From: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin)
Subject: Re: Any Humanities Grads out there?
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 06:02:04 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park
Originator: clin@erebor.eng.umd.edu


In article <1992Apr16.012641.17719@blaze.cs.jhu.edu>, callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Callahan) writes:
>
>From my perspective, the situation is as follows:  More people *think* they
>understand Shakespeare than *think* they understand Fourier Series.  But,
>while there might be some people who understand Fourier Series quite deeply, 
>there is certainly no one, including Shakespeare, who has ever understood 
>Shakespeare to anything approaching that degree of depth.
>

   I doubt anyone needs to either.   What you are trying to say is that
if we had some sort of scale that could measure understanding
then there are people in math who understand something a great deal
and would hence rate high on the scale, but no one who understands
Shakespeare really well and would rate low.  Fine.  But no one who
is a Shakespearean scholar needs to understand Shakespeare that well,
even if I could buy that there is somehow this higher level of understanding.
It may just be that it only makes sense to understand something deeply
(in your sense) in math but such a thing makes no sense in English.

    I find it amusing that we resort to the Bard.  It reminds me of
some line in Superman that went like:

   "Miss Teshmacher, there are some people who read War and Peace
     and come away thinking it's a children's story (or whatever)
     and others who can read the ingredients of chewing gum and
     unlock the secrets of the universe."
   "Lex, what has *chewing gum* got to do with the secrets of the
      universe?"
   "Right, right."

   Now if I choose some Jackie Collins novel or the like, would you
be able to say that you could completely understand that?

>Now, perhaps I'm getting off the topic and being a little disingenuous about
>my opinions.  The issue seems more likely to be how much intellectual effort 
>it takes to get a degree in some field or other, rather than the intrinsic
>difficulty of the field itself.  I would imagine it depends on the university 
>in question, for one thing.  A prestigious liberal arts college is likely to 
>offer a very thought-provoking Shakespeare course in which one will be 
>surrounded by a number of stellar students with whom to compete.  It is not 
>going to be an "easy A."  (At least, in my idealization of the ideal college, 
>not to be confused with the one I attended).  At some big state universities 
>(which might easily be confused with the one I attended), it is probably not 
>going to be as much of a challenge.
>

   You may be idealizing the liberal arts school.

>Getting back to Feynman, even he admits that there are objective standards.
>He recounts being able to distinguish great Renaissance paintings from some
>mediocre contemporaries without even consciously trying.  In the chapter "Found
>out in Paris," he points out that his amateur drumming technique was ultimately 
>identified as such.

   Yes, but he fooled a lot of other people and Feynman seems the type
to think that you can fool some of the folks in art though he was always
quite modest about his own artistic skills.  (or so it appeared)

>
>An engineer with no love for his or her profession should never be allowed
>to do more than design trivial refinements to toaster ovens.  No, strike 
>that--faulty toaster ovens can start fires.  Probably an MBA is the best
>career move, at least the one that will result in the least damage.  I've
>never understood why anyone would learn a profession out of anything other
>than pure zeal.  As for me, I don't have the discipline to get out of bed in
>the morning if it's not to do something I want to do.
>

   These things happen.  As I mentionedinan earlier post, the usual
state of an engineer (and science and math) is that of confusion.  Once
you figure something out, you're happy for a while, but then that leads
to new problems and more confusion.  Some people can't take this for
four years and want to bail out.

    It would be a nice world out there to say everyone ought to love
waht they are doing but a lot of people, even in the humanities, often
want to get out of school and will take courses that make their life 
easy.   It may be sad commentary but if we actually ended up doing something
we loved, a lot of people would be out playing sports.  It's not to say
some people don't love engineering, but some realize that they are good
at it or just like it (rather than love) and hey the pay ain't bad
(if you can get a job in these times).   It would also be nice if the
job we get lived up to our expectations too.

>>And I say, in the final analysis,
>>I may not have made as much money, my career may not be as smooth, but hell,
>>I am doing what I want to do, and what interests me.  I think that this is
>>a real point of misunderstanding between humanities and sciences.
>
>Great.  Probably no one has the option to do exactly what they want
>to do in life, but I have respect for those who try.  I imagine that the  
>technical people who are just on track for a job will be the most inclined
>to criticize other fields as easier, out of resentment.  Possibly this will
>also occur in people who are blinded by single-minded zeal for their profession.
>I just don't see what is accomplished by downgrading others.
>

   Oh, I had a friend who said that "I think they'll always be happier
than us" referring to some of my roommates who seemed to have very little
work most of the time.  It was a kind of lamenting of how much work
engineering students seem to have.  Yet, I would think that he wouldn't
trade his position with theirs.  There are some folks who believe that
there's always a little bit of suffering in what they do.

   I tend to respect someone who will opt for less pay doing what they
want.  Certainly happiness plays a big role in life.  This thought
is so prevalent in the US that I believe the numbers of those who
want to be engineers is on a decline.   There are other countries
(Japan notably) where personal happiness doesn't happen to be number one
on the list and responsibility to society is a bit stronger.  I'm not
saying it's good.  In fact, it may be quite bad (and I'm sure many
more Japanese will start to resent the number of hours they have to work)
though in the end, they may become the economic superpower.  But, that's
getting off track.

    In the end, I don't spend my time worrying about whether someone
chose to be in engineering or not.  I would like more people to be in
it but people will do what they will do.

--
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