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It is a question that not only high school graduates ask themselves when they have to choose their future:\u00a0Are you from science or literature?\u00a0<\/em>it is also heard in many professional fields.<\/p>\n The short answer would be that some strive to explain physical and natural phenomena and others to understand what human beings do.\u00a0Both are ways of understanding the world in which we live and they intend, with that knowledge, to do things that improve the quality of life: from a tunnel through a mountain, to composing a beautiful song that brightens the day.\u00a0Or from making a vaccine against a pandemic, to proposing solutions to political conflicts.<\/p>\n This duality, although it was born in the 19th century, is traced back to classical antiquity.\u00a0Let us remember that the origin of the European university is found in the\u00a0medieval\u00a0studia generalia<\/em>\u00a0.\u00a0For example, the\u00a0Studium Generale<\/em> de Palencia<\/a>\u00a0, which was the first university in Spain, was born in 1212. These\u00a0general studies<\/em>\u00a0were centers sponsored by popes, kings or emperors, where teaching based on the\u00a0seven liberal arts<\/a>\u00a0was taught\u00a0.\u00a0On the one hand, grammar, dialectics (or logic) and rhetoric (\u00a0trivium<\/em>\u00a0), which lay the foundations of human communication.\u00a0On the other hand, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (\u00a0quadrivium<\/em>), which develop numerical relationships in space and time.\u00a0Those who wanted to, could continue in a\u00a0higher faculty<\/em>\u00a0(law, medicine or theology) where they were\u00a0empowered<\/em>\u00a0to practice the profession.<\/p>\n Although there is no semantic relationship between the terms\u00a0universitas<\/em>\u00a0(association, consortium) and\u00a0universale<\/em>\u00a0, the European university had a universal vocation from its inception.\u00a0In fact, thanks to the fact that the language of instruction was Latin, and it was equally foreign to everyone, the students had very varied geographical and linguistic origins.\u00a0In addition, the graduates obtained a\u00a0licentia ubique terrarum<\/em>\u00a0that empowered them to practice their profession anywhere.<\/p>\n The\u00a0studia generalia<\/em>\u00a0were permeated with a strong theological component, but this was weakened when the Lutheran Reformation unveiled other ways of looking at and understanding the world.\u00a0Likewise, the vindication of vernacular languages \u200b\u200bas valid languages \u200b\u200bfor knowledge relegated Latin, and caused the homogenization in the cultural origin of the students.<\/p>\n The renunciation of Catholic and Protestant religious fundamentalisms (\u00a0Lutheran University of Halle (1694)<\/a>\u00a0) favored the scientific discoveries and technological advance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe.\u00a0Throughout the 19th century, the German university model prevailed in the world.\u00a0Curricula were secularized and approaches of a more philosophical nature gave way to verifiable knowledge and experimentation.\u00a0Few defended the usefulness of a\u00a0liberal arts<\/em>\u00a0training\u00a0for a society that was industrializing and technifying so rapidly.\u00a0The universalist vision of the university and also of the global knowledge that it should provide to its students was cracked.<\/p>\n Broadly speaking,<\/em>\u00a0the distinction is the same as that between predictive analysis and the art of interpreting meanings.\u00a0The same that exists between an analysis that aspires to find recurring causalities in physical-natural processes to predict a result, and an interpretation that aspires to find trends of meaning in human events to understand social processes.\u00a0In other words: between explaining why a stone falls and understanding why someone throws it.<\/p>\n This contrast influences the type of data needed to understand one event (the crash) or another (the launch).\u00a0In the techniques used to collect and\u00a0make<\/em>\u00a0data\u00a0speak<\/em>\u00a0, and tell what and why what happens.\u00a0In the ability to predict (\u00a0science<\/em>\u00a0) or foresee (\u00a0letters<\/em>\u00a0) what may happen and, if necessary, propose a solution.<\/p>\n There is a fundamental aspect that differentiates both ways of knowing.\u00a0It’s about the context;\u00a0that is, of when and where things happen.\u00a0In the case of\u00a0science<\/em>\u00a0, the context is more or less controllable and the delimitation of the variables depends on the technological and financial capacities;\u00a0there are the laboratory experiments as evidence.\u00a0However, in the\u00a0lyrics<\/em>\u00a0the context is\u00a0absolutely<\/em>\u00a0uncontrollable;\u00a0there are the polls to prove it.<\/p>\n While the\u00a0sciences<\/em>\u00a0investigate causal relationships that respond to physical-natural laws that transcend space-time, the relationships that study\u00a0letters<\/em>\u00a0are of significance and meaning;\u00a0that we know of, they do not respond to any transcendent law or principle.<\/p>\n That is to say, while the former are necessary and occur whenever the appropriate circumstances occur – which explains this blind faith in the asepsis of algorithms – they respond to factors that always depend on their historical context and, therefore, demand a thought. based on interpretive intuition.\u00a0There is a\u00a0mixed<\/em>\u00a0science\u00a0like economics that – everyone knows – is an excellent way of explaining crises once they have happened.<\/p>\n Thus, the possibility of controlling the context is essential to understand the contrast between\u00a0science<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0literature<\/em>\u00a0and the disparate theoretical-methodological problems they face.\u00a0If the context can be controlled – covered with variables -, the\u00a0same<\/em>\u00a0event\u00a0can be reproduced as\u00a0many times as the budget allows, as well as contrasting and verifying all the possibilities and answers.<\/p>\n If the context cannot be controlled, then the\u00a0same<\/em>\u00a0event\u00a0cannot be reproduced\u00a0, so it is only possible to study it while it happens and, comparing it with a similar one, find some trend that helps to better understand the general process.\u00a0For this reason, while the\u00a0sciences<\/em>\u00a0can aspire to an evaluative objectivity, the\u00a0letters<\/em>\u00a0must aspire to honesty as the maximum value.<\/p>\n However, reality shows that the border is not so clear.\u00a0Many researches have one foot in each mode.\u00a0There are countless examples that show that the effectiveness of an excellent vaccine or a promising territorial development or regional pacification plan always depends on debates about what is just, what is desirable or what is legitimate;\u00a0that is, of contextualized human actions and decisions.<\/p>\n The false belief in the\u00a0scientific\u00a0superiority<\/em>\u00a0and greater\u00a0usefulness<\/em>\u00a0of one way of knowing over the other has only caused a deafness that has not benefited anyone.\u00a0Thinkers such as Charles Snow in his conference\u00a0The two cultures<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(1959), Edgar Morin with the development of\u00a0complex thought<\/a>\u00a0(1982) or\u00a0Basarab Nicolescu<\/a>\u00a0and transdisciplinarity (1996), have denounced the disciplinary compartmentalization of knowledge and claim the need to reconnect both modes to understand holistically the intricate density of reality.<\/p>\nWhere does the difference lie?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
False beliefs<\/strong><\/h4>\n