument about how best to live. Your moral vision is totally original to you, and expressing it to an audience is one of the main purposes of telling the story.

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In effect, you, as the author, are making a moral argument through what your characters do in the plot.

John Truby, The Anatomy of Story

Stories are how we as a species explore ways of life and what our actions will do. Not all stories are good of course, but good stories feature an exploration of this in some form. Typically a protagonist begins living one way, then, through their actions interacting with fate, is changed and the story ends with the protagonist living a different way. Whether it is good or bad does not matter as much as ethical presentation–the message to the listener that says “see, if this happens and someone does X, then this will be the result.” I know Joseph Campbell would have something to say on this.

Reporters and news organizations understand this, which is why what they report on and present is a “story,” and those stories have great power over our society. Telling the right story to the right people, or enough people, can cause changes to all of society.

We learn right and wrong, good and bad behavior, good societies and people from bad societies and people from stories beginning when we are children and first capable of understanding a story. It may begin with the nursery rhymes and little stories our parents tell us (don’t cry wolf or no one will believe you when something bad actually happens!), but it quickly broadens to stories told by shows, movies, video games, books, friends, teachers, and almost anyone we meet and talk to. What we value as a society is determined by stories that society imbues in us. These could be nursery rhymes, famous works of literature, stories of founding fathers, foundational myths, war stories, anything.

It continues through your life all the way until the end. Why do social changes happen? People tell their story and their experience and the natural human tendency to empathize with the protagonist of a story begins to happen. Your story with all your hopes, dreams, fears, pains, sufferings, triumphs, experiences, and your unique blend of knowledge and virtues and vices tells everyone that yes, you are a human being, and they can begin to see why you do things a certain way or why maybe their own behavior towards you should change, or maybe they could emulate something you do, or avoid something you do. They learn something from your story about ethical living.

What was one of the major contributors to the acceptance of gay marriage in western countries? It was the stories of the LGBT community: stories of people, often told through the media in TV shows and movies, or in real life through friends and family. It was stories of people showing other ways of being and other experiences, which society at large learned from and began to incorporate into its world view. It was ethics communicated through stories in action.

Why do governments fund scientific research? Because they, and their citizens, realize through stories of the past and stories of a desirable future that they need to do it. Human communities and even our own lives as individuals run on stories.

The humanities are the study and creation of stories. This is obvious with literature classes or visual arts, but it is true in a broader sense for philosophy and the social sciences too. These are the exploration of right and wrong and good and bad in everything from high thinking ideas down to the nitty gritty of policy debates. The stories we tell each other and accept into our world view create the structure for these debates to exist. Philosophy and the social sciences then map their own research onto that structure. Stories communicate our ethics, and the humanities are the exploration of those stories and their results.

Ethics encompasses all aspects of a person’s life and all facets of a society. What values do we have as a society? Why do we value democracy? Why do we value courage? Why should we value economic growth? It’s through stories we learn to value these things. From childhood we’re taught through stories to be courageous, but we don’t always listen, or we forget those stories or we dismiss them as childish instead of accepting that such stories have always existed for a good reason: they teach the lessons we need. We just need to listen to them.

It isn’t obvious why disciplines such as music or dance would fit this model of telling stories and exploring ethics, but even if a piece of music is not telling an obvious narrative, or a dance has no narrative, they do serve to inform the larger studies of the humanities. You could think of it the same way the results of the study of mathematics often only has an impact on daily life because it informs other disciplines within STEM fields.

What all of this means is that story, in its broadest form of meaning, is the real power behind human societies. The modern world may be powered by STEM and all the wonders it has produced and will continue to produce, but ultimately all those STEM developments are still relying on the script and stage management of the humanities and the stories we all create using them as tools. Would we have Silicon Valley without stories through our history telling us that freedom and liberal democracy are worth building and fighting for? Why did the industrial revolution, and all its technical advances, not begin until a culture, driven by narratives of innovation and exploration, develop in the 19th century? It was not STEM that created and continues to maintain the grounds for human endeavors to focus on technical developments. It was our stories and the ethics they communicate.

But lest you be a STEMlord and you’re revving up your keyboard just remember that the writer behind the scenes is no more important than the rest of the production. The humanities are themselves changed by what STEM produces. Jules Verne might never have conceived his stories had he been born in an earlier period, and I don’t know if Adam Smith could have written The Wealth of Nations in a world that wasn’t connected by the infrastructure of early modern Europe. Sometimes the story and script changes with the actors too.