Nobel prizes reflect an outdated view of science and technology

By Ariana Jones

La Sortie de l'opéra en l'an 2000, ca. 1902. 

Obtained from: https://daily.jstor.org/can-science-fiction-predict-the-future-of-technology/ 

Alfred Nobel, famed engineer, inventor and chemist, dedicated 94% of his fortune to all those whose extraordinary work or outstanding discoveries most help improve our lives. The Nobel Prizes have long been regarded as the most prestigious and acclaimed award within all of the disciplines they recognise. Besides Peace and the recently added Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Sciences, which are separate prize categories of their own, these disciplines include Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine and Literature.

The academics and heroes in the aforementioned prize-worthy areas are clearly greater than 99% of us shall ever be, through either their intelligence or humanity. However, this doesn’t deny the fact that there have certainly been others well deserving of the Nobel Prize, or an award equal in recognition, over the past century and in the present day. Those whose work isn’t even eligible for praise by the “Nobel Committee” of experts and professionals, simply due to the nature of their field of study, are the under-appreciated psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists, just to mention a few of the many types of experts within the human sciences.

In response to a question posed by Live Science about what he would change about the Nobel Prize categories, Dan Kruger, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Michigan University said that, “I would change ‘Physiology or Medicine’ to ‘Life Sciences’, ‘Economics’ to ‘Social Sciences’, ‘Physics’ and ‘Chemistry’ to ‘Physical Sciences’, also maybe create a new, more applied, category for ‘Technology’, [and] ‘Literature’ ... maybe change to ‘Humanities.’”

This categorization of disciplines reflects a much more modern and comprehensive acknowledgement of all of the sciences: an understanding that Nobel himself either didn’t possess or didn’t specify clearly enough in his will.

Kruger’s opinion highlights the simple truth that there is favouritism present within the academic community, and this favouritism refers to the general bias of the natural sciences over the human sciences.

Nobel lived through the final few decades of the most technologically progressive century in history at the time. Pioneering inventors and scientists like himself were continuously looking for ways to develop new industrial technologies, creating and designing machines and products that had previously been unimaginable. The strive for innovation was collectively fostered in the scientific communities of most developed societies, and this mentality is reflected in Nobel’s original aim in establishing his fund, which was to award, “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind" with their creations and discoveries. 

The importance of the natural sciences and technology can’t ever be denied its role in the development of civilizations. However, advancement shouldn’t always be the focus, as it does not always mean improvement. After all, it is this insatiable thirst for achieving the impossible that has led to the creation of the technologies that have given us the most devastating wars and weapons - which, it could be argued, are more destructive than they are advantageous.

This focus on invention and discovery has long become outdated, and it's time to stop placing the study of the natural world on an opposite pedestal to the study of the complex, unpredictable and ever-changing world of humans.

The human sciences allow us to study the details of the multi-faceted behaviours of single individuals all the way to the interconnected activities of the peoples that our societies juggle constantly. They provide us with the potential, and too often disregarded, tools for introspection. 

It may seem silly at first glance to put ourselves under the microscope, but upon examination, there is so much about the human and all the features of this social, emotional and mostly irrational animal that we don’t even begin to understand. From the individual to the nation, every aspect of our daily lives has evolved over time to become the way it is today, and learning why and how this evolution has come to be is essential to our knowledge of the world we have created and how best we should move forward.

Isn’t this approach to advancement also of great importance and benefit to us all?

So really, the natural sciences and the human sciences are more closely related than you think. Both aim to learn more about the world we live in, but they just direct their instruments of measurement towards different targets. 

No matter how intelligent our computers become, how fast our trains travel, or how far out into space our telescopes can see, we can’t escape the fact that, for the time being at least,  we shall always be experiencing this world as humans. If we keep focusing on the expansion of our knowledge rather than the understanding of how we as humans perceive, react and utilise this knowledge to interact with each other as well as the world, we might just get ahead of ourselves and do more harm than good.