4 ms·

Yes, Feynman was the first person in any discipline to give lectures accessible to a popular audience. Goodness knows why no-one in the whole of the humanities

by foldr 7y ago

Yes, Feynman was the first person in any discipline to give lectures accessible to a popular audience. Goodness knows why no-one in the whole of the humanities has ever done this. (There is actually a much longer, and arguably more successful, tradition of humanists engaging with popular audiences. We remember the scientists who were good at it because they were so exceptional.) I suspect you haven't read the article, which in fact is at the level of a freshman humanities student. Not everything has to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Feynman also wrote plenty of stuff vastly less accessible than this article that you and I wouldn't understand - at least not without investing a lot of time and effort. But God forbid that anyone in the humanities write something that requires you to (gasp!) use a dictionary. The sheer arrogance and imbecility of the typical attitude towards the humanities on HN is really something to behold. Oh, why can't you all be more like this cool physics dude who we think is God's gift to literature because he dictated some amusing anecdotes about strip clubs and colored paint?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Feel free to try to un-press your condescension button; it's not helping you present your case at all. You just come across as rude and hostile. Let me try to restate a bit better. Feynmann wasn't the first, even in physics (Faraday may have been). But for Feynmann to do what he did in his lectures, he had to find a simpler way to present it - not because the words were hard, but because the mathematics was. What I want from the humanities is a bit different. Not easier words, but fewer. There's an article about a fifth the length of this one waiting to be written. It would have the same content, too, and would be far more readable (and read!) by non-humanities types. I suspect that even many freshman humanities students would appreciate the difference. (If you're a humanities major, you don't lack for pages to read.) Now, if you want to say that this wasn't written for the HN crowd, that's probably true. But it got posted here, and here we are. I assert that there is a possible way of writing that 1) is acceptable within the humanities, 2) does not "dumb down" the content trying to be communicated, and 3) is much more accessible to the non-humanities reader. But I'm not a humanities person myself, so I could be dreaming. 1) might be fundamentally opposed to 3).
- foldr 7y ago
  It's much more condescending to tell everyone in the humanities that (a) they should all follow the example of a physicist who never even wrote a book length work himself, and (b) that they are obliged only ever to work in the service of extremely impatient and poorly-read readers outside the humanities, whose preferences are the only ones that matter. Imagine if someone in the humanities expected the sciences to operate under such constraints. Why do you keep using these complicated "equations"? Why is this book about fluid dynamics packed with obscure terminology and strange diagrams? (I guess it must just be padding.)
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    You seem to be looking to find grounds to criticize what I say, rather than first trying to understand it. This is leading you to creating strawmen - to the point that it begins to look deliberate. In case it's not, though, I'm going to try this one more time. You are putting words in my mouth that I did not say, and I deny you the right to do so. Did I say "ever"? No. I said that, when talking to those outside the humanities, they should talk differently. (And what is the humanities if they only ever talk to themselves? Physics makes a difference to the world by what it enables us to do, so if the physicists talk only to themselves and to the engineers, they still can change the world. But if the humanities talk only to themselves, that's... not very helpful to society.) And, despite me explaining it, you continue to misunderstand what I said about Feynmann. When talking to those who aren't at your level in the discipline, can you still make it understandable to them, without making them first have to get to your level? How far can you go to do so? The problem that I see is that the humanities no longer seem to know how to talk to the culture at large. That's a real problem, because if the humanities are what they think they are, the larger culture needs them. The humanities need to talk to those outside the humanities, and to do so in a way that those outside can understand.
    - foldr 7y ago
      The article we're talking about is accessible to anyone with a bit of patience and a decent vocabulary (or the will to use a dictionary). I'm not in the humanities and I had no problem understanding it. I think it's really weird to use this particular article as an example of some kind of disconnect between the humanities and the culture at large. Pop science is fashionable, but 90% of it is fluff or pure nonsense. The level of scientific knowledge of the general public remains miserably low. Are the humanities doing so much worse in engaging the public? This is not obvious to me. I'm confused now about why you brought Feynman into this. Initially, you seemed to be contrasting successful pop science with unsuccessful attempts by the humanities to communicate with the general public, and suggesting that humanists should ape the communication style of Feynman and other famous scientists. I found this odd, since humanists communicate with the general public all the time, to a much greater extent than most scientists. Just read any high quality newspaper or magazine and you'll find lots of accessible articles by humanities professors, authors, critics, etc. (The article we're talking about is one example!) Perhaps it would help if you could just give an example of some work in the humanities (not necessarily recent) that you actually like. Presumably you don't think that there's never been any good or accessible work in the humanities. So rather than pointing to Feynman, why not tell us which humanists other humanists should be emulating?
2019-nCoV 7y ago
The need to dress up any idea in colourful vocabulary serves only to distract from the lack of substance and to impress other BS vendors. The linked diatribe could be distilled to a 100 word paragraph and nothing would be lost.

by foldr 7y ago

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Feel free to try to un-press your condescension button; it's not helping you present your case at all. You just come across as rude and hostile. Let me try to restate a bit better. Feynmann wasn't the first, even in physics (Faraday may have been). But for Feynmann to do what he did in his lectures, he had to find a simpler way to present it - not because the words were hard, but because the mathematics was. What I want from the humanities is a bit different. Not easier words, but fewer. There's an article about a fifth the length of this one waiting to be written. It would have the same content, too, and would be far more readable (and read!) by non-humanities types. I suspect that even many freshman humanities students would appreciate the difference. (If you're a humanities major, you don't lack for pages to read.) Now, if you want to say that this wasn't written for the HN crowd, that's probably true. But it got posted here, and here we are. I assert that there is a possible way of writing that 1) is acceptable within the humanities, 2) does not "dumb down" the content trying to be communicated, and 3) is much more accessible to the non-humanities reader. But I'm not a humanities person myself, so I could be dreaming. 1) might be fundamentally opposed to 3).

foldr 7y ago
It's much more condescending to tell everyone in the humanities that (a) they should all follow the example of a physicist who never even wrote a book length work himself, and (b) that they are obliged only ever to work in the service of extremely impatient and poorly-read readers outside the humanities, whose preferences are the only ones that matter. Imagine if someone in the humanities expected the sciences to operate under such constraints. Why do you keep using these complicated "equations"? Why is this book about fluid dynamics packed with obscure terminology and strange diagrams? (I guess it must just be padding.)
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  You seem to be looking to find grounds to criticize what I say, rather than first trying to understand it. This is leading you to creating strawmen - to the point that it begins to look deliberate. In case it's not, though, I'm going to try this one more time. You are putting words in my mouth that I did not say, and I deny you the right to do so. Did I say "ever"? No. I said that, when talking to those outside the humanities, they should talk differently. (And what is the humanities if they only ever talk to themselves? Physics makes a difference to the world by what it enables us to do, so if the physicists talk only to themselves and to the engineers, they still can change the world. But if the humanities talk only to themselves, that's... not very helpful to society.) And, despite me explaining it, you continue to misunderstand what I said about Feynmann. When talking to those who aren't at your level in the discipline, can you still make it understandable to them, without making them first have to get to your level? How far can you go to do so? The problem that I see is that the humanities no longer seem to know how to talk to the culture at large. That's a real problem, because if the humanities are what they think they are, the larger culture needs them. The humanities need to talk to those outside the humanities, and to do so in a way that those outside can understand.
  - foldr 7y ago
    The article we're talking about is accessible to anyone with a bit of patience and a decent vocabulary (or the will to use a dictionary). I'm not in the humanities and I had no problem understanding it. I think it's really weird to use this particular article as an example of some kind of disconnect between the humanities and the culture at large. Pop science is fashionable, but 90% of it is fluff or pure nonsense. The level of scientific knowledge of the general public remains miserably low. Are the humanities doing so much worse in engaging the public? This is not obvious to me. I'm confused now about why you brought Feynman into this. Initially, you seemed to be contrasting successful pop science with unsuccessful attempts by the humanities to communicate with the general public, and suggesting that humanists should ape the communication style of Feynman and other famous scientists. I found this odd, since humanists communicate with the general public all the time, to a much greater extent than most scientists. Just read any high quality newspaper or magazine and you'll find lots of accessible articles by humanities professors, authors, critics, etc. (The article we're talking about is one example!) Perhaps it would help if you could just give an example of some work in the humanities (not necessarily recent) that you actually like. Presumably you don't think that there's never been any good or accessible work in the humanities. So rather than pointing to Feynman, why not tell us which humanists other humanists should be emulating?

2019-nCoV 7y ago

The need to dress up any idea in colourful vocabulary serves only to distract from the lack of substance and to impress other BS vendors. The linked diatribe could be distilled to a 100 word paragraph and nothing would be lost.