> "Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?"
I'm not convinced that either of these is really important for a general education. I think educators fixate on romantic ideals of what is important to know while ignoring the subject matter that is relevant to ordinary life.
Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.
I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia.
I see the argument made by Snow as simply lamenting that there is under-emphasis on one particular set of romanticized unnecessary knowledge and over-emphasis on a different set. Most of physics, chemistry, etc, are neither directly relevant to your typical person nor readily digestible as being illustrative of more general principles that are relevant. A core educational curriculum would be better served teaching more fundamental concepts directly: scientific method, statistical methods, data analysis, etc.
What you propose is to simply replace the dichotomy science/humanities with another, that of applied/theoretical, which necessarily moves the division and fault lines. That way, in addition to the humanities, a number of theoretical subjects also fall off the cliff, namely theoretical physics, non-applied parts of mathematics, logic etc. This, in fact, does not transcend the dichotomy, it makes it worse by imposing additional limitations and essentially directly applying useful/useless as a criterion.
Essentially your complaint boils down to why are educational institutions providing education instead of the training their students actually need. Part of the problem is most people do need training more than education, but for social class reasons "every child must attend college to obtain an education" and so on.
We have an excellent vo-tech system for training, its just only for lower classes. Like $100K/yr plumbers. The middle upper classes are supposed to get a degree in french lit before becoming life long minimum wage coffee baristas.
This creates a certain level of social turmoil and confusion.
There is a secondary issue in that if you're young enough, modern K12 only teaches to a test, providing no education or training, merely memorized trivia as an elaborate daycare operation, as you describe. You could have gotten an education about the native american experience, its an interesting topic... pity all you got was trivia to answer multiple choice questions on a test.
> Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.
I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia.
The point is to learn how to 'learn'. Yes, memorizing endless facts can seem pointless, but the entire point of the classics is to gain a greater understanding of humanity in general, and to learn understanding.
The second law of thermodynamics is not that kind of trivia. It's probably the most fundamental law in science, the one that lets you derive almost any phenomenon if you think about it hard enough (e.g. there's a derivation of the law of gravity from it).
>> Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.
I've nearly had the same experience as you but my perception of it was very different. I attended one of the top 100 high-schools in the US and one of the top non-magnet public schools in my state. My curriculum was comprehensive, but yes -- prima facie, very little of it was seemed applicable (other than intro to business -- which helped me deal with personal finances, maths -- which helped me write "demo" programs, and of course CS classes).
On the other hand, I enjoyed"knowledge for the sake of knowledge" tremendously (e.g., History courses) but most importantly -- I felt that I learned a great deal between the lines in those classes. I wrote a great deal of persuasive essays in humanities courses, I begin to see American politics beyond simple slogans, and I read books that taught me a great deal about the human condition that I may have missed out in my suburb (All Quiet On The Western Front comes to mind) and even when they didn't -- they taught me to be a better conservationist at lunch time.
I'll note, however, that high school could have done a great deal more. I came to the US in the middle of 7th grade from former USSR and stepping into a US middle-school felt like a horrible practical joke: instead of chemistry and physics, for examples, there was one class called "science", and the quadratic formula would not be covered for another year.
I suspect, however, we've a different personality -- many of my classmates echo your views on this matter, equally as many echo yours. There was a similar split in college: equally as many greatly enjoyed general education/core requirements, others saw it as a hindrance to taking my engineering courses. On a micro-level it happened within the discipline as well and to an extent I was guilty of this: I wanted to crank out of code and not do integration by parts by hand, so I went through the "motions" rather than learn this by heart, which I came to regret years later when I tried to grok the kernel trick in machine learning.
I am, however, inclined to agree with you: we should teach the fundamental concepts directly, but not at the exclusion of general knowledge. Some students are motivated by practical applications, others more so by knowledge itself -- and this may varies by discipline. Given a college-level education is effectively necessity (even if a paper saying "B.S. in CS" is not always a hard requirement, the requisite proficiency is still expected) students who are not as intrinsically motivated to learn the material use self-discipline to compensate. This is not good news, as it reinforces the popular perception of education as "boring" by necessity and attractive only to people who like being bored.
.. To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.
It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reputed - I do not know if it is true - that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry". And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention.
All the intellectual arguments that you can make will not communicate to deaf ears what the experience of music really is. In the same way all the intellectual arguments in the world will not convey an understanding of nature to those of "the other culture". Philosophers may try to teach you by telling you qualitatively about nature. I am trying to describe her. But it is not getting across because it is impossible. Perhaps it is because their horizons are limited in the way that some people are able to imagine that the center of the universe is man...
"The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion"
Key point: for decades in the UK, school education forked at age 16 -- the point at which you specialized. Prior to age 16 you'd be studying for exams in 6-10 subjects: originally 'O' (ordinary) levels, then GCSEs. (School leaving age was 16.) If you wanted to continue and eventually go to university, you then went on to study for 2 years for 'A' (advanced) level exams -- roughly equivalent to year 1 or 2 at a US university. (British taught university degrees were typically 3 year courses.) However, this was intensive enough that typically you'd only take 3 or 4 'A' level subjects. This forced early specialization -- dropping either all science or all arts subjects.
(This system ran from the late 1940s through the 1990s, subject to fine-tuning. So, for example, in 1981-83 I was taking four 'A' level subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and 'general studies' (a vague attempt to shoe-horn the entirety of the liberal arts field into one quarter of the student's time).)
Such was the intensity of debate that it might be supposed that these were age-old themes: but in fact, the idea of separating academic disciplines into groups known as science and humanities was no older than the 19th century. The term "scientist" was only coined in 1833, and it was not until 1882 that another Rede Lecturer, Matthew Arnold, discussed – under the title of "Literature and Science" – whether or not a classical education was still relevant in an age of great scientific and technical advance.
----------------
There are also many themes in this article that are specific to Britain in the 1950s:
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Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry.
Arnold was responding – with infinitely more courtesy than Leavis – to an earlier lecture by T H Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his rumbustious defence of evolution, who argued that science was as valid an intellectual training as the classics.
It was not a popular opinion. As late as my own childhood in the Sixties, the bright boys were expected to read classics at Oxford, and the less bright steered towards the labs.
----------------
I think 2 things are worth remembering about any such debate:
1.) as a civilization becomes more advanced, the people in it tend to become more specialized. If you grew up in 1700, it was perhaps possible to read all of the classics, in literature (Homer) and medicine (Galen) and philosophy (Aristotle) and physics (Aristotle) and math (Euclid). But nowadays it is impossible to study every branch of knowledge to any meaningful depth.
2.) for all of the obvious disadvantages that come with specialization, there are also many advantages (indeed, that is why specialization exists). A modern potter has a fantastic array of choices regarding materials, which did not exist even 50 years ago. A historian today must pick a narrow speciality, as there are now many millions of documents to look through to be considered an expert -- indeed, I have a friend who has specialized in the American Civil War, and he once said "If you have only read 1,000 books about the American Civil War, then you are just an amateur." And in the old days the village blacksmith might have known how to make both a hoe and a horse hoof shoe but a modern mechanic needs to specialize regarding devices (cars? domestic machines? textile plants? telecommunications?) but then also pick a sub-specialty (if a car mechanic, then foreign or domestic? Perhaps a few particular brands).
There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.
Specialization is something I often wonder about. Consider the following analogy: the sum of human knowledge is represented by a giant circle (though not necessarily perfectly circular in shape). Anything inside the circle is that which is known; anything outside is unknown. You're born in the center, and as you learn, the set of what you know extends towards the edge. As you mentioned, at some point in time, you could know all of the circle; now you can only know some subset of it. If you're a scientist or whatnot, you actively move the edge outward.
My question is, will we ever reach a point where it takes so long to move from the center to the edge that we'll eventually stop making progress? In mathematics, it already takes considerable time to reach the knowledge boundary (30 years or so?) Will we reach a point where it takes greater than a lifetime? Or, is it possible to jump to the edge by skipping some foundational knowledge (could you do higher math without knowing, say, calculus, for example?) What are the risks of doing so? And ultimately, how does a complex society hang together when each person has (at most) knowledge of a tiny subset of available knowledge?
> There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.
There is. But when you get too entrenched in a single line of thought, then you lose the ability to solve problems that don't fit neatly into that single line of thought.
Witness all the science geeks who only know how to build or calculate things (but may not have a broader concept of the why or what of what they're doing - maybe this is why everyone has a start-up looking for a problem), and all the humanities or business people who can't figure out basic technology or other problems.
If science people had a better understanding of the humanities, philosophy, etc..., and humanities people learned to solve problems, I do think society would benefit.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't specialize, only that we should explore outside of our comfort zone and world view...
There is an economic benefit to a great many pursuits, but it is generally controlled by short-term benefits, at the maximum within the lifetime of a single human being, which is incredibly short-term still on a geologic time scale.
The benefits of generalization and broad understanding outlive a single person, a single society, or a single period of time. People who are well educated in the liberal arts, which includes both sciences and the humanities, will make more integrated decisions and more sane ones for the long term. We need those people; in my opinion we all need to be those people, even if we spend most of our time specializing. It's a subtle but critical difference.
I am utterly convinced of this: blind specialization will merely move humanity in an unknown direction which is the result of a self-reinforcing process of unknown origin or termination. Generalists will move humanity forward. It is the difference between a cancer and a baby: unmoderated growth versus life itself.
Do we want to go where economic gain takes us, effectively puppets of a multidimensional system beyond our full understanding or control, or do we want to move humanity forward? That is the question.
This is great, you summed up every idea I had while reading this in a way that was far more articulate than I could have.
I only have one thing to add: If there is an economic and even, possibly, a societal benefit to specialization, and The Two Cultures idea complains about the rift between the humanities and the sciences, then has someone properly updated the material to show how much more specialized society is becoming?
The Wiki article talks about a possible third culture, but it seems to me you could become fairly deeply specialized in business/economics without ever needing a classical humanities education or a classical math/science education.
Your 1.) is missing a point that has been passed over throughout most of this thread - knowledge does not build up over time like so much detritus. New discoveries replace old, inaccurate ones. It is conceivable that with sufficient optimization of scientific models, one could have a superior understanding of the world using less total data than older models without even taking into account the excising of blatantly verbose and inaccurate beliefs.
> There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.
It's possible to be mindful of the economic benefit and still lament what specialization does to the human spirit. Max Weber's Science as a Vocation might stand as a case in point.
I know someone who seems lazy and can't be bothered with important details that to me seem relevant to his job, but maybe he's a specialist in an area I can't possibly understand. How can you even tell if someone is specializing or just pretending to specialize?
Mentioned in this article is "The Third Culture" by John Brockman of Edge.org. That book is worth a read, even nearing 20 years in publication. It introduces the ideas of several fascinating scientists (among them Dan Dennett and Lynn Margulis) whose work manages to transcend the stated "two cultures," bringing science to bear on what were traditionally seen as "humanist" problems and vice-versa. These are thinkers who've taken responsibility for bringing their ideas directly to the public, rather than waiting for writers, journalists and, ahem, "insight pornographers" (if you follow HN) to do it for them. I first read it after obtaining my English degree, and it felt like I'd been shot with a sudden antidote to a haze of intellectual nonsense. I wonder how well it contrasts against the current trend in glossy pop science, which I suspect may be the flip-side of the same coin.
The idea of a (re-)integration of the two sides of Snow's dichotomy (alongside a critique of the concept of "The Two Cultures") can be found in Herbert Marcuse's essays[1]. There, Marcuse talks about the sciences' funding by the military-industrial complex and the position of the humanities as a potentially regulating (e.g. ethical) moderator to curb an overbroad influence on the sciences by forces outside the disciplines (or system).
[1]: Herbert Marcuse: Bemerkungen zu einer Neubestimmung der Kultur (Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture), in: Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1965.
I think most of our problems come from the misuse and misunderstanding of two words: debate and dialectic. Western culture DEBATES every effing thing so much so that presidential candidates have a series of publicized DEBATES where they each defend their plan to lead a nation.
If we were instead taught to have DIALECTICS and frankly try and remove the word DEBATE from our dialogues, we could start to solve big problems as the author suggests. However everyone is darn convinced their knowledge is superior.
Of course the irony is that it appears scientists are (in general) more dogmatic then any other group.
Well, thankfully that problem will soon be solved in England! The government has enacted a programme that should soon bear fruit, thanks to the introduction of "impact" and weighing publications in a new, innovative, carefully considered and consensual way. Soon, it will be the country of one culture (since only biased pundits would dare to say: the country of no culture), finally correcting the horrible mistakes of the past!
There is also a follow-up "The Two Cultures of Mathematics" by Timothy Gowers. I found it a crystal clear explanation of the differences between the schools of "problem solving" and "theory building" - and particularly of what really motivates "combinatorics".
Personally I think something is either rational and evidence based (or at least attempting to be) or it is not.
I would posit that this divide seems apparent simply because scientists and humanities people are for some reason grouped together in the same institutions. Imagine if half of CERNS facility was given over to say, cheesemaking, I'm sure a similar dichotomy would be commented upon.
"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."
Why do you think it was posted here, without comment, just as a simple wikipedia link? The whole point is that it is widely understood as the quintessential idea of the sciences finally overcoming the constraints enforced upon them by the obsolete humanities. The whole emphasis on the modern and technological development paints exactly that picture, tying the science/humanities dichotomy firmly into a progress narrative which necessarily means that the modern (sciences) will have to overcome (and thus leave behind) the old, i.e. the humanities.
"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."
In my life a see a large assymetry between the cultures. A fiar number of scientists/engineers I know are good in the arts, theater, music etc. I dont se as many humanities types as familar with science. I observed this MIT, Harvar,and Stanford where I have degrees and took courses.
This seems to ignore a rather important the a rather important third culture: the free-market capitalist. Why was this not mentioned? It is certainly an important one insofar as western culture is concerned, and has risen to become far more important and influential than the other two.
I don't think capitalists are a separate category in and of themselves - they invariably belong in one camp or the other.
Elon Musk is a scientist. Andy Warhol is an artist. Both are known for savvy and shrewd capitalistic exploitation of their talents.
A capitalist who is neither scientist nor artist is not much of a capitalist at all, for he/she has nothing upon which to capitalize. All business, at the end of the day, is the exploitation of an art or a science to fulfill a need.
Snow's Two Cultures was something I loudly cheered
when I first read about its points and for years
afterward.
But now the book and the OP strike me as not well
considered.
Net, the 'humanities' have a role much more
important than is commonly or easily described. It
took me a while to understand this point.
Sure, as an insecure a young nerd facing the world,
both nature and society, I wanted 'control' of my
life, in particular, 'security', and for those
wanted the power of 'truth' and didn't want to
settle for anything less solid than, say, plane
geometry or, in a pinch, mathematical physics. Of
course then only some of this could I articulate.
So, something like 'The Song of Hiawatha' with "By
the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining
Big-Sea-Water ..." seemed to me as mostly nonsense
and gibberish and at best maybe something lightly
entertaining but nothing like the 'truth' for the
power I was seeking. And maybe I was correct, but
I'm reluctant to return to that poem to be more
sure!
Eventually I concluded that (1) there is a lot about
the world, where I was trying to get control and
security, that was too complicated and subtle for
mathematics and/or mathematical physics to do me any
good and (2) that part of the world was so important
to my life that, even though I didn't have solid
tools to address it, I still had to handle it in
some sense.
Maybe 'The Song of Hiawatha' wouldn't help me
handle those complexities, but eventually I
discovered that some parts of the humanities could
to at least a useful extent.
Generally my central criticism of the humanities was
that, in strong contrast with mathematics and
mathematical physics, and, really, most of
engineering, technology, medical science, medicine,
and even law, the humanities (1) did not make clear
just what they were claiming was true and (2) for
any claims nearly never provided convincing
evidence. While these remain valid criticisms,
amazingly in places the humanities can be important
nevertheless.
Still, I was often torqued at the humanities: E.g.,
in, say, the English departments, a common claim was
that English literature had a lot of good knowledge
of people and would help readers understand people.
I concluded, and still do, that maybe a little.
Once I discovered the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving,
awash in real practical expertise, well considered
and formulated, about people, I concluded that Fromm
was a good example of progress on information for
understanding people. For more on love
specifically, actually some of the relevant articles
on Wikipedia seem quite good -- at least in places
they have explained some of what I figured out more
or less independently, at enormous cost, and added a
lot more.
So, it is possible to get some understanding of
people, but for this purpose I would mostly set
aside English literature as too thin and/or even
misleading.
For understanding people, I'd say that the most
important contribution of English literature to
understanding people is that some people like English
literature.
The crack in my scorn that got me started with the
humanities classical music. A brilliant person once
said, "Music doesn't mean anything.". Well, maybe,
maybe not, but it still can be useful for someone
wanting to understand people or even themselves,
amazingly.
Classical music was able to 'reach' me in part
because there were usually few or no words to take
literally and, thus, argue with.
Well, it turns out that classical music has
something of a language, especially about human
emotions. If want to understand people, the biggest
chapter is human emotions.
Classical music is an example of a common definition
of art as in the communications, interpretation
of human experience, emotion. Well, it can be easy
enough to find parts of classical music that are
quite effective meeting this definition of art. So,
here there is some progress in understanding humans.
One description of much of the media is vicarious,
escapist, fantasy, emotional experience
entertainment which sounds next to worthless for
the audience and, maybe, is, but we can reduce this
description to vicarious emotional experience and,
then, learn about people by feeling their emotions
-- and art has a lot of this and, thus, can help a
person understand people.
For some value for the audience, good art is
supposed to be universal and, then, often a person
in the audience can see where the art is describing
things much as in their life from which that person
can conclude, "I'm not the only one who has
encountered such a thing. That thing is not unique
to me. Whatever I did to make that thing happen,
others did the same, and maybe some of the main
causes are not really from me.".
E.g., a few weeks ago I did a search for a girl I
knew and fell in love with in high school. Yup, the
Internet showed me a scan of a high school annual
with her picture as a Homecoming Queen candidate.
To me she was always the prettiest human female I
ever saw in person or otherwise. Then many of those
days with her, decades ago, came back to me as if
they were last week. She was my first love and,
apparently, burned into my brain -- I can no more
forget her than I can forget my own name.
Well, we were young: We saw each other for 18
months and started when she was just 12 and in the
seventh grade and I was 14 and in the ninth grade.
I was a nerd, socially awkward, and not good at
understanding the emotions of a young woman, and we
were both afraid of rejection. So we were to afraid
to communicate clearly and accumulated quite a list
of false beliefs about each other that had us making
mistakes in our relationship. At one point, some of
her mistakes got me to draw some seriously wrong
conclusions, and I walked away from her. I don't
think that there was anything seriously wrong, and
everything wrong was based just on
mis-communications, My heart was broken, and I later
discovered that so was hers.
Then there's Wagner's opera Lohengrin, first
performed in 1850, about a knight, Lohengrin, of the
Holy Grail who marries sweet Elsa. Yes, the Wagner
"Bridal Chorus" or "Wedding March" music is from
their marriage in that opera. Elsa is misled by an
evil witch, makes a mistake, and Lohengrin is forced
to walk away from his new bride.
So, Lohengrin told me that I was not the first guy
to walk away from the young woman he loved and that
such things go back to at least 1850.
Also, Lohengrin and I made similar mistakes: We
asked too much of the understanding of our women and
should have had arranged a less 'brittle' situation.
Nerd guys: Listen up here and learn.
As good art communicates emotions about the human
experience, members of the audience can begin to
learn more about other people.
The best art, in the humanities, can be astoundingly
effective in communicating about humans; we don't
want to be without the results; and technical fields
are so far no substitutes.
> we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes.
True enough, for now. Once our understanding of human psychiatry is more complete, a much more accurate model will hopefully be possible. Of course getting a true understanding of another's mental state at any point in time to simulate the model forward to predict their next behavior will be the hard part. Even doing such forward prediction with the (compared to biological brains) toy computers we have today is already almost impossible if one wants absolute certainty.[1]
Of course one can view all artistic observations of human behaviors so far as a sort of an indirect empirical guide to human behavioral patterns.
Although it is often to the frequent irritation of those of us not blessed with a natural abundance of social skills that those who have the understanding allowing them to write down such observations are also often unable to understand that others do not possess their same social talents and that therefore many unspoken assumptions need to indeed be spoken up of.
[1] Computers are of course 100% predictable, short of a true random # generator plugged into the side, but there is a large gulf of difference between "theoretically doable" and "here is a state frozen 8GB 3.2GHZ desktop PC, tell me what is going to happen next without booting it up."
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced that either of these is really important for a general education. I think educators fixate on romantic ideals of what is important to know while ignoring the subject matter that is relevant to ordinary life.
Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.
I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia.
I see the argument made by Snow as simply lamenting that there is under-emphasis on one particular set of romanticized unnecessary knowledge and over-emphasis on a different set. Most of physics, chemistry, etc, are neither directly relevant to your typical person nor readily digestible as being illustrative of more general principles that are relevant. A core educational curriculum would be better served teaching more fundamental concepts directly: scientific method, statistical methods, data analysis, etc.
[+] [-] rmk2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|12 years ago|reply
We have an excellent vo-tech system for training, its just only for lower classes. Like $100K/yr plumbers. The middle upper classes are supposed to get a degree in french lit before becoming life long minimum wage coffee baristas.
This creates a certain level of social turmoil and confusion.
There is a secondary issue in that if you're young enough, modern K12 only teaches to a test, providing no education or training, merely memorized trivia as an elaborate daycare operation, as you describe. You could have gotten an education about the native american experience, its an interesting topic... pity all you got was trivia to answer multiple choice questions on a test.
[+] [-] Mikeb85|12 years ago|reply
The point is to learn how to 'learn'. Yes, memorizing endless facts can seem pointless, but the entire point of the classics is to gain a greater understanding of humanity in general, and to learn understanding.
[+] [-] zerohm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strlen|12 years ago|reply
I've nearly had the same experience as you but my perception of it was very different. I attended one of the top 100 high-schools in the US and one of the top non-magnet public schools in my state. My curriculum was comprehensive, but yes -- prima facie, very little of it was seemed applicable (other than intro to business -- which helped me deal with personal finances, maths -- which helped me write "demo" programs, and of course CS classes).
On the other hand, I enjoyed"knowledge for the sake of knowledge" tremendously (e.g., History courses) but most importantly -- I felt that I learned a great deal between the lines in those classes. I wrote a great deal of persuasive essays in humanities courses, I begin to see American politics beyond simple slogans, and I read books that taught me a great deal about the human condition that I may have missed out in my suburb (All Quiet On The Western Front comes to mind) and even when they didn't -- they taught me to be a better conservationist at lunch time.
I'll note, however, that high school could have done a great deal more. I came to the US in the middle of 7th grade from former USSR and stepping into a US middle-school felt like a horrible practical joke: instead of chemistry and physics, for examples, there was one class called "science", and the quadratic formula would not be covered for another year.
I suspect, however, we've a different personality -- many of my classmates echo your views on this matter, equally as many echo yours. There was a similar split in college: equally as many greatly enjoyed general education/core requirements, others saw it as a hindrance to taking my engineering courses. On a micro-level it happened within the discipline as well and to an extent I was guilty of this: I wanted to crank out of code and not do integration by parts by hand, so I went through the "motions" rather than learn this by heart, which I came to regret years later when I tried to grok the kernel trick in machine learning.
I am, however, inclined to agree with you: we should teach the fundamental concepts directly, but not at the exclusion of general knowledge. Some students are motivated by practical applications, others more so by knowledge itself -- and this may varies by discipline. Given a college-level education is effectively necessity (even if a paper saying "B.S. in CS" is not always a hard requirement, the requisite proficiency is still expected) students who are not as intrinsically motivated to learn the material use self-discipline to compensate. This is not good news, as it reinforces the popular perception of education as "boring" by necessity and attractive only to people who like being bored.
[+] [-] 3rd3|12 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B...
Transcript:
.. To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.
It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reputed - I do not know if it is true - that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry". And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention.
All the intellectual arguments that you can make will not communicate to deaf ears what the experience of music really is. In the same way all the intellectual arguments in the world will not convey an understanding of nature to those of "the other culture". Philosophers may try to teach you by telling you qualitatively about nature. I am trying to describe her. But it is not getting across because it is impossible. Perhaps it is because their horizons are limited in the way that some people are able to imagine that the center of the universe is man...
[+] [-] netcan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubidium|12 years ago|reply
This is quite a gem. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.
[+] [-] cstross|12 years ago|reply
(This system ran from the late 1940s through the 1990s, subject to fine-tuning. So, for example, in 1981-83 I was taking four 'A' level subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and 'general studies' (a vague attempt to shoe-horn the entirety of the liberal arts field into one quarter of the student's time).)
[+] [-] lkrubner|12 years ago|reply
----------------
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on...
Such was the intensity of debate that it might be supposed that these were age-old themes: but in fact, the idea of separating academic disciplines into groups known as science and humanities was no older than the 19th century. The term "scientist" was only coined in 1833, and it was not until 1882 that another Rede Lecturer, Matthew Arnold, discussed – under the title of "Literature and Science" – whether or not a classical education was still relevant in an age of great scientific and technical advance.
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There are also many themes in this article that are specific to Britain in the 1950s:
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Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry.
Arnold was responding – with infinitely more courtesy than Leavis – to an earlier lecture by T H Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his rumbustious defence of evolution, who argued that science was as valid an intellectual training as the classics.
It was not a popular opinion. As late as my own childhood in the Sixties, the bright boys were expected to read classics at Oxford, and the less bright steered towards the labs.
----------------
I think 2 things are worth remembering about any such debate:
1.) as a civilization becomes more advanced, the people in it tend to become more specialized. If you grew up in 1700, it was perhaps possible to read all of the classics, in literature (Homer) and medicine (Galen) and philosophy (Aristotle) and physics (Aristotle) and math (Euclid). But nowadays it is impossible to study every branch of knowledge to any meaningful depth.
2.) for all of the obvious disadvantages that come with specialization, there are also many advantages (indeed, that is why specialization exists). A modern potter has a fantastic array of choices regarding materials, which did not exist even 50 years ago. A historian today must pick a narrow speciality, as there are now many millions of documents to look through to be considered an expert -- indeed, I have a friend who has specialized in the American Civil War, and he once said "If you have only read 1,000 books about the American Civil War, then you are just an amateur." And in the old days the village blacksmith might have known how to make both a hoe and a horse hoof shoe but a modern mechanic needs to specialize regarding devices (cars? domestic machines? textile plants? telecommunications?) but then also pick a sub-specialty (if a car mechanic, then foreign or domestic? Perhaps a few particular brands).
There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.
[+] [-] msluyter|12 years ago|reply
My question is, will we ever reach a point where it takes so long to move from the center to the edge that we'll eventually stop making progress? In mathematics, it already takes considerable time to reach the knowledge boundary (30 years or so?) Will we reach a point where it takes greater than a lifetime? Or, is it possible to jump to the edge by skipping some foundational knowledge (could you do higher math without knowing, say, calculus, for example?) What are the risks of doing so? And ultimately, how does a complex society hang together when each person has (at most) knowledge of a tiny subset of available knowledge?
[+] [-] Mikeb85|12 years ago|reply
There is. But when you get too entrenched in a single line of thought, then you lose the ability to solve problems that don't fit neatly into that single line of thought.
Witness all the science geeks who only know how to build or calculate things (but may not have a broader concept of the why or what of what they're doing - maybe this is why everyone has a start-up looking for a problem), and all the humanities or business people who can't figure out basic technology or other problems.
If science people had a better understanding of the humanities, philosophy, etc..., and humanities people learned to solve problems, I do think society would benefit.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't specialize, only that we should explore outside of our comfort zone and world view...
[+] [-] calinet6|12 years ago|reply
The benefits of generalization and broad understanding outlive a single person, a single society, or a single period of time. People who are well educated in the liberal arts, which includes both sciences and the humanities, will make more integrated decisions and more sane ones for the long term. We need those people; in my opinion we all need to be those people, even if we spend most of our time specializing. It's a subtle but critical difference.
I am utterly convinced of this: blind specialization will merely move humanity in an unknown direction which is the result of a self-reinforcing process of unknown origin or termination. Generalists will move humanity forward. It is the difference between a cancer and a baby: unmoderated growth versus life itself.
Do we want to go where economic gain takes us, effectively puppets of a multidimensional system beyond our full understanding or control, or do we want to move humanity forward? That is the question.
[+] [-] padobson|12 years ago|reply
I only have one thing to add: If there is an economic and even, possibly, a societal benefit to specialization, and The Two Cultures idea complains about the rift between the humanities and the sciences, then has someone properly updated the material to show how much more specialized society is becoming?
The Wiki article talks about a possible third culture, but it seems to me you could become fairly deeply specialized in business/economics without ever needing a classical humanities education or a classical math/science education.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] protonfish|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jboynyc|12 years ago|reply
It's possible to be mindful of the economic benefit and still lament what specialization does to the human spirit. Max Weber's Science as a Vocation might stand as a case in point.
[+] [-] 0xdeadbeefbabe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewtoast|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmk2|12 years ago|reply
[1]: Herbert Marcuse: Bemerkungen zu einer Neubestimmung der Kultur (Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture), in: Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1965.
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|12 years ago|reply
If we were instead taught to have DIALECTICS and frankly try and remove the word DEBATE from our dialogues, we could start to solve big problems as the author suggests. However everyone is darn convinced their knowledge is superior.
Of course the irony is that it appears scientists are (in general) more dogmatic then any other group.
[+] [-] rmk2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lkozma|12 years ago|reply
https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf
[+] [-] everyone|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rch|12 years ago|reply
-- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
[+] [-] ArekDymalski|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmk2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bchjam|12 years ago|reply
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
[+] [-] rasengan0|12 years ago|reply
SOS
[+] [-] maerF0x0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peter303|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revscat|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] potatolicious|12 years ago|reply
Elon Musk is a scientist. Andy Warhol is an artist. Both are known for savvy and shrewd capitalistic exploitation of their talents.
A capitalist who is neither scientist nor artist is not much of a capitalist at all, for he/she has nothing upon which to capitalize. All business, at the end of the day, is the exploitation of an art or a science to fulfill a need.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] graycat|12 years ago|reply
But now the book and the OP strike me as not well considered.
Net, the 'humanities' have a role much more important than is commonly or easily described. It took me a while to understand this point.
Sure, as an insecure a young nerd facing the world, both nature and society, I wanted 'control' of my life, in particular, 'security', and for those wanted the power of 'truth' and didn't want to settle for anything less solid than, say, plane geometry or, in a pinch, mathematical physics. Of course then only some of this could I articulate.
So, something like 'The Song of Hiawatha' with "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water ..." seemed to me as mostly nonsense and gibberish and at best maybe something lightly entertaining but nothing like the 'truth' for the power I was seeking. And maybe I was correct, but I'm reluctant to return to that poem to be more sure!
Eventually I concluded that (1) there is a lot about the world, where I was trying to get control and security, that was too complicated and subtle for mathematics and/or mathematical physics to do me any good and (2) that part of the world was so important to my life that, even though I didn't have solid tools to address it, I still had to handle it in some sense.
Maybe 'The Song of Hiawatha' wouldn't help me handle those complexities, but eventually I discovered that some parts of the humanities could to at least a useful extent.
Generally my central criticism of the humanities was that, in strong contrast with mathematics and mathematical physics, and, really, most of engineering, technology, medical science, medicine, and even law, the humanities (1) did not make clear just what they were claiming was true and (2) for any claims nearly never provided convincing evidence. While these remain valid criticisms, amazingly in places the humanities can be important nevertheless.
Still, I was often torqued at the humanities: E.g., in, say, the English departments, a common claim was that English literature had a lot of good knowledge of people and would help readers understand people. I concluded, and still do, that maybe a little.
Once I discovered the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, awash in real practical expertise, well considered and formulated, about people, I concluded that Fromm was a good example of progress on information for understanding people. For more on love specifically, actually some of the relevant articles on Wikipedia seem quite good -- at least in places they have explained some of what I figured out more or less independently, at enormous cost, and added a lot more.
So, it is possible to get some understanding of people, but for this purpose I would mostly set aside English literature as too thin and/or even misleading.
For understanding people, I'd say that the most important contribution of English literature to understanding people is that some people like English literature.
The crack in my scorn that got me started with the humanities classical music. A brilliant person once said, "Music doesn't mean anything.". Well, maybe, maybe not, but it still can be useful for someone wanting to understand people or even themselves, amazingly.
Classical music was able to 'reach' me in part because there were usually few or no words to take literally and, thus, argue with.
Well, it turns out that classical music has something of a language, especially about human emotions. If want to understand people, the biggest chapter is human emotions.
Classical music is an example of a common definition of art as in the communications, interpretation of human experience, emotion. Well, it can be easy enough to find parts of classical music that are quite effective meeting this definition of art. So, here there is some progress in understanding humans.
One description of much of the media is vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment which sounds next to worthless for the audience and, maybe, is, but we can reduce this description to vicarious emotional experience and, then, learn about people by feeling their emotions -- and art has a lot of this and, thus, can help a person understand people.
For some value for the audience, good art is supposed to be universal and, then, often a person in the audience can see where the art is describing things much as in their life from which that person can conclude, "I'm not the only one who has encountered such a thing. That thing is not unique to me. Whatever I did to make that thing happen, others did the same, and maybe some of the main causes are not really from me.".
E.g., a few weeks ago I did a search for a girl I knew and fell in love with in high school. Yup, the Internet showed me a scan of a high school annual with her picture as a Homecoming Queen candidate. To me she was always the prettiest human female I ever saw in person or otherwise. Then many of those days with her, decades ago, came back to me as if they were last week. She was my first love and, apparently, burned into my brain -- I can no more forget her than I can forget my own name.
Well, we were young: We saw each other for 18 months and started when she was just 12 and in the seventh grade and I was 14 and in the ninth grade.
I was a nerd, socially awkward, and not good at understanding the emotions of a young woman, and we were both afraid of rejection. So we were to afraid to communicate clearly and accumulated quite a list of false beliefs about each other that had us making mistakes in our relationship. At one point, some of her mistakes got me to draw some seriously wrong conclusions, and I walked away from her. I don't think that there was anything seriously wrong, and everything wrong was based just on mis-communications, My heart was broken, and I later discovered that so was hers.
Then there's Wagner's opera Lohengrin, first performed in 1850, about a knight, Lohengrin, of the Holy Grail who marries sweet Elsa. Yes, the Wagner "Bridal Chorus" or "Wedding March" music is from their marriage in that opera. Elsa is misled by an evil witch, makes a mistake, and Lohengrin is forced to walk away from his new bride.
So, Lohengrin told me that I was not the first guy to walk away from the young woman he loved and that such things go back to at least 1850.
Also, Lohengrin and I made similar mistakes: We asked too much of the understanding of our women and should have had arranged a less 'brittle' situation.
Nerd guys: Listen up here and learn.
As good art communicates emotions about the human experience, members of the audience can begin to learn more about other people.
The best art, in the humanities, can be astoundingly effective in communicating about humans; we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes.
Took me a while to see these points.
[+] [-] com2kid|12 years ago|reply
True enough, for now. Once our understanding of human psychiatry is more complete, a much more accurate model will hopefully be possible. Of course getting a true understanding of another's mental state at any point in time to simulate the model forward to predict their next behavior will be the hard part. Even doing such forward prediction with the (compared to biological brains) toy computers we have today is already almost impossible if one wants absolute certainty.[1]
Of course one can view all artistic observations of human behaviors so far as a sort of an indirect empirical guide to human behavioral patterns.
Although it is often to the frequent irritation of those of us not blessed with a natural abundance of social skills that those who have the understanding allowing them to write down such observations are also often unable to understand that others do not possess their same social talents and that therefore many unspoken assumptions need to indeed be spoken up of.
[1] Computers are of course 100% predictable, short of a true random # generator plugged into the side, but there is a large gulf of difference between "theoretically doable" and "here is a state frozen 8GB 3.2GHZ desktop PC, tell me what is going to happen next without booting it up."