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Dr. Ahmad Tamimdari is professor of Persian language and literature at Allameh Tabatabaei University’s Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages. He has written a number of books and is a researcher on Persian language and literature. What follows is text of an interview with him on humanities and their current situation in Iran.
What makes humanities important?
Humanities discuss various aspects of human life, both from personal and social angles and are very important in that they engineer and guide other fields of science. That is, the more experimental sciences progress, the more they need an architecture which is provided to them by humanities. Therefore, in the absence of humanities nobody knows what would happen to such experimental sciences as chemistry and physics. For example, Renaissance started with advances in physics, chemistry and astronomy and continued until rationalism reached its peak in the 18th century. The result was unprecedented cases of international aggressions including two big world wars, colonialism of Africa and Asia, conquest of India by the Great Britain, occupation of Algiers by France and occupation of northern parts of Iran by the Russians. This was because physics and chemistry had greatly advanced in the absence of a parallel advance in human sciences. Therefore, the experimental sciences went astray. During 19th and 20th centuries, European scholars paid renewed attention to humanities because they had been already ignored. Sociology and psychology were major fields which are part of humanities as are sports, recreations, arts, religions, and philosophy. As a result of renewed attention to these fields of human knowledge, the world greatly progressed.
Unfortunately, the issue of traffic problems, urbanization, building towers and housing complexes, air pollution and global warming, thawing of polar ice caps and development of technology are solely aimed at acquiring more profits. Therefore, everyday problems of human beings have led to progress of experimental sciences, but this is not true about humanities. I mean that humanities are still in primitive stages as compared to experimental and natural sciences. Because when humans are not known, it is not clear what various fields of science are good for. As put by the late Dr. Shariati, experimental sciences are like a luxury cruiser sailing the seas which has all kind of equipment, but the only thing which is missing is in what direction it is moving and where it intends to go. Therefore, all sciences should move in a direction to increase human welfare and progress as well as racial and moral equality, but this has not happened in reality and many problems currently exist in various countries of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Also, colonialism in Africa and Asia is due to underdevelopment of humanities and development of experimental sciences. Therefore, humanities engineer and guide experimental sciences and if they are not developed, the result would be harmful to humanity.
You mean that in your opinion, humanities and their development takes precedence over experimental sciences?
Yes. That is correct. If humanities developed more than experimental sciences, nothing would happen. However, the opposite will harm ethics, philosophy, religion, arts and language. Many problems in the world are result of language difficulties. Political dialogue pertains to semiotics and eloquence of speech, which should be developed among people. When the knowledge of correct speaking or correct thinking has not developed, there would be many problems and confrontations. As for arts, the artists only refine human ethics and conduct. When somebody writes in a beautiful handwriting, that beauty does not stop at letters of alphabet, but imbues all aspects of the artist’s life. Or those who cause sound pollution by sounding alarms on their cars know nothing about the importance of peace and comfort. This should be taught to people. If education is not developed, people would get out of hand and would lead uncivilized lives because they would be far from factors which foster civilization and culture. When ethics, philosophy, religion, arts, and even sports are absent, experimental sciences work to the detriment of humanity.
How can we promote humanities in our country?
Promoting humanities needs effective planning and support and in addition to thinkers, that support should also come from government and educational organizations at primary, middle, and high school levels and the higher education institutes as well. I mean, since high school has been established in this country, talented students have been encouraged to study experimental and mathematical sciences and less talented ones have chosen humanities. As a result, we have gone a wrong way for about a century and that mistake still continues. This should be reversed; that is, students that are not talented for theoretical work should engage in practical fields and those with higher intelligent quotients should study humanities, social sciences, sociology and anthropology, education, politics, economics and psychology. The most intelligent students should choose these courses in order for us to have good planners who would design courses for experimental sciences. Experimental sciences are like a vehicle which needs to be driven and that driver is humanities. Manual workers construct a building, but the plan is given to them by an architect. In the absence of that plan, the building will not be made. Philosophy is concerned with designing human life and setting its goals. Therefore, there should be good support at the level of Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and Education Ministry which would cover primary, secondary and high school education and higher education. The goal should be to encourage bright students to choose human and social sciences. The government should provide them with scholarships so that, they won’t be encouraged to study in other fields which are more promising in terms of income.
How could we move toward production of indigenous humanities?
First, we must note that not everything which is indigenous is necessarily better. We don’t have to indigenize all aspects of culture. There is much aggressiveness in the cultures of Asian countries which has been indigenized in our country and this is not good. Therefore, we must first explain the exact meaning of indigenous. Production of humanities and social sciences is somehow international and is the same for all countries. Of course, national culture is very important. We must determine indexes of national culture and discard what is bad. For example, racist tendencies among people of cities, who hold other cities in contempt, are not good. We must first get rid of negative features of our local culture in order to attune the sciences which are imported from developed countries or are produced here to a positive national culture.
Many sayings in our national and indigenous culture are not good. In a national ceremony before the Iranian New Year, they jump over a fire and say “May your redness be mine and my yellow color be yours” or some say, “The less intelligent the neighbor’s child is better for me.” This means that they consider low intelligence of neighbor’s child as an opportunity for their own child. This is a wrong culture which should be corrected. Therefore, not everything in our culture is good. Of course, there are many positive points, but we must first get rid of negative ones. We must first reform the culture then see how we can adapt experimental sciences to our national and indigenous culture. For example, driving culture in our country is awful and if it is a national culture, then it is a cause of shame. We even don’t care for international law. To correct this situation, we must first teach our children how to drive or don’t throw garbage everywhere. Perhaps, this does not seem to be an important point, but it is in fact very important. We must know how garbage is produced and how it should be recycled and transported. This needs education.
After removing negative points, we must see how we can get along with modern technology. We need to study and research and we must attach special importance to education at all levels. We must teach our children not to lie.
Just look at road fatalities. Statistics are terrible. About 20,000-25,000 people are killed annually in accidents and this is a very high figure. This is a result of faulty road construction and city planning. Driving has not been learned properly and claims lives. Therefore, we need to think a lot about urbanization, housing and road construction and a humanities organization should be in charge of planning. All these problems are due to inattention to promoting humanities. Therefore, recognizing the indigenous culture is good, but we must first pay attention to positive points and get rid of negative aspects.
How we can link humanities to social issues and make them more applied?
We must first make the society understand social needs though educational institutes and the press. Many people do not know about their real needs even those who are apparently well-to-do. For example, 10 tons of iodinated salt should be consumed to keep Tehran citizens healthy, but even one ton is not used. This does not mean that our society does not need iodinated salt, but does not know that it needs the salt. Many people do not know about their needs and diseases. Many of them have problems with blood sugar and fat, but do not know and do not take therapeutic steps in time. Therefore, we need to know our needs.
We must first tell people that they are suffering from certain moral problems and should solve them first before trying to assess them in classrooms. Every classroom needs proper lighting, a whiteboard, video projector and other things. We must first provide them. However, there is a negative attitude in our culture which says anyone who cannot buy a shoe just looks at a person who has lost a foot. This is good because we would know the value of God’s blessings. However, God has told us that thanking for blessings will increase them and ignoring them will take them from us. We must also pay attention to countries that are progressing and try to turn our citizens into perfect human beings. We must develop our own progress indexes and bolster them. When the needs are known, the role of humanities would be to meet those needs.
Farabi International Award has been held for a few years to develop humanities and draw more attention to them. How do you think this Award can play a role in promoting humanities?
It can be very important. When we name a festival after humanities, it will be very effective in promoting this field of knowledge. It draws all good works on humanities from various universities to the event and this will be a good way to promote humanities. When top works receive their awards, people know about the importance of humanities. At present, many social sectors in our country do not recognize a doctorate in humanities and many of our people wonder if there is a doctorate course for humanities or literature. They do not believe it. This shows that our mass media have not done their job in introducing humanities to people.
The Institute for Social and Cultural Studies which is affiliated to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology can be very influential provided that it is not totally focused on academic work and also pays attention to propaganda aired on radio and television. Therefore, through Farabi International Award, we would be able to pay attention to works in humanities. The award may not be important, per se, but attention is important and high-ranking officials in our country should pay attention to this field. Therefore, we must provide more facilities for the Award every year. For example, not many works on literature were sent to the Award from other countries while a lot of such works are produced out of Iran. Throughout the Indian Subcontinent, in Arab and Muslim countries, as well as in Eastern and Western Europe comparative literature, Iran studies, and orientalism are taught at universities and relevant works are produced. However, due to insufficient information, not all of those works have been sent to this Award.
We must also set duties for our universities and get university teachers cooperate with Farabi International Award in assessing research works and consider them a privilege for their academic work. Farabi International Award has insufficient facilities at its disposal and since the secretariat has to use university teachers during two months of summer when universities are not active, more privileges should be considered for those who work with the Award and this needs meticulous planning.
How is the situation of research in your area of specialty (Persian language and literature) and how the situation can be improved?
In our field of Persian language and literature and even in linguistics and study of ancient languages and Arabic literature, which is related to our language, we need to train poets, writers, storywriters, journalists, reporters and even speakers. We must train people who can talk and write eloquently. Therefore, we need literary productions like short stories, novels, or poems. In another part, we need to do literary research on styles and linguistics. We need to do more work on methodology. Methodology is very important. We have few books on this subject and good books have not been written on methodology in arts and literature and development of interdisciplinary fields like psychology of literature and sociology of language.
At present, contacts among faculties and courses which deal with humanities and social sciences are weak. Such contacts are more powerful for social sciences, but they are weak when it comes to humanities, especially literature. In our faculty, for example, people who teach English literature, French, Turkish, Spanish, Persian, Arabic, or philosophy are not usually in contact with each other. We just say hello to each other when we see a colleague in the corridors and we don’t meet in any other place. Therefore, the breeding ground for interdisciplinary courses is absent.
Another point is that researchers in this field are not advanced. We must have on-the-job courses for civil servants. We must establish academic courses to introduce students to modern research methods and organize research workshops for them. One month in every year should be dedicated to this. Teachers and our colleagues should feel the need and ask university officials to organize workshops on research methodology. If this is not taught properly, no research could be done in a proper 7manner and our researchers will turn into copying other people’s works.
Research in our field is not serious and only the elite write few books which can be used. We need to know about research methodology through workshops and apply that methodology to humanities and social sciences.
In conclusion, I thank you and your journal for paying attention to this issue and I also thank the Institute for Social and Cultural Studies and its officials who have paid attention to this issue. I think humanities and social sciences will grow in a proper manner in our society in the coming years.
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Humanities Engineer and Guide other Sciences
