11–20 of 78 posts
> Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking someone to explain a very specific thing (one particular physical law), and i…
Since the Industrial Revolution, scientific progress has far outstripped progress in the humanities. We've gotten very good at answering the how, but not the why (or why not).
The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution (1959) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30203398 - Feb 2022 (2 comments)
C.P. Snow – The Two Cultures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328386 - March 2019 (1 comment)
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568791 - Sept 2016 (1 comment)
The Two Cultures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6560085 - Oct 2013 (80 comments)
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025501 - Jan 2010 (1 comment)
Are We Beyond the Two Cultures? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598451 - May 2009 (1 comment)
> Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking someone to explain a very specific thing (one particular physical law), and i…
Frankly if you take a bunch of actual physics students out of the crowd immediately after having taken their final exam in statistical mechanics and ask them that same question, my guess is you'd only see about 50% of them give a confident and correct answer.
So... yeah. If you instead ask a bunch of random people "can anyone explain the idea of conservation of energy?" (the first law, of course), you're going to do much better.
>I remember G.H. Hardy remarking to me in the 30's with some mild puzzlement: 'Have you noticed how the word "intellectual" is used nowadays? There seems to be a new definition that doesn't include Rutherford or Eddington or Dirac or Adrian or me.'
Its scientists complaining about not being accepted by the "cool kids". A tale as old as time.
Related: The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution (1959) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30203398 - Feb 2022 (2 comments) C.P. Snow – The Two Cultures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328386 - March 2019 (1 comment) The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568791 - Sept 2016 (1 comment) The Two Cultures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65…
This is starting to trend in the opposite direction, however I find the problem is more along these lines: https://massivesci.com/articles/chaos-in-the-brickyard-comic...
> Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking someone to explain a very specific thing (one particular physical law), and i…
The worst thing we do is fail to teach statistics to liberal arts majors. Then, as citizens, they make obvious mistakes about the relative costs and effects of things they advocate for or are against, and can be easily manipulated in any direction with attacks on their availability heuristics.
We'd study some essays like Snow's "The Two Cultures" and create reports on contemporary artists before breaking up into groups consisting of both engineering and art students with the goal of designing and implementing kinetic art. Coming from the engineering side, it was fun for me to get the chance to experience an academic art setting, and I think the class overall helped me overcome being immediately dismissive of more conceptual art as well as showing me tools and the frame of mind to approach and appreciate art.
For the artists, I think the goal of our professor was to build some technical literacy, and provide them with the technology that could inspire them, expanding their breadth of what could be feasibly done.
Though like this essay, the relationship between the two cultures could seem like it would turn adversarial or pretentious or dismissive, but I believe everyone in the class had a great time, and were all just excited to create things together.