Society is starting to look exactly like what happens when we spend decades treating STEM as the only path worth investing in, while sidelining the humanities.
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@thepurpleoctopus again, I am reminded of a moment in Small Gods (1992) by Terry Pratchett in which an engineer and a philosopher argue on which books to save from a vast library about to be destroyed by religious zealouts: Some books teach people how to live better while some books teach people how to *be* people. #discworld
@baltakatei @thepurpleoctopus as usual, the late, great Terry Pratchett has nailed it!
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@baltakatei @thepurpleoctopus as usual, the late, great Terry Pratchett has nailed it!
@baltakatei @thepurpleoctopus His novels should be required reading in schools, particularly this one.
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@thepurpleoctopus again, I am reminded of a moment in Small Gods (1992) by Terry Pratchett in which an engineer and a philosopher argue on which books to save from a vast library about to be destroyed by religious zealouts: Some books teach people how to live better while some books teach people how to *be* people. #discworld
@baltakatei @thepurpleoctopus I just finished the audiobook of this one! Another great parallel conversation between Urn and Didactylos is the one later in the book about the arms race.
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Agree completely, although it's probably worth noting that STEM subjects have also been focused on applied science and engineering subjects most likely to offer an economic return.
@ReggieHere Yes, very true. Thank you!
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@thepurpleoctopus soooo the humanities are not the same as the social sciences. Both of which we need.
@DrSuzanne Very correct, and I feel I should have included this, to be honest. However, when I wrote this, I mostly thought of philosophy and ethics, so I hope my oversight can be forgiven.
I will also say that where I worked academically, even the social sciences were looking down on the arts and humanities. And on the other side, in German speaking academia, social sciences and the humanities are often seen as almost the same.
But yes, you're definitely right.
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@thepurpleoctopus I work in tech, and I 100% agree that we need to challenge the assumption that humanities are somehow not “useful”. The seems to have increasingly crept into public discourse from the far right. An educated person should be broadly well read, including science, tech, arts and humanities, and we need people specializing in all these domains.
@Frantasaur @thepurpleoctopus humanities also means communication, not the technical side, but the wording, the influence, the way we communicate difficult and complex subjects. And it looks like there is great need of it. What we receive is mostly advertising and not information any longer.
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Society is starting to look exactly like what happens when we spend decades treating STEM as the only path worth investing in, while sidelining the humanities.
This isn't a criticism of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. We need them. Desperately. They should be well supported.
But we also need philosophy, history, literature, languages, ethics, the arts, and every discipline that wrestles with what it means to be human. We need people who can understand the human condition, recognise propaganda, interpret context, think critically about power, engage with complexity, and ask not only how the world works, but what kind of world we ought to build.
A society built only to solve technical problems eventually forgets how to solve human ones.
#Humanities #STEM #Education #CriticalThinking #Ethics #Democracy #Society
@thepurpleoctopus the Bachelor/Master system that replaced the german 'Diplom' was a major step towards less broad education imho. the word 'University' comes from a universal (aka broad) education. the Bachelor/Master system kill a huge amount of this broadness by streamlining universities towards utilitarism/usefulness for the industry.
we clearly lack a period of full blown social innovation in e.g. the fields of community health, financial health, forms of living, isolation issues ...
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@Frantasaur @thepurpleoctopus humanities also means communication, not the technical side, but the wording, the influence, the way we communicate difficult and complex subjects. And it looks like there is great need of it. What we receive is mostly advertising and not information any longer.
@energisch_ @Frantasaur As someone who studied communication science with a passion, yes, I wholeheartedly agree.
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@thepurpleoctopus the Bachelor/Master system that replaced the german 'Diplom' was a major step towards less broad education imho. the word 'University' comes from a universal (aka broad) education. the Bachelor/Master system kill a huge amount of this broadness by streamlining universities towards utilitarism/usefulness for the industry.
we clearly lack a period of full blown social innovation in e.g. the fields of community health, financial health, forms of living, isolation issues ...
@blazr short answer: yes. Exactly.
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I'm interested in the differences between the anglosphere and other cultures on this - I'm from the UK but live in France, and my English/French daughter studied chemistry in the French grande école system - and received a much broader general education than she would have done in the UK - including at least 2 foreign languages throughout her 5 years higher education in chemistry, along with philosophy and the arts.
There is in the UK constant criticism of the too-early over-specialisation in UK schools and universities, and attempts to introduce a French-style 'bac', which even for science specialists includes languages, philosophy, literature, etc...
I'm not saying there's no 'two cultures' problem at all outside the anglosphere - but I tend to think it is particularly acute there.
@GeofCox @thepurpleoctopus @Colman Are you sure it's the British system that's broken, not some schools? My daughter attended a state school, studied German, Japanese and Latin to GCSE and has A Levels in Art, Design & Technology, Maths and Physics.
I'm terrible at languages. I can't learn vocabulary (possibly undiagnosed ADHD), so I'd have hated being forced to continue to fail.
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Society is starting to look exactly like what happens when we spend decades treating STEM as the only path worth investing in, while sidelining the humanities.
This isn't a criticism of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. We need them. Desperately. They should be well supported.
But we also need philosophy, history, literature, languages, ethics, the arts, and every discipline that wrestles with what it means to be human. We need people who can understand the human condition, recognise propaganda, interpret context, think critically about power, engage with complexity, and ask not only how the world works, but what kind of world we ought to build.
A society built only to solve technical problems eventually forgets how to solve human ones.
#Humanities #STEM #Education #CriticalThinking #Ethics #Democracy #Society
@thepurpleoctopus I studied philosophy in university,and was hired into Sun Microsystems as such. They needed someone with a deep background, to work between one of the founders and the stem-only programmers. And, to be fair, as a logician.
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@Colman I'm not from the anglosphere, but we called it just "natural sciences". The local term for STEM then was MINT (Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaften und Technik).
I usually still use the term Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) in regular speech, but it doesn't translate that well to English directly.
That said, I do agree with you, and I would use a different term than STEM if I did not mean to highlight everything that came with the term.
@thepurpleoctopus @Colman With tongue just slightly in cheek, I talk about the sciences as "natural philosophy"
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@Frantasaur @thepurpleoctopus humanities also means communication, not the technical side, but the wording, the influence, the way we communicate difficult and complex subjects. And it looks like there is great need of it. What we receive is mostly advertising and not information any longer.
@energisch_ @thepurpleoctopus the end game of big tech right now seems to be to flood the world with LLM generated content that echoes the same patterns as human language, but the intentionality of what is being communicated is gone. Real communication is also getting lost in this flood.
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@thepurpleoctopus @Colman With tongue just slightly in cheek, I talk about the sciences as "natural philosophy"
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@energisch_ @thepurpleoctopus the end game of big tech right now seems to be to flood the world with LLM generated content that echoes the same patterns as human language, but the intentionality of what is being communicated is gone. Real communication is also getting lost in this flood.
@Frantasaur That's true, but it is only an increase of disinformation what we got before and this disinformation has been placed and used intentionally by people to get control of economy and politics. IMHO it is a big criminal movement. With no rules. It is like the pioneer days of fossil fuel industry. @thepurpleoctopus
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@energisch_ @thepurpleoctopus the end game of big tech right now seems to be to flood the world with LLM generated content that echoes the same patterns as human language, but the intentionality of what is being communicated is gone. Real communication is also getting lost in this flood.
@Frantasaur @energisch_ Oh, good point. More fuel for my thoughts, thank you
And I wonder if this stems (no pun intended) from certain perception of the humanities as "the talking subjects" that they try to replace it with literally just a babbling machine...
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@Frantasaur @energisch_ Oh, good point. More fuel for my thoughts, thank you
And I wonder if this stems (no pun intended) from certain perception of the humanities as "the talking subjects" that they try to replace it with literally just a babbling machine...
@thepurpleoctopus Certainly the case. They try to harm research of investigative journalism at every turn. The more damage they can to to important media the better they can control and set the agenda. @Frantasaur
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