(no subject)

[stormdog]

Heh. I just realized that, in a way, I'm embarrassed to be reading all this stuff about architecture and engineering because it feels, in comparison to stuff on social theory and urban policy, like 'fluff.' Shouldn't I be reading things that help me make a difference instead of just satisfying my own curiosity?

I dunno. How does one exist as a part of this broken society at this point? Why is life so complicated?

Comments

[stormdog]

I think that's basically another facet of what I was trying to express.

When I was little, I wanted to be a scientist. To me, that meant someone like the characters in Real Genius or people like Nikola Tesla. As I went through undergrad and into grad school, I realized that I could be a scientist after all; just of a different kind. (Of course, that didn't work out for me either...)

I feel that degree of softness in this sense correlates strongly to applicability of qualitative methods. Humanities requires a lot of quantitative work, but must be combined with qualitative work. I think a lot of people don't think about or know much about the rigor , value, and necessity of qualitative research, while at the same time not realizing how much quantitative work is involved in the humanities, and devalue it in comparison to 'hard' stuff. It's a shame.

[acelightning]

WHen I was little, I also wanted to be a scientist - my role model was Maria Sklodovska Curie (because she was the only woman scientist I'd ever heard of). She spent her lifetime boiling and analyzing vats of exotic mineral ores, testing the properties of each new substance she isolated (and giving herself cancer because nobody knew how dangerous radiation was), and other scientists around the world used her work as background for more discoveries up to and including the transuranic element now named Oganesson.

I worked hard at learning as much about science as I could when I was a child. It wasn't until I started college, and declared my major as physics, that I discovered that I was incapable of learning calculus, or any of the other advanced forms of mathematics that would be required for heavy-duty science. My brain just isn't wired for it. I'm a good technician, and I might have done okay as an engineer, but I was not scientist material at all.

I wound up with a BA in English, plus a lot of experience at the college radio station, which brought out my abilities as a technician (my father had taught me the basic mind-set). But there's precious little quantitative work involved in comparing the poetry of Emily Dickinson with that of Walt Whitman.