The Art and Humanities play a complementary role to that of Science and Technology by addressing the question of SOCIAL INSERTION without which raw knowledge provided by the pure science to their products and to society at large cannot be meaningfully harnessed for development. It is the Art and the Humanities that draw attention to the skills that we all need to be able to live in society without creating tension with our neighbours by infringing constantly on the values they hold to be sacrosanct.
The interplay of Science and Technology and Art and Humanities at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology should be guided by the words of the author John Gardner who stated, “The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because it is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good pipes nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” The same can be said of the admonition of Noam Chomski who stated that, ‘Science talks about very simple things and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become complex, science cannot deal with them… But it is a complicated matter: Science studies what is at the edge of understanding, and what is at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are too complicated”
The world therefore needs roads and bridges and there is also the need to understand the world and its many complex problems. There must be cooperation of all disciplines instead of one area of knowledge puffing itself up.
Even though the fear of the threat of the Arts and Humanities to Science and Technology in KNUST could be real and genuine, it would not be justifiable to question the relevance of the former in our quest to develop as a nation. What all and sundry have to realise and acknowledge is that a perfect blend of the two would enable KNUST and Ghana to get a small piece of a big pie rather than the biggest of a small pie in our quest to lounge forward in development.