Advice from Leonard Cohen

Singer, songwriter, poet, novelist, 1960s survivor Leonard Cohen gave a concert in the DC area this week, and although he didn't actually address S&T in any way, he did recite and then sing a few lines that do have meaning for S&T policy grunts. A tragic flaw of technocrats is the misguided belief that it is possible to craft perfect policies that will somehow impose a rational shape on a messy reality. It's the assumption that the clearheaded, rational, evidence-based approach of the sciences and engineering is the best, perhaps the only valid, world view. Much of the commitment to "communication" with the general public is in practice an attempt to teach everyone else to see the world in a certain way. Although there is no doubt that this a valuable and useful way to see reality, it is not the only valid perspective. Visual artists, poets, novelists, dramatists, musicians, not to mention philosophers, historians, and social scientists, provide insights that add to our understanding of what is human, what is desirable, what is possible.

As Leonard Cohen put it simply and eloquently:

Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.