Abstract
This chapter looks at the impact of recent societal approaches of knowledge and science from the perspectives of two rather distant educational domains, mathematics and music. Science’s attempt at ‘self-understanding’ has led to a set of control mechanisms, either generating ‘closure’—the scientists’ non-involvement in society—or ‘economisation’, producing patents and other lucrative benefits. While scientometrics became the tool and the rule for measuring the economic impact of science, counter movements, like the slow science movement, citizen science, empowering music-art initiatives and other critical approaches focus on intrinsic and ethical questions of education and knowledge. Thinking about knowledge and research in terms of quantifiable products impacts heavily upon the domains of science and arts, while the complexity of knowledge acquisition forces society to consider also other parameters like equality, personal development and participatory processes.
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Notes
- 1.
The first answer is made up (although based on frequently heard answers given by starting students in those disciplines, whereas the second answer, strikingly personal, is to be found in Hardy (1967: 65–66).
- 2.
To avoid readers wasting time to identify the subject of this profile, it is indeed the profile of one of the three authors of this paper, as it happens the senior member.
- 3.
This gradual change from a descriptive approach to a normative one can be found in many cases. A recent nice example is the use of the BMI-index or Quetelet -index. Originally it was nothing more but an interesting mathematical correlation but today it has become an almost purely normative index and not even a stable index at that. In past decennia the “healthy range” has moved from 20–25 to 18–25. No doubt the rise of anorexia is one of the contributing factors.
- 4.
An intriguing history of mathematics can be told in terms of closure and mathematicians are particularly fond of doing so: natural numbers lead to integers because subtraction is not closed in the natural numbers, which leads to rational numbers because division is not closed in the integers, which leads to ….
- 5.
Given two parameters x and y, one could consider their sum x + y, but then one ignores the possibility of introducing weights a and b, such that b = 1 − a and the sum is replaced by a.x + b.y, but then one ignores the importance in powers so that a more general form would be a.x n + b.y m, but then one has not yet answered the question why we chose to start with an addition.
- 6.
This group was founded in 2010 and based in Berlin. The complete manifesto (though no longer than a single page) is to be found at: http://www.slow-science.org. In Belgium a strong advocate of slow science is Isabelle Stengers , see Stengers (2013).
- 7.
This observation is sufficient reason, we believe, to doubt the effectiveness of guidebooks on how to be a good scientist. If most instructions are of the form “Thou shall …” or “Thou shall not …”, then the members of the community are affected and not the structure wherein they are situated.
- 8.
One of the authors (Jean Paul Van Bendegem) participated in a debate at the University of Antwerp about these very issues. One of the participants was Helga Nowotny who has played a prominent role in the ESF (the European Science Foundation) actually described “slow science ” as an ugly term, as it suggested that one is slowing down and therefore no longer enthusiast about science. It left one of us completely puzzled what the correlation could be between creativity and speed, an item which will be discussed in the final section on music.
- 9.
It is not easy to pinpoint the beginnings of citizen science (is a nineteenth-century “gentleman-scientist” more a scientist than a citizen or vice versa?) but for the modern period, i.e., the period that started with the industrialization of science itself, the famous scientific enterprise, the first book on the topic is Irwin (1995).
- 10.
As one might expect, the phenomenon of crowd-sourcing has also appeared within the framework of citizen science.
- 11.
Without going into details, we believe that many STEM -initiatives (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics ) show the same tension. It is not really about showing how interesting mathematics is for everyone but rather to find the next generation of brilliant mathematicians.
- 12.
Since 2010, a research group of the AEC, Association Européenne des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen, “has developed several tools for higher music education institutions in order to assist the institutions with the requirements proposed by the Bologna process. The group has studied issues related to curriculum design and development, and therefore has also dealt with three key elements that have been much talked about in European Higher Education in recent years and that have been given additional impetus by the Bologna Process: Learning Outcomes, Credit Points and Quality Assurance.” http://www.aec-music.eu/work--policies/curriculum-design
- 13.
At least not in Flanders.
- 14.
See https://www.ecoom.be/en/introduction: “The Centre for Research & Development Monitoring (Expertisecentrum Onderzoek en Ontwikkelingsmonitoring, ECOOM) is an interuniversity consortium with participation of all Flemish universities (KU Leuven, UGent, VUB, UA and UHasselt). Its mission is to develop a consistent system of R&D and Innovation (RD&I) indicators for the Flemish government. This indicator system has to assist the Flemish government in mapping and monitoring the RD&I efforts in the Flemish region.”
- 15.
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Coessens, K., François, K., Van Bendegem, J.P. (2018). Math and Music: Slow and Not For Profit. In: Smeyers, P., Depaepe, M. (eds) Educational Research: Ethics, Social Justice, and Funding Dynamics. Educational Research, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73921-2_6
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