Why C&C?

COMING-OF-AGE, Philosophy

"Why C&C" is a column introducing the theme and purpose of Cognition & Creativity in light of the most current edition. It is written by our Editor-in-Chief, Rachel Jeong.

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In ninth grade rhetoric class, I remember Mr. O’Hara asking us the question: 

“Which one is most important: ethos, pathos, or logos?” 

For the longest time, the STEM-rebuking portion in me thought it obviously was pathos. All humans are influenced by bias: easily swayed by emotion and personal bias (ethos). 

Yet, I have come to realize the power of the antibody to bias: facts, hardcore numbers, statistics, data. I underestimated the power in knowing scientifically how our brains work and why we do the things we do and how we move as a society and as humans each breathing millisecond. 

You can’t have completely effective pathos without logos, at least on a normal person. You can’t have the humanities without understanding cognition (psychology), and you can’t have cognition without its effects, as seen in the humanities.

According to Harvard grad and college advisor Cathleen McCaffery, the former president of Brown University describes the humanities as crucial today:

“There is nothing more important right now than the humanities, as the humanities help us most understand who we are, where we come from, and imagine where we might be going.”

I couldn’t agree more. As the humanities move to our future’s forefront, it is important to balance it with its connection to the STEM studies. And ultimately, I firmly believe interdisciplinary thought and work will end up being the innovative solutions our rapidly advancing civilization needs today. After all, interconnectedness seems the law of nature. At Word for Thought, it is our mission to provide highschoolers with insight on often-overlooked interdisciplinary work, particularly in the cognitive science realm: the culmination of psychology, neurology, philosophy, sociology, computer science, and linguistics. We believe knowledge of the self, and others’ basic human tendencies is the foundation for maximizing life potential. By gaining an understanding of the human mind, learning how they relate and branch out to other behaviors and phenomena, and through discovering one’s own potential, highschoolers with Word for Thought are able to process the sheer magnitude of complexity and interconnectedness of the world through art.

So as we explore this fall-summer edition, I hope we can bring the same lens to approaching our quest to process and perceive the human experience. Our theme this month, spectrum, is the very synthesis of different cog sci concentrations and a myriad of stories to tell the same story. The story that–no matter how many various contributing factors meld our perception of the human experience, no matter how many different things we feel at once–we are eventually all part of the same existence. That it is all part of life’s mystery. Because the answer seems to be at the crossroads where all the layers meet. 

So the answer, Mr. O’Hara, is the intersection of all of them.