
Two Cultures (2016) - johnloeber
http://johnloeber.com/w/twocultures.html
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thescribe
>In this respect, a humanities or broad liberal-arts education — meant to
teach critical, analytic thinking, and engage students with questions about
the human experience, does not seem like a bad idea.

I had never thought about the humanities in the context of what should they be
doing. This was an insightful piece of what humanities could be.

Having said that, given the liberal arts classes I took at university I would
not trust that group collectively with any detail of society that could impact
outside of their academic world. The amorality of scientific knowledge would
be a great deal preferable to that nonsense.

~~~
johnloeber
> Having said that, given the liberal arts classes I took at university I
> would not trust that group collectively with any detail of society that
> could impact outside of their academic world. The amorality of scientific
> knowledge would be a great deal preferable to that nonsense.

The point of my piece was not to advocate for placing either one group in
charge of decision-making. The point was that the gulf between the sciences
and the humanities needs to be bridged: scientists and engineers have serious
ethical concerns they need to consider in their work, humanists need to think
about how they can use technology to better understand and improve the lives
of other people. Technology is a neutral tool, and its value to us depends
entirely on _how_ we choose to use it. The _how_ is, to a significant extent,
a humanities question.

(If it seems to you that the _how_ is a question more answerable from a
scientific point of view, then I suggest you ask yourself why you think so,
and dig a little deeper -- you'll probably arrive at some sort of fundamental
value or belief that you hold, which I would categorize as a humanities
position.)

~~~
thescribe
>If it seems to you that the how is a question more answerable from a
scientific point of view, then I suggest you ask yourself why you think so,
and dig a little deeper -- you'll probably arrive at some sort of fundamental
value or belief that you hold, which I would categorize as a humanities
position.

Ok, wow, you're very right. Thank you for taking the time to respond to me.

~~~
johnloeber
I didn't expect to change your mind so quickly. :-)

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

