Introduction
at the World Cultural Council´s 20th Anniversary Award Ceremony

by Prof. Phillip V. Tobias
Vice-President, World Cultural Council

It is an honour to say a few words on the occasion of the 2003 World Award Ceremony. It gives me especial delight, as Vice President of the World Cultural Council, to be able to take part in the 20th Anniversary of the Council. It is of course more than 20 years since our far-sighted President, Dr. Estrada, first conceived of the benefits that may flow from such a body as the W.C.C. But, as an organization, this is a 20th birthday occasion.

To the President I offer warm thanks and felicitations on this vicennial anniversary. For two decades we have been led by you and your vision; we have been inspired by your ideals – which have led to the founding of, not only the W.C.C., but also the Global Foundation and the International University near Mexico City.

Nobody can achieve such remarkable goals on his own: you have been blessed, Mr. President, for all of this time by the unstinting and dedicated support of the Executive Director, Dr. Esteban Meszaros Wild, without whose input these things could not have been achieved. I mention also the Secretary-General, Ms Lillyan Hernández, whose quiet, loyal work behind the scenes the Council depends on to the uttermost degree. My congratulations are extended not only to these three exceptional people, but to those other personnel in the Council and the esteemed fellow-members of the W.C.C.

As far as I have been able to determine, this meeting in Helsinki, at 60º north latitude, is the furthest north that the W.C.C. has yet met. In 2000, when we met in Johannesburg at 26º south latitude, we could claim then that we had penetrated further south than ever before. Thus, by your invitation to meet in Finland, you have helped the Council towards the attainment of its ideal to become a truly global organization – in geography as well as in spirit!

You will have seen that, this year, the Council is making awards in Science and in Art, respectively the Einstein Medal and the Leonardo da Vinci Medal. On alternate years, the Council awards the Einstein Science Medal and the Vasconcelos Award for those engaged in the sensitive task of helping growing intellects to flower! Vasconcelos, after whom the third medal is named, was a distinguished Mexican educationalist.

The marriage between these fields is worth pondering over. When in the 1660s, the French and the English established their Académie des Sciences and The Royal Society respectively, their founding fathers included seekers after the truth, from both scientific and artistic (including literary) milieux. Then, in the 19th century, a schism arose between the sciences and the arts. On one hand, confronted by the successes of the scientists, the artists and litterateurs retreated somewhat, almost it seemed as a defence mechanism. They even came to despise the hard-headed, materialistic scientists. But it was not simply a failing on the part of the arts. There is little doubt that scientists were showing an overweening pride, bordering on the arrogant, as they claimed – or seemed to claim – that theirs was the only pathway to the truth.

By the middle of the twentieth century, in a famous essay called “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution”, C.P. Snow tried to characterise the two broad fields. It was inevitable that he drew a picture of their supposed irreconcilability! But after some severe opposition and further reflection, he wrote The Two Cultures Reconsidered: there he conceded that they were not nearly as far apart as he had earlier suggested.

Similarly, another twentieth century scholar made an attempt to define the major forms of human creative endeavour: he was Joseph Needham, a considerable figure as a scientist in biochemistry and embryology. He delineated such areas as science, mathematics, art, philosophy, history, religion or theology. The pictures he drew showed a series of disciplines and of their exponents that were so different from one another that an over-zealous classifier, with a tendency to be a “splitter”, might have been tempted to place them in different species! Then Needham recanted, just as Snow had done: his groups, he admitted, were far too subjective, unrealistic and essentialist. Incidentally, Needham’s own life is a fascinating marriage of disparate tendencies. He was, as I have said, a fine scientist; he was also a Marxist, a member of the High Church of England (“Anglo-Catholic”), a philosopher, linguist and historian! To explain and justify his standpoint, he wrote book after book of essays. One had the title, “The Great Amphibium”, to signify one who swims in the sciences and walks in the arts!

So these two English scholars, after having originally reinforced the schism between the arts and sciences, on further thought went on to show the points in common between them.

Previously I have pointed out that there is a place in science for both ethics and aesthetics – or, if you will, “ethos” and “aesthetikos”. Here in Finland, I see a hint of the personal symbiosis in Johan Julius (“Jean”) Sibelius. He is widely admired as Finland’s greatest composer: yet, I was exceptionally interested to read that, as a schoolboy, he had excelled in mathematics. It has been said that the mathematical brain and the musical brain are often powerfully developed in the same individual. The elegant precision of musical notation and the rigorous exactitude of mathematics seem to have much in common. It is perhaps not surprising to find those parts of the human brain that subserve mathematical skill and musicality often to be strongly developed in the same individual.

If you will not take offence, let me find another example across the Gulf of Finland in St. Petersburg. I refer to Alexander Borodin. He grew up with his twin loves of music and science, notably chemistry. He was well known as a college teacher and is credited with the setting up of the first medical school for women students in St. Petersburg. But the reputation he gained as a composer was even greater. In his busy academic life, he struggled to find time for his composing. He complained: “In the winter I can compose only when I am sick. When I am tied down to the house…my head splitting, my eyes burning, and I have to blow my nose all the time – then I give myself up to composing. So, my friends wish me not good health. Say instead: I hope you are ill!”

These case histories, from north and south of the Gulf of Finland, may be foreshadowed by Shakespeare’s words:

“All the world’s a stage,
And one man in his time plays many parts.”

“One man in his time plays many parts”: that connotes another kind of truth and another sort of synthesis.

Sibelius: is he perchance a model for us and for tomorrow’s man? For surely, if mankind’s intellect is to survive in the future, humanity needs a certain kind of synthesis. In that sense Sibelius has shown us the way. That way lies wisdom. That way lies survival.

It has been an honour to base some of this short address upon Finland’s own great composer, and a world composer withal. Thank you, Jean Sibelius, for giving us not only Finlandia, Valse Triste, The Swan of Tuonela and the Second Symphony, and for making your mark as, what has been described as, “the most monumental figure in twentieth century symphonic music”. Thank you also for giving me part of my theme on this 20th birthday occasion.

Thank you,
Phillip V. Tobias

Johannesburg
8th November 2003