The conundrum of the sciences – social
Both hold important answers to the solutions required to better the lives of global citizens
To most of us the apparent conundrum in contemporary life is obvious. Despite significant advances in some areas – both globally and in South Africa, the quality of our lives and wellbeing, social cohesion, appreciation of identity, access to resources and opportunities, healthcare, job security, peace and stability — just to name a few areas — are increasingly fragile.
This puzzle is amplified when we realise that we have never had such immediate access to superior technology and information. Dr Michio Kaku, author and theoretical physicist at the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Centre, says it best: “Today the mobile phone has more computer power than all of Nasa back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon.” Most of us in South Africa, despite our economic standing, have access to this astounding technology in the palms of our hands.
In the global healthcare domain, cancer is one example where there is a disconnect between access to information and solutions. This is despite significant progress in research, with real breakthroughs. While patients can access new treatments faster than ever, an end is not in sight for this disease. According to America’s National Cancer Institute, “the number of new cancer cases will rise to 22 million within the next two decades” with “more than 60% of the world’s new cancer cases [occur- ring] in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America [which will also record] 70% of the world’s cancer deaths.” Why is this, with the incredible advances in understanding the pathology of this disease?
The same disconnect is seen when one looks at poverty and inequality, globally and particularly in South Africa. Dr Jean Triegaardt, writing in his 2006 paper Poverty and inequality in South Africa: Policy considerations in an emerging democracy, surmises that although “poverty and inequality have co-existed for generations both in developed and developing nations, and in spite of the multiple interventions, the progress in eliminating this problem remains elusive”.
Despite South Africa’s awareness of how poverty and inequality impacts millions of citizens, levels have only increased and today the country has the dubious distinction of being the most unequal society in the world.
Economist and philosopher Amartya Sen wrote in 2000 that “human lives are bettered and diminished in all kinds of different ways, and the first task … is to acknowledge that deprivations of very different kinds have to be accommodated within a general overarching framework”.
Many plans around the world recognise and accept this premise and the need for holistic programmes that impact positively on development and wellbeing. Internationally the Millennium Development Goals were adopted by global leaders in 2000, which were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Africa has for the first time conceived of an overarching long-term and holistic development plan, Agenda 2063. South Africa has had various plans since 1994 and now has the National Development Plan.
The question then is why, when we know so much, with so much technology at our disposal and despite so many advances, is the sustained improvement of the human condition still elusive. What are we missing? What do we need to know that we do not? How do we get to where we need to go?
Perhaps the answer could lie in greater collaboration between the social and natural sciences? Both hold important answers to the solutions that are required to better the lives of global citizens and reduce deprivations of various kinds as envisaged by Sen. The natural sciences underpin our understanding of how to manage the world’s natural resources and can drive innovations in almost every field.
At the same time, Bent Flyvbjberg’s 2001 book Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Science Fails and How it can succeed again says: “This discipline can, and should be sensitive to context, show connections between phenomena, courses of action and events and engage with social and political actors in dialogue, thereby facilitating answers to age-old value questions like ‘how should we live’ and ‘what is to be done?’ ”
Expanding upon this, Jonathan Michie in his 2015 paper ‘Why the
“Perhaps the answer could lie in greater collaboration between the social and natural sciences?”