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Just over a century ago,
one of the world’s leading mathematicians posed this question to a number of
his colleagues:
important unsolved questions in mathematics?
Hilbert then ranked in what he believed to be their order of importance –
produced a list of 23 mathematical problems that shaped mathematics for 100
years.
challenge to a diverse group of social scientists he had spent two years
gathering:
great unanswered questions in the social sciences?
ranked the final problems himself, but Kosslyn, the John Lindsley Professor of
Psychology in Memory of William James, is using technology to revolutionize,
and democratize, the process. Selecting the important issues in the field isn’t
just his job – it’s everyone’s.
And while Hilbert used a
conference to present his list of problems, Kosslyn convened last Saturday’s
Hard Problems in Social Science Symposium in Harvard’s Northwest Science
Building to provide a setting in which his invited colleagues could suggest
what are being termed the “hard problems” in the social sciences.
concluding summit, “this is actually a kick-off event,” Kosslyn explained in an
interview. “What we’re trying to do is collect as many problems as we can and
then have people vote on them in terms of two dimensions: that is, what’s most
difficult and what’s most important, which may not be the same.
the University’s Division of Social Science will collect online submissions at Hard
Problems web site and at a Hard Problems Facebook page. Anyone, anywhere, regardless of their field of
expertise, is encouraged to submit questions for consideration until May 31.
were the brainchild of Harvard College graduate Nick Nash ’00, a joint
chemistry and physics concentrator who has been thinking for some time about
what he perceives as the need to improve awareness and understanding of the
social sciences. “These are the sciences of our shared humanity,” he told a
reporter. “But these sciences are much more in their infancy relative to
physics or chemistry.”
sciences are ultimately about people, we felt very strong that this be a
democratic process and global process,” said Nash, who proposed the idea of
creating a “Hilbert’s Questions” list for the social sciences and the
conference, to Kosslyn. “We really want people around the world to view these
videos, read the transcripts, and then vote on what they think is important,” said
Nash, a member of the Indira Foundation, the charitable foundation that
sponsored the symposium,. “and even add more questions.”
Saturday’s symposium,
broadcast live via the Internet, featured 12 speakers, including, among others, experts in
philosophy, medicine, history, political science, psychology, and economics
from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the
University of California, San Diego, Oxford University, New York University,
and Harvard. In addition, there were about 100 attendees of diverse backgrounds,
ranging from Harvard undergrads to Ridley Pledger, the grandfather of a member
of Harvard’s women’s softball team.
Pledger, who was visiting
from Friendswood, Texas, said he decided to attend the symposium because he
wants to learn more about economic issues. Pledger said that although he was
trained as a chemical engineer, he doesn’t feel out of place among social
scientists because “money is basic to everybody. It doesn’t matter how you earn
it. It’s what happens to it, or where is the money going to come from, that’s
important.”
speakers during their allotted 15-minute presentations ranged from why
gender differences in economic outcomes persist, posited by Claudia Goldin,
Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard and director of the Development of
the American Economy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, to
how to get people to make positive changes in their health behaviors, asked by
Emily Oster, assistant professor of economics at the Booth School of Business
at the University of Chicago, to how to close the achievement gap, which Roland
G. Fryer called the new problem of the 21st century. “The problem of the 21st
century is no longer a problem of the color line, the problem of the 21st
century is how do we get eighth-graders to achieve at the same level, across
the country, regardless of their race?” said Fryer, Robert M. Beren Professor
of Economics at Harvard, director of Harvard’s Educational Innovation
Laboratory, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic
Research.
professor at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke about nation
building and what creates effective and resilient institutions. She presented
questions as well as possible solutions. “One of the crises in contemporary
American life is a kind of massive disinvestment from our basic institutions,
especially our political institutions,” Swidler said during her presentation.
“You can think of this in terms of particular political interests, and you can
think of it in terms of the larger problem of whether the willingness to have
effective, powerful institutions that can address collective problems exists at
all.”
Swidler suggested that
status and a strong cultural knowledge of a particular institution might
contribute to the institution’s strength. But like the other speakers, Swindler
focused more on concisely framing her “hard problem.” “It’s the questions, not
the answers, I have right now that matter,” she said.
At the completion of the
presentations, attendees were given a chance to question the speakers. “Is
it, in a sense, a false question to talk about hard questions in the soft
sciences?” asked audience member Hans Bakker, professor of sociology and
anthropology at the University of Guelph, in Ontario.
“I don’t think that these
are the soft sciences. If they’re so soft then why don’t we have the answers?” James
Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California,
San Diego, responded.
“It’s interesting because
that question is about language really,” Fowler continued. “It would be easier
if we did speak the same language, but I think the problems that we face now
are not going to be within [disciplines]. … They’re going to be between
disciplinary problems. This is part of the problem that
we’re all expressing, that we’re going to have to reach out and figure out
common signs that we can use to talk to one another,” Fowler concluded.
During one of the coffee
breaks, presenter Gary King, Harvard’s Albert J. Weatherhead III University
Professor based in the Department of Government, and director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social
Science, reflected on the symposium’s comparison with the Hilbert questions. “A
lot of the mathematical [Hilbert] problems, it was later proven, can never be
answered. So surely some of these problems cannot be answered, but it’s not
really different,” King said.
sciences have become progressively “harder” over the years, King said,
especially in their use of data collection and analysis. The computer
revolution – including the development of online social networking – will
further those developments, he said. He went on to say that there is a need to
develop much more infrastructure in the social sciences, allowing researchers
to share information as they would in a wet lab setting.
presenters and audience are any indication, one of the hard problems will
inevitably be creating definitions within social science studies, and even
defining the field itself. “One of the most interesting parts of this
conference was the very first words that the moderator (Kosslyn) said. He said,
‘What is social science? What is a social science problem? What is a
solution?’” said Harvard Class of 1956 economics alumnae Ruth Bruening. “I
think those are the real questions,” she said.
day up best in his response to one of the final questions asked: What do the
questions about hard problems suggest about the answers? Kosslyn judged that
depending on what question you ask, different things count as answers. “So
getting the questions straight, in this case the problems, is an absolutely
necessary first step to forward a position to even start thinking about the
solutions,” Kosslyn said.
questions are vital. “Sometimes just listing the big problems is enough to
inspire somebody to come up with a good solution, or a way around something, or
a way to redefine the question so that you can get past it,” King said. He reasoned
that the answers to these particular problems would undoubtedly affect everyday
people.
Jennifer Shepherd, the special initiatives program manager in the Division of Social Sciences, looked into a cardboard box
containing the “hard problems” submissions from the day. Nash
talked to the final attendees and speakers heading out. He loosened a red tie
with multiple Harvard crests embroidered on it, looking tired, but pleased.
phenomenal group, and the attendees were thoughtful and willing to take a
stand, Nash said, adding that he’s ready for the voting to begin. He’s also ready
looking forward to seeing what impact the symposium will have on the field.
questions is collected from across the globe, the conference presenters will
be charged with selecting and ranking the most important issues in social
sciences. Each panelist was selected by Kosslyn for his or her expertise and to
represent different fields, perspectives, and backgrounds.
Hilbert felt that unsolved
questions were “the hallmark of a discipline with vitality,” Nash said. “This
exercise today is an exercise in the vitality of social sciences. Knowing what
the mountains are encourages climbers,” he added. “There’s nothing more
inspiring for a first-year grad student than knowing that no one’s climbed
Everest.”
