The Alchemist

Social science VS literature

Youtube feeds me this Taiwanese channel @Sociostanding. In its bio it says:

Students of social science have the duty to repay the public resources borrowed during their journeys of inquiry. Yet now their ability to fulfill the repayment is hampered by academic writing style and paywalled publishers. Sociostanding is aimed at helping this process of repaying. Here you can easily stay on top of the latest social science findings.

I also followed his Apple Podcast channel so that I can listen when driving. I was deeply amazed by his videos! He made social and political sciences so interesting for someone who never studied them before. Now I deeply believe that scientific approach - logic and rationality - is the key for social problems.

For several days I was thinking about @Sociostanding vs @anzhengming, and social science vs literature.

Watching @anzhengming's videos, you can feel that in her mind, science is not THE answer, not even AN answer. She empasises the importance of "文艺". "文艺" - Literature and Art, I cannot find a direct equivalent word in English. In Chinese, we call Renaissance "文艺复兴", which I believe is a bad translation. I guess what @anzhengming is trying to say is that, in dictatorship like China, we have to look for answers in history and art that promotes humanism. Although it confuses me that it was humanism rather than the universal sociology values that she is promoting, I undertand why in the journey of seeking changes, almost all Chinese China critics are using literature instead of social science.

Simply because they are not able to. When education and research resources are under government intense control, how are we Chinese able to leverage social and political sciences to solve our problem? Government will shutdown any research that touches the core issue. We have to rely on external researches - use foreign eyes to see through China.

So I asked Gemini, "now that modern social and political sciences are using scientific methods like statistics, logic, and rationality to solve more and more social problems, why do we still need literature and art?" Here is Gemini's answer:

  1. Empathy and Human Connection
  2. Critical Thinking and Imagination
  3. Cultural Preservation and Heritage
  4. Emotional Expression and Healing

A powerful government may be able to restrict its people's access to scientific resources, but it's much harder to suppress critical thinking and imagination. It takes courage and creativity to conceive and take part in movements like White Paper Protests, where young people risk their lives for change.

Perhaps one day, like talents in US and Taiwan, Chinese people will have the freedom to study their own society through rigorous researches.