Happy Friday! We’ve compiled our favorite articles and essays from the last month for you to browse and enjoy this weekend.
In NPR’s 13.7 Cosmos & Culture, theoretical physicist, author and Dartmouth College professor Marcelo Gleiser explores “the growing gap between the sciences and the humanities” – how it harms us, how we enable it and what we can do to bridge the divide. With a course called “Understanding the Universe: From Atoms to the Big Bang,” Gleiser hopes to portray “the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences as different and complementary ways of knowing the world and why we matter,” a lesson that is just as crucial in the workplace as it is in the classroom. He writes:
“The classroom is the ideal place for this conversation between the sciences and the humanities to unfold. By exposing students to the two sides of the cultural divide, we stand a chance of building bridges that will actually close the gap. Scientists should read from original sources, and humanists should grapple with scientific concepts such as relativity, quantum physics, evolution and natural selection, plate tectonics, climate change, and the expanding universe. Scientists should recognize that some research topics – AI, biotechnology, climate change, life extension, the nature and pervasiveness of faith, and many others – need to be investigated together with humanists as a joint effort; inasmuch as they impact society as a whole, they are not ‘just’ scientific research projects.”
Elsewhere on the Internet:
In Harvard Business Review, Dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business Bill Boulding encourages leaders to embrace workplace discussions around sensitive topics. “In the absence of conversation,” he writes, “people make assumptions.”
Inside Higher Ed featured our wellness programs at Case Western Reserve University and our invaluable partnerships with professors in a profile of Books@Work.
Doctor and writer Gavin Francis explore the kinship between literature and medicine in an essay for Aeon. “There are parallels between generating and appreciating lasting stories and art, and generating and appreciating healing, therapeutic encounters,” he writes.
Psychology Today takes a revealing look at the epidemic of loneliness and its psychological toll, arguing for meaningful connection at work, at school, at home and in the community.
How well do we know ourselves? Sixteen new workplace studies show that “people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance,” writes Adam Grant in The Atlantic.
Image: Thomas Moran, The Chasm of the Colorado, 1874, [Public Domain] via WikiArt.org
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