Why science needs the arts | Radio NZ programme with Tim Jackson

We need the arts, more plays and works of fiction to help us envision the future, and bring to mind differing views and opposing sides of an argument.
July 2023

From the Radio NZ website:

More is not always better, says polymath playwright, scientist and philosopher Professor Tim Jackson.

While we need less growth to put less demand on the planet’s resources and slow down climate change, CUSP director Tim Jackson argues that we need more art, more plays and works of fiction to bring both sides of that argument to life.

“You have to burst out of the rational cage and you have to begin to think what’s possible, what could it be like, what would we like it to be like, what do we want it to be like. I think art is very good at that. It’s a place where we can engage in a vision for the future, we can think about a different kind of world and we can think about it outside the confines of all the rational thinking that we’re trained into using to address these problems. We can think in a different way.”

In New Zealand as a guest of the British Council, he told Jesse Mulligan that embracing both sides of his brain had enabled him to think more creatively about problems facing the world.

The full interview is available via the Radio NZ website.

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