Hodgson Pete: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hodgson Pete: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19445] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I want to speak straightforwardly and uncomplicatedly in favour of clause 8 of the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill and I will say why that is so shortly. But before I do that I just want to refer with your permission Mr Chairman Tisch to some remarks made by Catherine Delahunty on the previous clause. She said of the people who had come to the Education and Science Committee on this legislation that she had found them to be—and I think I have her words correct—fiercely eccentric. That is a lovely poetic description of scientists when they are being scientists. I commend the member for that description; it seems to me to be a cracker. 
As long as this clause makes its way into law as the member in the chair Grant Robertson pointed out we now have the opportunity for a person who is primarily interested in the humanities to be involved in picking up prizes that are big in the range of prizes that exist for scholarship in general. Those prizes are inevitably administered by the Royal Society. Who else would administer them? The member in the chair pointed out that we might see a person picking up the Rutherford Medal for example who has a humanities background. Here is the thing: it is entirely possible—actually I would assert it is likely—that a person who picks up the Rutherford Medal for the humanities may well also be a scientist. In my experience which is not vast or anything people who have brains way bigger than mine will move quickly and easily across endless disciplines. They just get comfortable with themselves and comfortable with their ability to think. They do not see boundaries; they do not see limitations. 
I do not want to name-drop particularly but I went offshore with Dr Alan MacDiarmid in about 2000-and-something. We went to China Korea and Japan. His job was to open scientists’ doors and to get into the Chinese and Japanese academies of science or whatever they are called. My job was to open Government doors and we had 20 or 30 science managers with us. I think it was a successful trip. I hope it was; it was certainly well planned. Dr MacDiarmid was nearing the end of his life and he put in a huge amount of energy. He was an amazingly energetic man. But he was also in a way fiercely eccentric and he would just wander off almost into hyperspace. I could not keep up with him. He had certainly moved away from all of the chemistry that he received his Nobel Prize for many years ago. He was miles away from that; he was entirely philosophical about any issue that came to mind. So it seems within the bounds of possibility that such a person might receive the medal that the member in the chair spoke of and might in fact be moving freely across from one discipline into another and back again. 
Actually that point raises another matter which is the link between the sciences on the one hand and the humanities on the other. We have some classic examples in which we know that science and the humanities interact. The interaction with the humanities in the Antarctic is an example of that. Writers and poets as well as photographers give us an insight into that environment given that most of us will never be allowed to go there because scientists are allowed to go and non-scientists are not unless they are the occasional writer poet or photographer. That is an example. 
When I first because the Minister of Research Science and Technology the Ministry of Science Research and Technology ran something called the Smash Palace Fund in which it put scientists and artists together for the day or for 2 days or whatever it was. They had to do problem solving and they had to then explore how each other’s mind worked. Solving the problem was the given issue but in actually working out the difference between the way that the left brain and right brain worked the link between the two voids the two big lumps of science and arts was explored. 
Then of course—and I think other people have made mention of this—we now have some sciences that need the arts. Everybody’s really favourite science these days is neuroscience. It used not to be; 10 years ago the favourite was forensic science. But hey we have a new fashion: it is neuroscience. Neuroscience does not make good progress unless the arts are involved. It does not make a lot of sense unless we take a bit of behaviourism and fold it in and behaviour is of course very often an expression of culture. We would love for economics to be a science— 
David Shearer 
: Dismal science. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: —well some people call it a dismal science—but I do not think it has enough of a body of knowledge to be a science yet. Certainly there is enough in microeconomics but there is not in macroeconomics in my view. The behavioural economics developments that are occurring now as a result of neuroscience are pretty interesting. I have had the opportunity to study them in the last year or two. I understand that some members of the Committee may not want to do so but I have done that and I have enjoyed it and found it to be reasonably interesting. Those developments have come about because science and the humanities have been required to collide and the collision is reasonably productive. 
So I do not think that the Royal Society legislation that we have in front of us and the clause 8 contribution that means that someone who has a humanities background might be involved in picking up a prize is the limit of what we are about to get up to tonight. I think that we are offering a sort of legislative can-do to the idea of the collision between the arts and science. I do hope that especially in economics it makes progress because economics as a discipline needs to make some progress. 
If you will indulge me Mr Chairperson I have just finished reading this book by a guy called Lloyd Geering. The title is  
Christianity without God 
. 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: Heretic! 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I thought he was found not to be such. I could be wrong. I thought that the decision in 1966 was that he was not a heretic but if the member wants to correct my history he is welcome to do so. I was not about to get into that issue. I was about to draw this thread: the good professor says “We are encouraged by no less an authority than the Bible to believe that we have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all of the Earth.” Lloyd Geering asserts in other words that biblical theism encouraged us to exploit the Earth. He then goes on to say that in earlier times when we were not being monotheist when we were dealing with many Gods we were much more aware than we are now and I quote again “that their continued existence on Earth was dependent on the forces of nature. That is why they our ancestors personified and deified these forces and tried to placate them. That is why they believed their own destiny to be in the lap of the Gods the most important of whom was mother Earth.” 
All I am saying there is that the humanities collided with environmentalism and therefore with environmental science. Am I right? I do not want to make a big deal of that but that is what a big brain can do. I cannot do that but a big brain such as Lloyd Geering’s can. It seems to me to be not a bad example in a book that I finished reading a couple of days ago of where that collision between the humanities and science might lead us. 
There is another thing to be said and then I will stop saying anything. The other thing to say is that the opposite of that ignoring the role of humanities as a scientist or of science as a humanities student is just a form of chauvinism. It is not tolerable it is not useful it is something we should not put up with and it is the reason why we should I hope rapidly pass into law clause 8 which puts science technology and the humanities on an equal footing for the first time in our legislative history.