Guest Blog by Dr Nicholas Maxwell, Science and Technology Studies, UCL
The world is in a state of crisis. Global problems that threaten our future include: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, catastrophic loss of wildlife, and mass extinction of species; lethal modern war; the spread of modern armaments; the menace of nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; rapid rise in the human population; increasing antibiotic resistance; the degradation of democratic politics, brought about in part by the internet. It is not just that universities around the world have failed to help humanity solve these global problems; they have made the genesis of these problems possible. Modern science and technology, developed in universities, have made possible modern industry and agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern power production and travel, modern armaments, which in turn make possible much that is good, all the great benefits of the modern world, but also all the global crises that now threaten our future.
What has gone wrong? The fault lies with the whole conception of inquiry built into universities around the world. The basic idea is to help promote human welfare by, in the first instance, acquiring scientific knowledge and technological know-how. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems, and promote human welfare.
But this basic idea is an intellectual disaster. Judged from the standpoint of promoting human welfare, it is profoundly and damagingly irrational, in a structural way. As a result of being restricted to the tasks of acquiring and applying knowledge, universities are prevented from doing what they most need to do to help humanity solve global problems, namely, engage actively with the public to promote action designed to solve global problems. Universities do not take their basic task to be public education about what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. As a result of giving priority to the pursuit of knowledge, universities do not even give priority within academia to the vital tasks of articulating problems of living, local and global, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions – possible and actual actions, policies, political programmes, ways of living.
Universities are in part responsible for the genesis of the global problems we face today, not because they have pursued scientific knowledge and technological know-how in such an extraordinarily successful way, but because they have done so in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental concern to help humanity learn what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. We need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities around the world, wherever possible, so that their central task becomes to help humanity learn how to solve local and global problems of living, so that we may make progress towards a good, civilized world. Almost every branch and aspect of the university needs to change. Every university should seek to take a leading role, both by itself bringing about the changes that are required and advocating that this needs to be done on a world-wide basis.
I first spelled out in detail the argument for the urgent need for an academic revolution in From Knowledge to Wisdom (Blackwell, 1984), available free online at https://philpapers.org/rec/MAXFKT-3 . A recently published paper gives a vivid account of my work on the issue over the decades: see “How Universities Have Betrayed Reason and Humanity—And What’s to Be Done About It”, 2021, Frontiers in Sustainability. For a list of 23 structural changes that need to be made to universities to enhance their capacity to help humanity solve global problems effectively and rationally, see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom/whatneedstochange .
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