Teach arts and sciences together

Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, a dancer ... Telling stories from her own education and from her time in space, she calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one -- to create bold thinkers.

What I want to do today is to spend

some time talking about some stuff that's

sort of giving me a little bit of

existential angst, for lack of a better word,

over the past couple of years, and

basically, these three quotes

tell what's going on.

"When God made the color purple,

God was just showing off," Alice Walker

wrote in "The Color Purple," and

Zora Neale Hurston wrote in

"Dust Tracks On A Road,"

"Research is a formalized curiosity.

It's poking and prying with a purpose."

And then finally,

when I think about the near future,

you know, we have this attitude, well,

whatever happens, happens. Right?

So that goes along with the Chesire Cat

saying, "If you don't care much

where you want to get to,

it doesn't much matter which way you go."

But I think it does matter

which way we go, and what road we take,

because when I think about design in the

near future, what I think are the most

important issues, what's really

crucial and vital is that we need

to revitalize the arts and sciences

right now in 2002.

(Applause)

If we describe the near future

as 10, 20, 15 years from now,

that means that what we do today

is going to be critically important,

because in the year 2015,

and the year 2020, 2025, the world

our society is going to be building on,

the basic knowledge and abstract ideas,

the discoveries that we came up with today,

just as all these wonderful things we're

hearing about here at the TED conference

that we take for granted in the world

right now, were really knowledge

and ideas that came up

in the '50s, the '60s, and the '70s.

That's the substrate that we're exploiting

today, whether it's the internet,

genetic engineering, laser scanners,

guided missiles, fiber optics, high-definition

television, sensing, remote-sensing

from space and the wonderful

remote-sensing photos that we see in

3D weaving, TV programs like Tracker,

and Enterprise, CD rewrite drives,

flatscreen, Alvin Ailey's Suite Otis,

or Sarah Jones' "Your Revolution Will Not

Be Between These Thighs," which

by the way was banned by the FCC,

or ska, all of these things

without question, almost without exception,

are really based on ideas

and abstract and creativity

from years before,

so we have to ask ourselves,

what are we contributing to that legacy

right now? And when I think about it,

I'm really worried. To be quite frank,

I'm concerned. I'm skeptical

that we're doing very much of anything.

We're, in a sense, failing to act

in the future. We're purposefully,

consciously being laggards.

We're lagging behind.

Frantz Fanon, who was a psychiatrist

from Martinique, said, "Each generation

must, out of relative obscurity,

discover its mission, and fulfill or betray it."

What is our mission? What do we have

to do? I think our mission is

to reconcile, to reintegrate

science and the arts, because right now

there's a schism that exists

in popular culture. You know,

people have this idea that science

and the arts are really separate.

We think of them as separate

and different things, and this idea was

probably introduced centuries ago,

but it's really becoming critical now,

because we're making decisions about our

society every day that,

if we keep thinking that the arts

are separate from the sciences,

and we keep thinking it's cute to say,

"I don't understand anything about this one,

I don't understand anything about the other

one," then we're going to have problems.

Now I know no one here at TED

thinks this. All of us, we already know

that they're very connected, but I'm going

to let you know that some folks

in the outside world, believe it or not,

they think it's neat when they say,

"You know, scientists and science is not

creative. Maybe scientists are ingenious,

but they're not creative.

And then we have this tendency, the career

counselors and various people say things

like, "Artists are not analytical.

They're ingenious, perhaps,

but not analytical," and

when these concepts underly our teaching

and what we think about the world,

then we have a problem, because we

stymie support for everything.

By accepting this dichotomy,

whether it's tongue-in-cheek, when

we attempt to accommodate it in our world,

and we try to build our foundation

for the world, we're messing up the future,

because, who wants to be uncreative?

Who wants to be illogical?

Talent would run from either of these fields

if you said you had to choose either.

Then they're going to go to something

where they think, "Well, I can be creative

and logical at the same time."

Now I grew up in the '60s and I'll admit it,

actually, my childhood spanned the '60s,

and I was a wannabe hippie and I always

resented the fact that I wasn't really

old enough to be a hippie.

And I know there are people here, the

younger generation who want to be hippies,

but people talk about the '60s all the time,

and they talk about the anarchy

that was there, but when I think about

the '60s, what I took away from it was

that there was hope for the future.

We thought everyone could participate.

There were wonderful, incredible ideas

that were always percolating,

and so much of what's cool or hot today

is really based on some of those concepts,

whether it's, you know, people trying to

use the prime directive from Star Trek

being involved in things, or again that

three-dimensional weaving and

fax machines that I read about in my

weekly readers that the technology

and engineering was just getting started.

But the '60s left me with a problem.

You see, I always assumed I would go

into space, because I followed all of this,

but I also loved the arts and sciences.

You see, when I was growing up as

a little girl and as a teenager,

I loved designing and making dogs' clothes

and wanting to be a fashion designer.

I took art and ceramics. I loved dance.

Lola Falana. Alvin Ailey. Jerome Robbins.

And I also avidly followed the Gemini

and the Apollo programs.

I had science projects and tons of astronomy

books. I took calculus and philosophy.

I wondered about the infinity

and the Big Bang theory.

And when I was at Stanford,

I found myself, my senior year,

chemical engineering major, half the folks

thought I was a political science and

performing arts major, which was sort of

true because I was Black Student Union President

and I did major in some other things,

and I found myself the last quarter juggling

chemical engineering separation processes,

logic classes, nuclear magnetic resonance

spectroscopy, and also producing

and choreographing a dance production,

and I had to do the lighting and the

design work, and I was trying to figure out,

do I go to New York City

to try to become a professional dancer,

or do I go to medical school?

Now, my mother helped me figure

that one out. (Laughter)

But when I went into space,

when I went into space I carried a number

of things up with me. I carried a poster

by Alvin Ailey, which you can figure out

now, I love the dance company.

An Alvin Ailey poster of Judith Jamison

performing the dance "Cry," dedicated to all

black women everywhere. A Bundu statue,

which was from the Women's Society

in Sierra Leone, and a certificate for the

Chicago Public School students to work to

improve their science and math,

and folks asked me,

"Why did you take up what you took up?"

And I had to say,

"Because it represents human creativity,

the creativity that allowed us, that we were

required to have to conceive and build

and launch the space shuttle, springs from

the same source as the imagination and

analysis it took to carve a Bundu statue,

or the ingenuity it took to design,

choreograph, and stage "Cry."

Each one of them are different

manifestations, incarnations, of creativity,

avatars of human creativity,

and that's what we have to reconcile

in our minds, how these things fit together.

The difference between arts and sciences

is not analytical versus intuitive, right?

E=MC squared required

an intuitive leap, and then you had

to do the analysis afterwards.

Einstein said, in fact, "The most beautiful

thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all true art and science."

Dance requires us to express and want

to express the jubilation in life, but then you

have to figure out, exactly

what movement do I do to make sure

that it comes across correctly?

The difference between arts and sciences

is also not constructive versus

deconstructive, right? A lot of people

think of the sciences as deconstructive.

You have to pull things apart.

And yeah, sub-atomic physics

is deconstructive. You literally try to

tear atoms apart to understand

what's inside of them. But sculpture, from

what I understand from great sculptors,

is deconstructive, because you see a piece

and you remove what doesn't

need to be there.

Biotechnology is constructive.

Orchestral arranging is constructive.

So in fact we use constructive and

deconstructive techniques in everything.

The difference between science

and the arts is not that they

are different sides of the same coin, even,

or even different parts

of the same continuum, but rather

they're manifestations of the same thing.

Different quantum states of an atom?

Or maybe if I want to be more 21st century

I could say that they are different harmonic

resonances of a superstring.

But we'll leave that alone. (Laughter)

They spring from the same source.

The arts and sciences are avatars of

human creativity. It's our attempt

as humans to build an understanding

of the universe, the world around us.

It's our attempt to influence things,

the universe internal to ourselves

and external to us.

The sciences, to me, are manifestations

of our attempt to express

or share our understanding,

our experience, to influence the universe

external to ourselves.

It doesn't rely on us as individuals.

It's the universe, as experienced

by everyone, and the arts manifest

our desire, our attempt to share

or influence others through experiences

that are peculiar to us as individuals.

Let me say it again another way:

science provides an understanding

of a universal experience, and

arts provides a universal understanding

of a personal experience.

That's what we have to think about,

that they're all part of us, they're

all part of a continuum.

It's not just the tools, it's not just

the sciences, you know, the mathematics

and the numerical stuff and the statistics,

because we heard, very much on this

stage, people talked about music

being mathematical. Right? Arts don't just

use clay, aren't the only ones that use clay,

light and sound and movement.

They use analysis as well.

So people might say, well,

I still like that intuitive versus analytical

thing, because everybody wants to do the

right brain, left brain thing, right?

We've all been accused of being

right-brained or left-brained at some point

in time, depending on who

we disagreed with. (Laughter)

You know, people say intuitive, you know

that's like you're in touch with nature,

in touch with yourself and relationships.

Analytical: you put your mind to work, and

I'm going to tell you a little secret. You all

know this though, but sometimes people

use this analysis idea, that things are

outside of ourselves, to be, say, that this

is what we're going to elevate

as the true, most important sciences, right?

And then you have artists, and you all

know this is true as well,

artists will say things about scientists

because they say they're too concrete,

they're disconnected with the world.

But, we've even had that here on stage,

so don't act like you don't know

what I'm talking about. (Laughter)

We had folks talking about the Flat Earth

Society and flower arrangers, so there's

this whole dichotomy that we continue

to carry along, even when we know better.

And folks say we need to choose either or.

But it would really be foolish to choose

either one, right?

Intuitive versus analytical?

That's a foolish choice. It's foolish,

just like trying to choose between

being realistic or idealistic.

You need both in life. Why do people

do this? I'm just gonna quote

a molecular biologist, Sydney Brenner,

who's 70 years old so he can say this. He said,

"It's always important to distinguish

between chastity and impotence."

Now... (Laughter)

I want to share with you

a little equation, okay?

How do understanding science

and the arts fit into our lives

and what's going on and the things

that we're talking about here

at the design conference, and this is

a little thing I came up with, understanding

and our resources and our will

cause us to have outcomes.

Our understanding is our science, our arts,

our religion, how we see the universe

around us, our resources, our money,

our labor, our minerals, those things

that are out there in the world we have

to work with.

But more importantly, there's our will.

This is our vision, our aspirations

of the future, our hopes, our dreams,

our struggles and our fears.

Our successes and our failures influence

what we do with all of those, and to me,

design and engineering, craftsmanship and

skilled labor, are all the things that work on

this to have our outcome,

which is our human quality of life.

Where do we want the world to be?

And guess what?

Regardless of how we look at this, whether

we look at arts and sciences are separate

or different, they're both being influenced

now and they're both having problems.

I did a project called S.E.E.ing the Future:

Science, Engineering and Education, and

it was looking at how to shed light on

most effective use of government funding.

We got a bunch of scientists in all stages

of their careers. They came to Dartmouth

College, where I was teaching, and they

talked about with theologians and financiers,

what are some of the issues of public

funding for science and engineering

research? What's most important about it?

There are some ideas that emerged that

I think have really powerful parallels

to the arts. The first thing they said was that

the circumstances that we find ourselves in

today in the sciences and engineering that

made us world leaders is very different

than the '40s, the '50s, and the '60s

and the '70s when we emerged

as world leaders, because we're no longer

in competition with fascism, with

Soviet-style communism, and by the way

that competition wasn't just military,

it included social competition

and political competition as well,

that allowed us to look at space

as one of those platforms to prove

that our social system was better.

Another thing they talked about was the

infrastructure that supports the sciences

is becoming obsolete. We look at

universities and colleges, small, mid-sized

community colleges across the country,

their laboratories are becoming obsolete,

and this is where we train most of our

science workers and our researchers,

and our teachers, by the way,

and then that there's a media that doesn't

support the dissemination of any more than

the most mundane and inane of information.

There's pseudo-science, crop circles,

alien autopsy, haunted houses,

or disasters. And that's what we see.

And this isn't really the information

you need to operate in everyday life

and figure out how to participate in this

democracy and determine what's going on.

They also said that there's a change

in the corporate mentality. Whereas

government money had always been there

for basic science and engineering research,

we also counted on some companies to do

some basic research, but what's happened

now is companies put more energy into

short-term product development

than they do in basic engineering

and science research.

And education is not keeping up.

In K through 12, people are taking out

wet labs. They think if we put a computer

in the room it's going to take the place

of actually, we're mixing the acids,

we're growing the potatoes.

And government funding is decreasing

in spending and then they're saying,

let's have corporations take over,

and that's not true. Government funding

should at least do things like recognize

cost-benefits of basic science and

engineering research. We have to know

that we have a responsibility

as global citizens in this world.

We have to look at the education

of humans. We need to build our resources

today to make sure that they're trained so

that they understand the importance of

these things, and we have to support

the vitality of science, and that doesn't

mean that everything has to have one thing

that's going to go on, or we know

exactly what's going to be the outcome of it,

but that we support the vitality and the

intellectual curiosity that goes along,

and if you think about those parallels

to the arts, the competition

with the Bolshoi Ballet spurred

the Joffrey and the New York City Ballet

to become better.

Infrastructure museums, theaters,

movie houses across the country

are disappearing. We have more

television stations with less to watch,

we have more money spent on

rewrites to get old television programs

in the movies.

We have corporate funding now that,

when it goes to some company, when it

goes to support the arts, it almost requires

that the product be part of the picture

that the artist draws, and we have

stadiums that are named over and over

again by corporations.

In Houston, we're trying to figure out

what to do with that Enron Stadium thing.

(Laughter) And fine arts and education

in the schools is disappearing, and we have

a government that seems like it's gutting

the NEA and other programs,

so we have to really stop and think,

what are we trying to do

with the sciences and the arts?

There's a need to revitalize them.

We have to pay attention to it. I just want

to tell you really quickly what I'm doing.

(Applause)

I want to tell you what I've been doing

a little bit since... I feel this need

to sort of integrate some of the ideas

that I've had and run across over time.

One of the things that I found out

is that there's a need to repair

the dichotomy between the mind and body

as well. My mother always told me,

you have to be observant, know what's

going on in your mind and your body,

and as a dancer I had this tremendous

faith in my ability to know my body,

just as I knew how to sense colors.

Then I went to medical school, and I was

supposed to just go on

what the machine said about bodies.

You know, you would ask patients

questions and some people would tell you,

"Don't, don't, don't listen to what

the patients said." We know that patients

know and understand their bodies better,

but these days we're trying to divorce them

from that idea. We have to reconcile the

patient's knowledge of their body

with physician's measurements.

We had someone talk about

measuring emotions and getting machines

to figure out what, to keep us

from acting crazy. Right?

No, we shouldn't measure,

we shouldn't use machines

to measure road rage and then do

something to keep us from engaging in it.

Maybe we can have machines help us

to recognize that we have road rage and

then we need to know how to control that

without the machines. We even need to be

able to recognize that without the machines.

What I'm very concerned about

is how do we bolster our self-awareness

as humans, as biological organisms?

Michael Moschen spoke of having to teach

and learn how to feel with my eyes,

to see with my hands.

We have all kinds of possibilities to use

our senses by, and that's

what we have to do.

That's what I want to do, is to try to use

bioinstrumentation, those kind of things

to help our senses in what we do,

and that's the work I've been doing now as

a company called BioSentient Corporation.

I figured I'd have to do that ad, because

I'm an entrepreneur, because entrepreneur

says that that's somebody who does what

they want to do because they're not broke

enough that they have to get a real job.

(Laughter) But that's the work I'm doing

with BioSentient Corporation trying to figure

out how do we integrate these things?

Let me finish by saying that

my personal design issue for the future

is really about integrating, to think about

that intuitive and that analytical.

The arts and sciences are not separate.

High school physics lesson before you

leave. High school physics teacher used to

hold up a ball. She would say this ball

has potential energy, but nothing

will happen to it, it can't do any work

until I drop it and it changes states.

I like to think of ideas as potential energy.

They're really wonderful, but nothing

will happen until we risk

putting them into action.

This conference is filled

with wonderful ideas.

We're going to share lots of things

with people, but nothing's going to happen

until we risk putting those ideas into action.

We need to revitalize the arts and sciences

of today, we need to take responsibility

for the future. We can't hide behind saying

it's just for company profits,

or it's just a business, or I'm an artist

or an academician.

Here's how you judge what you're doing.

I talked about that balance between

intuitive, analytical.

Fran Lebowitz, my favorite cynic,

she said the three questions

of greatest concern, now I'm going to

add on to design, is,

"Is it attractive?"

That's the intuitive.

"Is it amusing?" The analytical.

"And does it know its place?"

The balance. Thank you very much.

(Applause)