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It is a sad state of affairs that in general, the humanities have less robust knowledge about the world, yet make more noise than scientists, who have more cons
by smokel 3y ago
It is a sad state of affairs that in general, the humanities have less robust knowledge about the world, yet make more noise than scientists, who have more constructive knowledge, but are not understood by the general public.
The net effect is that the public is almost always terribly misinformed.
- wpietri 3y agoThis to me sounds a lot like a Two Cultures view on the high modernist side. It seems hopelessly outdated to me. Personally, I'm much more concerned about scientists and technologists who ignore the humanities than vice versa.
- smokel 3y agoOuch, that was not my intention. The problem I see is in the lack of rigour for obtaining and sharing knowledge. A lot of research in the social sciences, almost by definition, deals with extremely complex interactions that are hardly possible to say anything constructive about. For example, one cannot reproduce experiments, nor objectively measure things such as, say, happiness. On the other hand, most contemporary research in the exact sciences, such as quantum computation, is so hard to understand, that one needs a PhD in a respective field to even reasonably talk about it. Obviously, I should have avoided to make this sweeping kind of generalisation, but from my personal experience this dichotomy at least exists in the fields that I am interested in (e.g. mathematics and physics on one side, contemporary art and philosophy of mind on the other side). It is not even the culture that is different, it is the method being used, and the matter being studied that differs. Is this still considered an outdated view? And how should I go about changing my perspective? I really like it if someone crosses the boundaries of these two domains, but I have found very few inspiring authors who do so successfully. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.