(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

[cmcmck]

One keeps trying to learn about everything and anything.

The far right hates people with knowledge!

[stormdog]

Thanks; that kind of makes me feel better. *hugs*

[acelightning]

Most of the time, people consider stuff like architecture and engineering to be "serious", and social sciences to be "fluff". There are equations that describe what forces act on a roof truss, or what the electricity does within a given type of circuit. But human behavior, individually or in groups, is not as amenable to scientific, mathematical analysis - which is why the social sciences are considered "soft" sciences, as opposed to "hard" ones like physics and mechanics and even chemistry.

But I agree with cmcmck; all knowledge is useful in some way, and knowing more than one's opponents is often a great advantage. Besides which, being curious is a good thing, and satisfying one's curiosity is always a rewarding experience.

[stormdog]

A friend on Facebook said something similar, referencing the campaign for more STEM training. My thoughts:

"I feel like humanties are much less concrete (no pun intended) and require a lot more creativity than practical (as opposed to theoretical) STEM stuff. Even more importantly, an understanding, or lack thereof, of humanities concepts fundamentally shapes the application of STEM skills in ways that quite readily fuck us all over.

A lack of understanding of politics and related humanities concepts and how our perception of the world is shaped by those who have that understanding harms and kills millions of people every day all over the world.

(I want to add that practical STEM endeavors can absolutely *benefit* from creativity, but I do not believe they require it.)"

If people see social sciences as fluff (and I realize a lot of them do), they are completely failing to understand their nature.

[acelightning]

Most things in science and engineering are very physical - you can observe something, and then when a colleague repeats it, you can tell whether or not there's something going on. But the social sciences deal with how human beings think, feel, and behave, and that's not as easy to put into repeatble experiments. So they're "soft" as opposed to "hard" sciences.

[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.