I was just like you. I thought that math, chemistry, physics, and computer programming was the be-all end all. In fact, I went out of the way and made fun of those who went on the side of the soft sciences and liberal arts. After all, it's just stuffy old history, bad books that people love, and fancy schmancy words to describe the brain that have no real understanding of the neuroscience underneath....Right?

To give you an idea, Im finishing up an electrical engineering degree alongside a IT security degree, all with a math minor. So, I'm no slouch when it comes to the 'hard sciences', or I don't think I am. Now, where to begin.

English: Of all, engineers need to communicate with non-technical people, as we're the technical people. They _have_ to trust us when we say 'this works', 'this cant work', or 'I don't know'. Now, how do we communicate this? We do this by writing and speaking. Of course, you can 'write'. Now, is that writing clear enough so that a technical topic can be understood by your non-technical manager, or a VC you are applying to? English teaches you how to communicate what's in your head so others can understand it. The other half is speech, which I view just as important. In my free time, I am looking at volunteering to teach computer literacy courses at the local food pantry/shelter so those of low income can learn how to do things like make resumes and maintain communications. Worksheets, handouts, and books only do so good. This case, effective speech is just as important as the written word. A few misplaced words or bad phrases can either cause confusion or just flat out offend.

Soft sciences: This is the hole where topics like psychology, sociology, political science all fit. I think these studies would be apparent why they could be useful to you. They help understand people and how to relate with them. These sciences can explain the 'why' certain phrases work better than others, and explain how to differ your speech and written patterns when dealing with different cultures. And many of these 'softer sciences' use good ol statistics to make their deductions, so they directly relate back to hard sciences. On the darker side, you can exploit these topics to get people to do your will, because you would understand deeper parts of culture than they would pay attention to. If you were to do this, you would be a tech geek with swaying power: People would come to _you_ for answers. And yes, that has a lot of power attached to it.

History: This is, by far, the hardest for me to relate. It does, by a sort of roundabout way. It's also my one weakest skill, so bear with me here. History meant to me 'stuff' that occurred long ago that would never pertain to me. I mean, how does stuffy dead people do anything to me? Well, lets talk about some unrelated topics.

Lets talk about Markov chains. They're a powerful statistical inference tool. So, who's Markov? Well, he died in 1922, in Russia. Yet, his models and math are used to this day. We'll use his theorems until somebody has better. And his was worked on from earlier theorems and assumptions. If you understand the history, look it as a CVS. If there's an assumption in there, we can work back and understand the root why and 'fix' it or disregard it.

But that is just a tangent of why history is useful. The essence is so we understand how we got to now, by what path, and why. Things that are obvious now weren't so before. History can allow us to understand the whys of math, of psychology, of weaponry, physics, chemistry, of religion, and any other topic. Effectively, the true meaning of history is "not the future and not the present". Even your file system is a historical document that can be inferred upon using statistics and psychology techniques.

Perhaps I cleared up a bit of at least why I value the liberal and softer arts and sciences.