In his book, Jerome Kagan says, “The modern world desperately needs a Swift, Kant, Goya, Shaw, Beckett, or Eliot to provoke a passive population, adrift in a ship without a confident direction… to choose a moral position that demands a deeper empathetic concern with the social and natural settings into which each generation is born and to communicate it to a desperate public” (p. 243).
Evaluate this proposal through your critical examination of the state of the three cultures (science, social science, and the humanities) as presented in Kagan’s book.
Explain what such a person would or should say and/or do, based on your evaluation. Describe what you envision today’s Kant or Eliot to be. This can be an actual or a hypothetical person. Your Poet/Philosopher of Our Age must be able to respond to the failures of the three cultures while defending and promoting them. You need to explain how this person’s thought and/or action would contribute to an authentic transformation of society.
Research: Include at least 6 sources, journal articles in the disciplines of the social sciences, the sciences, and the humanities. You can choose to find research in all three, or just two of the cultures.
Analyze: Your research should help you in your analysis by supporting your explanation of how the three cultures (the social sciences, the sciences, and the humanities) would contribute, in your proposed scenario, to such a transformation.
> 6 sources required, academic journal articles (social sciences and/or the humanities)
