From: callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Callahan)
Subject: Re: Any Humanities Grads out there?
Organization: Johns Hopkins Computer Science Department, Baltimore, MD
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 01:26:41 GMT

hulsey@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Diana Hulsey) writes:

>These facts contribute to the impression that science is more rigorous than 
>humanities, and as a result, many bright young people who seek to do the most
>with their intellects might consider a science rather than the humanities,
>just for the challenge and prestige they percieve that it implies.

Mathematics is rigorous because it deals with issues that are simple enough 
that one can make completely precise statements about them and prove them 
conclusively.  Seeking that kind of rigor in "softer" fields is misguided due 
to the sheer complexity of the issues.  I certainly cannot speak as an expert, 
but this misguidedness can probably be found in some modern approaches to the 
social sciences.  Note that there is a distinction between suggesting that
a field is not worthy of study and suggesting that current methods are
not necessarily the best.  Since Feynman was brought up in a posting, I 
would recommend reading his comments in "Cargo Cult Science" from _Surely 
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_.  

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.

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.

There is no question that it is easier to establish quality control for a 
course in calculus.  Mathematicians are pretty much agreed on a wide body
of material.  While professors might take different approaches, they will
still agree on what is a correct statement, and what is not.  For this reason, 
a student who gets an A in a calculus course can be confident that he learned
something real, no matter where he took it.  Of course, there is a whole other
question of whether he or she learned to apply formulas or learned a general 
method of mathematical reasoning, so there is some divergence even between
these courses.

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.

>Now, the issue that I come across which is more troublesome than this, is 
>the disrespect for the humanities as a meaningful thing to do.  "Why do you
>want to do classics?" is the question I continually hear,  mostly from
>Engineers who have no great love for what they are doing, and only see a
>secure job at the end of their travails.  

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.

>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.

--
Paul Callahan       | "... the 'spineless prickly pear' ... this long-neglected 
callahan@cs.jhu.edu | gift of nature, which now promises to be of as great or 
                    | even greater value to the human race than the discovery 
BIFF WHERE ARE YOU? | of steam."                      -- Luther Burbank, 1911
Xref: sparky soc.college.grad:970 soc.college.gradinfo:671 soc.culture.indian:14456