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It's quite simple: people don't understand science, and science doesn't understand people. Several generations of highly specialized education tend to do that.

It's quite simple: people don't understand science, and science doesn't understand people. Several generations of highly specialized education tend to do that. We need more poets who are scientists, more scientists who are poets. We need a level of breadth that has not yet been seen except in a few diamonds in the rough. These ties between our humanity and our world are more important than we realize. In practice, this means a better and more widespread liberal arts education—a program that you may not realize is valuable until ten years after graduation, and therefore must be a wisdom passed down to our children and embraced as a society. It needs to be a program that teaches the incredible depth of science, and the humanity to deal with the complex consequences, which are necessarily bigger than our perspective. Until this shift occurs, we will continue to encounter this divergence of understanding. It's a long bet, but we need it more than ever.

vinbreau 12y ago
After reading Leonard Shlain's Art & Physics, I agree with you. In the past it was the artists, poets and popular writers who helped the general public consume often difficult to grasp ideas. We do seem to be in a lull where the creatives are either beholden to the mass culture of capitalism or to detached from the world of science to communicate it. Those that do are on the fringe and only noticed by small cliques. Art is blooming everywhere right now, but very little of it is civically minded. This is an era of image over substance.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>In practice, this means a better and more widespread liberal arts education Or, instead of making the science majors spend more of our very scarce time on humanities courses, couldn't you just make the humanities majors spend more of their less-scarce time on science and math courses? Why is it that scientists are continually called on to "remain in touch" with "humanity" (as if we scientists are not human!) and "liberal arts" (as if anyone in our work-or-die society is free in the old Greco-Roman sense!), but nobody taking their education outside the sciences is called upon to display the kind of basic scientific literacy shown by passing intro-level courses in calculus, statistics, and research methods?
- calinet6 12y ago
  You'll understand in ten years. I don't mean to blow you off and be all "wise" and crap, I really, truly mean it. With that said, I absolutely, completely agree that the humanities majors need more than basic scientific literacy. That's 50% of the problem. But I challenge you to think deeply about why the other 50% of the problem might lie with how scientists understand the humanities, because I really strongly believe that.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >You'll understand in ten years. Really? I have some extracurricular education in the humanities, actually, with particular focus on politics and the related pieces of philosophy. It's also worth mentioning that I am well away from my own undergrad years. The problem is not that I find humanities subjects insubstantial from far-away, but that I find them insubstantial from close up. Whereas I find myself wishing all the time that I had, in previous years, taken more advantage of opportunities to learn science and math. >I don't mean to blow you off and be all "wise" and crap, I really, truly mean it. Then I think we should have a much more detailed conversation about what you mean, because you have certainly managed to come off that way. >With that said, I absolutely, completely agree that the humanities majors need more than basic scientific literacy. That's 50% of the problem. No. They don't even have basic scientific literacy to start with. To quote the common material on this matter: >A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. 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 now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, "What do you mean by mass, or acceleration", which is the scientific equivalent of saying, "Can you read?" — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. I would hope that more than 10% of humanities experts can today answer such basic questions as "What is acceleration?" (the second derivative of position/displacement) or "Explain the significance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to human life" (humans must eat food to survive, and will eventually die). Even if the rate is more like 95%, we are again speaking of scientific questions on the level of "Have you read a classic?" and "Can you read at all?". In fact, I strongly doubt that most "humanists" can answer the question about acceleration, since they mostly never studied any calculus -- it would have dragged down their freshman-year GPA and wasn't required anyway. Meanwhile, we have not gotten up to the level of talking about interesting hobby material (rocketry or electronics or programming), nor to the level where the "humanists" (or even most scientists) can competently understand scientific concepts essential to public life, such as the Greenhouse Effect, cognitive bias, or p-values. By the standards of a modern, scientific civilization, the classical humanist is a developmentally disabled child who continues to insist, against all evidence, that he is the jewel of intellectuals and has an exclusive right to make all of society's important choices. >But I challenge you to think deeply about why the other 50% of the problem might lie with how scientists understand the humanities, because I really strongly believe that. If you believe it strongly, please provide evidence. I'm of course open to convincing evidence, but I strongly believe the opposite: the problem is not evenly split, it lies almost entirely in the way people holding society's ethical and political reigns disdain and disregard the mere facts uncovered by science and mathematics in favor of their ever-more-sophisticated "humanistic" intuitions.

vinbreau 12y ago

After reading Leonard Shlain's Art & Physics, I agree with you. In the past it was the artists, poets and popular writers who helped the general public consume often difficult to grasp ideas. We do seem to be in a lull where the creatives are either beholden to the mass culture of capitalism or to detached from the world of science to communicate it. Those that do are on the fringe and only noticed by small cliques. Art is blooming everywhere right now, but very little of it is civically minded. This is an era of image over substance.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>In practice, this means a better and more widespread liberal arts education Or, instead of making the science majors spend more of our very scarce time on humanities courses, couldn't you just make the humanities majors spend more of their less-scarce time on science and math courses? Why is it that scientists are continually called on to "remain in touch" with "humanity" (as if we scientists are not human!) and "liberal arts" (as if anyone in our work-or-die society is free in the old Greco-Roman sense!), but nobody taking their education outside the sciences is called upon to display the kind of basic scientific literacy shown by passing intro-level courses in calculus, statistics, and research methods?

calinet6 12y ago
You'll understand in ten years. I don't mean to blow you off and be all "wise" and crap, I really, truly mean it. With that said, I absolutely, completely agree that the humanities majors need more than basic scientific literacy. That's 50% of the problem. But I challenge you to think deeply about why the other 50% of the problem might lie with how scientists understand the humanities, because I really strongly believe that.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >You'll understand in ten years. Really? I have some extracurricular education in the humanities, actually, with particular focus on politics and the related pieces of philosophy. It's also worth mentioning that I am well away from my own undergrad years. The problem is not that I find humanities subjects insubstantial from far-away, but that I find them insubstantial from close up. Whereas I find myself wishing all the time that I had, in previous years, taken more advantage of opportunities to learn science and math. >I don't mean to blow you off and be all "wise" and crap, I really, truly mean it. Then I think we should have a much more detailed conversation about what you mean, because you have certainly managed to come off that way. >With that said, I absolutely, completely agree that the humanities majors need more than basic scientific literacy. That's 50% of the problem. No. They don't even have basic scientific literacy to start with. To quote the common material on this matter: >A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. 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 now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, "What do you mean by mass, or acceleration", which is the scientific equivalent of saying, "Can you read?" — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. I would hope that more than 10% of humanities experts can today answer such basic questions as "What is acceleration?" (the second derivative of position/displacement) or "Explain the significance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to human life" (humans must eat food to survive, and will eventually die). Even if the rate is more like 95%, we are again speaking of scientific questions on the level of "Have you read a classic?" and "Can you read at all?". In fact, I strongly doubt that most "humanists" can answer the question about acceleration, since they mostly never studied any calculus -- it would have dragged down their freshman-year GPA and wasn't required anyway. Meanwhile, we have not gotten up to the level of talking about interesting hobby material (rocketry or electronics or programming), nor to the level where the "humanists" (or even most scientists) can competently understand scientific concepts essential to public life, such as the Greenhouse Effect, cognitive bias, or p-values. By the standards of a modern, scientific civilization, the classical humanist is a developmentally disabled child who continues to insist, against all evidence, that he is the jewel of intellectuals and has an exclusive right to make all of society's important choices. >But I challenge you to think deeply about why the other 50% of the problem might lie with how scientists understand the humanities, because I really strongly believe that. If you believe it strongly, please provide evidence. I'm of course open to convincing evidence, but I strongly believe the opposite: the problem is not evenly split, it lies almost entirely in the way people holding society's ethical and political reigns disdain and disregard the mere facts uncovered by science and mathematics in favor of their ever-more-sophisticated "humanistic" intuitions.