The Institute For Cultural Research

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January 1998 Seminar

Human Solutions
Problem solving and society
January 10 and 11, 1998
The Royal Society of Medicine
1, Wimpole Street, London W1M 8AE

Almost every branch of human life may be regarded as a search for solutions. From earliest history and across every culture, human beings have attempted to tackle problems and this has resulted in a dazzling array of ideas, institutions and approaches.

Yet the underlying mechanisms of this endeavour often go unnoticed. How do we approach problems? Why do we sometimes find solutions easily - and sometimes overlook the obvious for generations? What invisible factors - cultural, psychological, historical - shape our methods?

The Institute for Cultural Research has gathered together for this seminar a group of experts from a wide variety of fields to examine the human capacity to seek and find solutions to problems.

Steven Mithen looks at the evolution of mankind's problem-solving ability and shows how it is linked to the very survival of our species.Doris Lessing tells how myths and stories have been used from the most ancient times to aproach problems which defied - and continue to defy - 'logical' solutions.

Robert Ornstein picks up the theme, describing how modern psychologists are only just beginning to recognise the value of types of thought often current among 'primitive' people, but neglected in the West in favour of 'practical' values. Peter Wade examines the distorting lens of cultural identity through which anthropologists and their subjects have attempted to solve problems.

The biologists, Professors Lewis Wolpert and Brian Goodwin, turn their microscopes on the scientific tradition itself and debate whether an approach once viewed as the only permissible solution may - in the light of new scientific discoveries - once again be becoming a problem.

The physicist and inventor, Kevin Byron, discusses in practical terms how and why solutions and problems don't always go hand in hand, while Professor Heinz Wolff looks at the creative process - and discusses ways to stimulate it.

This richness of human thought is our common heritage. Understanding it may offer new insights in formulating the problems and solutions of the future.

PROGRAMME
Saturday, January 10th
Chairman: David Wade

9.45-10.00 am Chairman's introduction

10.00-11.00 am Problems, Myths and Stories
Doris Lessing

11.00-11.30 am Coffee/tea

11.30-12.30 pm Problem-Solving in the Stone Age: Archaeological Perspectives on the Evolution of Human Culture
Steven Mithen

12.30-1.50 pm Lunch

1.50-2.50 pm Cultural Identity - Solution or Problem?
Peter Wade

2.50-3.20 pm Tea/coffee

3.20-5.20 pm Science and our understanding of the world:
A debate to be chaired by Henri Bortoft

In Praise of Reductionism
Lewis Wolpert

Beyond Analysis: the Science of Complex Wholes
Brian Goodwin

Sunday, January 11th