Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 10:59:12 -0700 (MST) From: Martha Gimenez To: psn-seminars@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Social change and poetry (FWD) Gary is having some email problems and asked me to forward this message. Martha ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 09:04:43 -0800 (PST) From: gary marx To: psn-seminars@csf.colorado.edu Martha Gimenez asks, why is "social change without poetry" in serious trouble? (mandate 2). There I meant that our efforts to generate systematic, empirically accurate, logical and sophisticated data on which to base social change will be further enhanced if they have aesthetic, emotional, spiritual, and evocative qualities. Beauty, humor, playfulness, symbols and even ambiguity (in limited contexts) and an element of mystery can enhance the process and the product, and can reach the reader in a way that the lifeless prose and numbers that dominate much of the profession never can. Of course this should not be in lieu of sloppy or fuzzy thinking. There is a wonderful quote somewhere from Whitehead about the limitations of clarity in settings that may be too complex for our models. Social researchers can benefit from drawing upon the humanities' side of their split personality. We can be more than passionless engineers with a sterile mode of communication. Perhaps buried within the remark is the notion that our work should, where possible, be artful as well as technical.