Only connect

Abstract

Synthesize and conclude: this is the brief which I was given in relation to the foregoing proceedings. A fascinating, though daunting, task. To synthesize inevitably involves a degree of subjectivity and, as Flaubert sagely adumbrated, to conclude is folly. On the supposition that all of our hypotheses are working hypotheses, I shall make the following observations, in the hope that they may attract others and that the on?going debate may be enhanced and carried forward. We live in a world which has the illusion of having fulfilled the dream of the Enlightenment. The wonders of technology have opened amazingly new horizons, but our `brave, new world? is neither as `brave? nor as `new? as it is often presented. `Interdisciplinarity? has become a buzz?word for administrators as well as for academic planners, eager to economize by letting an entire subject?area drop off the table without being noticed, blithely ignoring the fact that countless others before us were polymaths and that the universal learning of the Renaissance man has for centuries been the bedrock of Western civilization. Nor is this new technological world all that `brave?, containing, as we shall see, various threats to democracy.