STEM is Barbarous
Perhaps you’ve heard the English acronym “STEM”—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It’s used to elevate these over everything else—economics, politics, history, anthropology, philosophy, art, theology, literature.
It’s worked. It’s such a cute acronym. The word “stem” in English means tronco, from which everything grows. So everything grows from STEM subjects, right?
The word is part of the worship of science, especially in English. Everyone should admire the STEM subjects. I do. But moderns worship Science, capital S, a golden calf.
The English definition of the word has been crucial to the worship. Since the mid 1800s the English word “science” has come to mean only physical and biological science. Before then the English used “science” to mean “any systematic study or knowledge.” The study of English poetry and Christian theology and Roman history were all “sciences.” Systematic study was distinguished from mere unsupported opinion, or bad journalism such as Folha would never allow in its pages.
Every language has a science word, such as ciência or Wissenschaft. But they are not confined—unless influenced by English speakers—to the physical sciences. Germans speak of Geisteswissenschaft, “spirit science,” which English speakers call “humanities.” And then the modern English speaker banishes them from Real Science such as physics or biology.
So STEM is a weapon in an academic and political war. A while ago a Japanese minister of education suggested that public universities in Japan drop non-STEM subjects. The study of Japanese poetry, for example, which naturally mainly the Japanese do, was to be dropped from systematic study.
The justification for the war against culture is that STEM fields are claimed to contribute to economic growth. The justification of the justification is that economic growth is all we should care about. Not Japanese poetry.
As an economic scientist, I can tell you that neither justification is scientifically warranted. Sure, technology can make for economic growth. Good. But equally obviously it can, combined with science, also make for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and global warming. The study of history, politics, poetry, and theology can help us think systematically about all that. High culture has this use—if you require poetry to have a use beyond giving dignity and meaning to the human spirit.
And the economic effects of what actually goes on in the STEM fields are mostly trivial, compared with, say, a humane liberalism allowing ordinary people to try out things. What the biochemist and former vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, Terence Kealey, calls “the linear model”—that science implies technology which implies enrichment—is false.
Take astronomy, on which large sums are spent. Admirable as it is as a spiritual undertaking, it’s useless for the economy. So too most mathematics. Number theory—which I love—yields computer security. Good. But 99.9% of it is useless.
Don’t be barbarous. Stop reducing everything to the economy. Admire mathematics and poetry for themselves. Stop saying “STEM.”
Weekly column in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil
Translated into Portuguese for the newspaper.
For the record, I disagree with your definition, at least re economics.
Economics is ~75% STEM. It is the major exception among the social sciences.
The parts of psychology most related to biology and the brain might be 50% STEM; that is the subject that is the borderline.
I agree with the rest of your description, inclusive of using the word STEM as a weapon.
And in fact the last 10-15 years has demonstrated that most of the social sciences have “developed” into purely leftist politics, and not science. To say nothing of an ever increasing fraction of the humanities. And so in that very real sense I am in favor of the weaponization of the word STEM.
And if one is neither an elite student nor come from money, imo one would do very well to focus one’s college career on “STEM” and not on the rest, lest one finish with a mountain of student debt majoring in grievance studies and yet be unemployable in fields which could help pay off that debt.
Of course, sadly an increasing fraction of *economists* have moved closer to this leftist ideologizing camp.
But not, IMO, economics overall.
Respectfully.
I think the ascendancy of STEM and its overemphasis is mostly due to the advent of spurious “Studies” programs in Academe. Gender Studies, Islamic Studies, the myriad other Marxist DEI offshoots, all were little more than aspersions cast onto arts and literature departments.