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In these days when STEM is so promoted, I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared t

In these days when STEM is so promoted, I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared to STEM. Perhaps there are some subjects which fall in this category. But I know, for instance, with music theory and composition, the heavy stuff can get fairly complicated and technical very fast. Certainly few people would be dismissive of the technical training required to be a virtuoso player. I think this is the same for other "liberal arts" subjects too. Take linguistics -- from what I know about some of the linguistics concepts that pioneer translation software, speech synthesis, natural language processing, etc., linguistics is hardly "fluff" and requires some years of deep study to be an expert at. The Economist's monetary chart is solely based on supply vs. demand. In many subjects, I think extremely gifted autodidacts are pretty rare. No matter whether its the STEM subjects or the arts or anything else, I think most people benefit from an environment where like minded peers can bounce ideas off of each other. When I look at Wikipedia's list of autodidacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autodidacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autodidacts I know this is just a sample, but at first glance, the list of autodidact scientists and engineers certainly seem to be of comparable size with artists / musicians / etc. EDIT: I will add that I agree with other above posts, that one of the biggest barriers for the modern autodidact scientist / engineer is that it is really hard to home-tinker with certain concepts. You can program at home very easily. You can make circuits and robotics at home. You can even "group buy" small order electronic bare boards from contract manufacturers with all the difficult-to-hand-solder parts already taken care of. It is nearly impossible, however, for a home tinkerer to get access to $100K scopes, electron microscopes, GCMS / NMR machines, or any other "big equipment" of this nature that you can think of. Heck, depending on what you are doing, you probably even risk a run in with "the law" these days from tinkering in certain sectors of hobbies like home chemistry or home biology. To me, that's pretty much the barrier for non-college STEM in a nutshell.

Nav_Panel 10y ago
I'm not disagreeing with your general point -- from my observations at a tech-focused school, many STEM folks write off the arts pretty hard -- but I think your examples are poorly chosen. Most folks are aware or have at least heard that, at a deep level, music has a lot of mathematics. Additionally, linguistics emerged specifically as a scientific study of language: much closer to STEM than other humanities. A better example might be that philosophy/law require broad and deep contextual knowledge of prior thinkers and extremely strong logical skills. Even having trained in formal logic as a software developer, I sometimes struggle to parse philosophical arguments, even when laid out plainly. Yet, even that is still a comparison on the same plane as STEM when ultimately these fields come with different sorts of complexities. Apples and oranges.
jeffdavis 10y ago
"I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared to STEM." It's not that the subjects are lightweight fluff, it's that the students are disproportionately so. STEM is fairly objective, so it's comparatively hard to hide your lack of depth. But if you just want to go to college as a social signal, and a ticket to 4 years of parties, then arts and humanities will offer you a place of comfort. Not every professor for every class at every university; but at pretty much any university you can find some kind of lazy path through the arts/humanities departments. There are a few reasons for this: * Many professors / TAs use classes as a political platform first, and an education platform second. If you just tell them what they want to hear (a slightly avant garde kind of progressive liberalism will do the trick pretty much anywhere), you get an A or B. * Based on the title of the course, huge mobs of lazy students will sign up assuming that it's easy (this is never a serious STEM class). The professor then adapts the grades so that a lot of them pass, because otherwise there will be a revolt. * Universities like to provide "a path to success" for pretty much all of their students who are willing to put in even small amounts of effort. If they can't tell the difference between a concerto and a sonata, then the counselors can take them out of music theory, and put them in "post-modern ethno musical studies".
- wfo 10y ago
  From my experience what you are describing is exactly psychology, which is a STEM field. And humanities disciplines are quite dissimilar as are STEM disciplines. Philosophy is generally fairly rigorous and difficult, communication is often not except when it encompasses fields like journalism, etc. I think the bar for mediocrity is much lower in the humanities, but the bar for top-notch excellence is much higher. When two students complete an exam correctly, they are both great students who wrote down the correct answers as instructed. When two students write papers, you can actually tell that one of them is genuinely brilliant.
  - jeffdavis 10y ago
    That's a good point, and you could make similar claims about economics and political science (do those last two count as STEM?). Oh well. I guess colleges want money, and they will find a way to make their customers happy.
kamaal 10y ago
>>I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared to STEM. As a teenager in India, most people took Arts, Humanities and commerce(No economics, but accounting) because it was widely believed to 'light fluff', course work easy to get through. And you could get a 'Bachelors' title next your name without much work. Among science people these subjects was what we believed losers took, because they couldn't study anything better. Which was to some extent true. I studied Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology. I would typically get to sleep 5 hours a day. Apart from the main exams, we had to study hard for engineering entrance exams. Compare this to some one who studied history or accounting. You can't exactly compete with someone working 3 times more harder than you, in a area which is vastly more economically valuable.

Nav_Panel 10y ago

I'm not disagreeing with your general point -- from my observations at a tech-focused school, many STEM folks write off the arts pretty hard -- but I think your examples are poorly chosen. Most folks are aware or have at least heard that, at a deep level, music has a lot of mathematics. Additionally, linguistics emerged specifically as a scientific study of language: much closer to STEM than other humanities. A better example might be that philosophy/law require broad and deep contextual knowledge of prior thinkers and extremely strong logical skills. Even having trained in formal logic as a software developer, I sometimes struggle to parse philosophical arguments, even when laid out plainly. Yet, even that is still a comparison on the same plane as STEM when ultimately these fields come with different sorts of complexities. Apples and oranges.

jeffdavis 10y ago

"I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared to STEM." It's not that the subjects are lightweight fluff, it's that the students are disproportionately so. STEM is fairly objective, so it's comparatively hard to hide your lack of depth. But if you just want to go to college as a social signal, and a ticket to 4 years of parties, then arts and humanities will offer you a place of comfort. Not every professor for every class at every university; but at pretty much any university you can find some kind of lazy path through the arts/humanities departments. There are a few reasons for this: * Many professors / TAs use classes as a political platform first, and an education platform second. If you just tell them what they want to hear (a slightly avant garde kind of progressive liberalism will do the trick pretty much anywhere), you get an A or B. * Based on the title of the course, huge mobs of lazy students will sign up assuming that it's easy (this is never a serious STEM class). The professor then adapts the grades so that a lot of them pass, because otherwise there will be a revolt. * Universities like to provide "a path to success" for pretty much all of their students who are willing to put in even small amounts of effort. If they can't tell the difference between a concerto and a sonata, then the counselors can take them out of music theory, and put them in "post-modern ethno musical studies".

wfo 10y ago
From my experience what you are describing is exactly psychology, which is a STEM field. And humanities disciplines are quite dissimilar as are STEM disciplines. Philosophy is generally fairly rigorous and difficult, communication is often not except when it encompasses fields like journalism, etc. I think the bar for mediocrity is much lower in the humanities, but the bar for top-notch excellence is much higher. When two students complete an exam correctly, they are both great students who wrote down the correct answers as instructed. When two students write papers, you can actually tell that one of them is genuinely brilliant.
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  That's a good point, and you could make similar claims about economics and political science (do those last two count as STEM?). Oh well. I guess colleges want money, and they will find a way to make their customers happy.

kamaal 10y ago

>>I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared to STEM. As a teenager in India, most people took Arts, Humanities and commerce(No economics, but accounting) because it was widely believed to 'light fluff', course work easy to get through. And you could get a 'Bachelors' title next your name without much work. Among science people these subjects was what we believed losers took, because they couldn't study anything better. Which was to some extent true. I studied Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology. I would typically get to sleep 5 hours a day. Apart from the main exams, we had to study hard for engineering entrance exams. Compare this to some one who studied history or accounting. You can't exactly compete with someone working 3 times more harder than you, in a area which is vastly more economically valuable.