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I recall Stephen Fry's great comments on Steve Job's "Apple stands at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts." statement. But it has always bothe
by bh42222 15y ago
I recall Stephen Fry's great comments on Steve Job's "Apple stands at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts." statement.
But it has always bothered me that the age of reason also means the age when the scientific principle and liberal arts not only split but often end up with an "us vs. them" relationship.
This may be one of the least coherent and strangest things I've ever tried to express on the Internet. But I suspect that if we as a civilization were not capable of making a distinction between the hard sciences and the liberal arts, then Steve Jobs would have sought early medical treatment and would be alive today and for many years more.
Allow me to try and explain. The leading smart people used to be expected to know both the "science" of the day and the arts.
But then we get the age of reason and people start to specialize in one or the other, but rarely both. And we do end up with two separate and often defined against each other areas of knowledge.
Does this make sense? Just google image search for Millau Viaduct and tell me that product of engineering isn't also art.
I think the world has lost something by this split. I think engineering and science have lost a bit to. But I also suspect the liberal arts have lost a lot by not requiring a thorough knowledge of the hard science as a foundation.
Hell, I wish doctors were required to learn and know A LOT more math and statistics.
Somewhat ironically math is still considered an art at our universities.
But by not requiring a deep, and I mean deep knowledge of hard science for any liberal arts degree, our great institutions have created an artificial separation between learned people.
And there's also this distinct sense of mystique, an accidentally created legend about non-science "knowledge". This sense that the demon haunted world contains nuggets of powerful knowledge which would be evaporated if the light of the candle that is science would shine on them.
This mythical belief plagues society in surprising ways.
I think Steve Jobs decision to first try "alternative medicine" is party because of this.
And while every typical western (North America and Europe) university has "core" requirements, I think that's a joke. I think if instead everyone had to learn an almost equal share of hard science and liberal arts for any degree, then we'd have a better civilization.
- asmithmd1 15y agoJobs may not have acted irrationally. Have you looked into the procedure that he needed? It is not a tonsilectomy. Here is the latest I found about the surgery: "Over the last 15 years major pancreatic centers in the United States have developed excellent results for the Whipple surgery. In almost all the major centers the death rate from this surgery is now less than 5%." That is a 1 in 20 chance of dying on the operating table - makes base jumping seem safe.
- algorithms 15y agoWhich is still a much better chance than trying to defeat the cancer with alternative medicine...
- asmithmd1 15y agoHe was faced with the choice of: roll a D20, if you don't get 20 roll again to see how many years you live. Or Roll a D8 to see how many years you live. He chose the D8 and then tried the first choice when he realized he had rolled a 3
- drzaiusapelord 15y agoExcept he was told by any sane, rational doctor that waiting 9 months is the equivalent of rolling nothing. You can't let a tumor sit around for 9 months hoping bamboo shoots and green tea enemas cure your cancer. I can't see how this is remotely rational. Those are our odds. His odds, considering his vast wealthy, would be potentially better (better doctors, hospitals, etc). So in other words he chose a the best high-risk naturopath approach over the best low-risk surgical approach. He found the best woo merchants out there and he paid for it with his life. I'm not sure why so many are defending him. Yes, he made consumer goods slightly better than his competition, but he's still human and made a pretty terrible mistake. If anything, we should publicize this so other people don't make this mistake.
- willyt 15y agoI've known a few people, close friends parents and a family member die of cancer. You can struggle on through chemo and radiation therapy for 4-5 years or you can go in 6 months. I'm not sure I can say which one is best. The ops are by no means magic cures, if you survive the op you are in a lot of pain from chemo and radio therapy. Example, Morphine sickness is pretty horrific. Quite common for people to reject it and take the pain because you feel so bad on it. Having seen that and if I knew that I had a cancer which was very unlikely to be cured I would definitely consider not going through with the surgery. Better to die quickly than live in constant pain for another 5 years? Its easy to make the stretch to trying a bit of alt medicine. It's is not going to make things any worse than they are, if anything the placebo effect of feeling you are in control is probably quite strong. I don't think it's easy for a healthy person to understand what's going through someones mind when they're faced with this.
- zallarak 15y agoI could only care slightly less for Steve Jobs, but this comment was an excellent read. lol @ doctors needing to know more stats, so true. "But by not requiring a deep, and I mean deep knowledge of hard science for any liberal arts degree, our great institutions have created an artificial separation between learned people." But I think it goes both ways; I'd like to see more hard scientists with a strong background in the liberal arts. Reminds me of how Oxford (it might still do so) calls their Physics degree/certification a degree in Natural Philosophy.
- paganel 15y ago> But I think it goes both ways; I'd like to see more hard scientists with a strong background in the liberal arts. Exactly, I actually kind of have a little bit of sympathy for a guy like Oppenheimer that cited John Donne and the Bhagavad Gita after the first nuclear test (even though even the thought of nuclear bombs almost makes me sick to my stomach), but I suspect that today's scientists are not that versed in "liberal arts".
- hugh3 15y agoI try to be one of those scientists who is also well-versed in the humanities. There are very few rewards for it, though, apart from a smug feeling of superiority to everybody and a massive further decrease in the number of people with whom I have anything in common. :)
- zallarak 15y agoI could only care slightly less for Steve Jobs, but this comment was an excellent read. lol @ doctors needing to know more stats, so true. "But by not requiring a deep, and I mean deep knowledge of hard science for any liberal arts degree, our great institutions have created an artificial separation between learned people." But I think it goes both ways; I'd like to see more hard scientists with a strong background in the liberal arts. Reminds me of how Oxford (it might still do so) calls their Physics degree/certification a degree in Natural Philosophy.
- aheilbut 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
- bh42222 15y agoWell I'll be darned. I don't think I've ever seen this, but maybe I did and forgot it wasn't my idea. So I fully admit I've never had an 100% original thought.
- dorian-graph 15y agoI find it dangerously bizarre and stupid when people try to separate science, art and physical. A talk I listened to a few weeks ago that was delivered at BYU (Meaning some of it is spoken in a religious context) called "Why Scientists Should Read Shakespeare and Why Humanists Should Understand Einstein" covered this same/similar principle.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jellicle 15y ago> But I also suspect the liberal arts have lost a lot by not requiring a thorough knowledge of the hard science as a foundation. Okay, but how? 10-year Bachelor's degrees? Part of the reason why the world is getting more specialized is that there is more knowledge out there to be known. A thorough knowledge of the hard sciences is not something you can squeeze into a semester.
- jmonegro 15y agoExactly. Cramming such amounts of knowledge into every individual is terribly inefficient.