Comment by ggggtez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggggtez | Hacker News Reader

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There is an issue of terminology happening here. While Georgia Tech might have a "Liberal Arts College", that's not the same thing as a "Liberal Arts degree".

From wikipedia: "There is no formal definition of liberal arts college".

Here's someone else explaining better than I can: "A bachelor's degree in liberal arts means that the courses you take will be in general areas of study such as philosophy, mathematics, literature, art history, or languages, rather than in applied or specialized fields."

If you think that Biochemistry is a "liberal arts degree" then you've really misunderstood what the above poster was talking about. Biochemistry is a specialized field, and no one would consider that a liberal arts subject.

If it helps, you want to be looking towards degrees like: psychology, business, literature, arts, sociology, women's studies, languages, history, political science... Does this mean these degrees will never touch math? By no means! But it's foolish to think the level of mathematical and technical rigor would be similar to a degree in, say, Physics.

Generally speaking, even a Physics student will take some liberal arts classes as electives, as part of a "liberal arts education"; what we might call well-rounded. But while the physics student might read a few books and find it interesting, and keep that as part of them for the rest of their life... it's generally not the case that a student of Fine Arts is going to take Calculus and occasionally wistfully perform derivatives.

STEM people have a real blind spot with this.

Who runs the world? Not STEM people. Most politicians have a legal and/or liberal background. They may also have a background in STEM - particularly likely in Europe, less so in the US - but you get nowhere in politics without studying and understanding foundational liberal arts skills such as rhetoric, persuasion, and public debate.

The idea that liberal arts majors spend their entire time writing on essentially useless activities - like post-structural critiques of famous literature - is hilariously naive.

Some liberal arts academics do indeed do this, but that's because the liberal arts have pure and applied elements. Just like STEM. And STEM academics also spend their time on wildly impractical theoretical pastimes.

But at the applied end, the liberal arts run the planet. They don't keep the lights on - engineers do that - but they set the policy goals and define the political, economic, moral, and philosophical orthodoxies that virtually everyone conforms to, whether or not they're consciously aware of it.

> you get nowhere in politics without studying and understanding foundational liberal arts skills such as rhetoric, persuasion, and public debate

I’m skeptical that attainment of political power is easily attributed to a good liberal arts education. I think desire for power, some intelligence, and a relaxed relationship with principles go a long way. Well-crafted rhetoric...eh.

A lot of practice comes a long way. A few truly top politicians were also actors. (Not necessarily very good ones.)

Funnily enough, most politicians* are from law backgrounds... which while it falls on the 'arts' side of the spectrum is definitely a specialized field and vocation.

I suspect that the dichotomy isn't so much 'STEM vs Arts' but 'Accountable vs Unaccountable'. Most STEM fields are accountable to reality and future employers, and law is similarly accountable to rival scholars of law and employers of new lawyers. That makes law a rather noteworthy outlier in the liberal arts.

*in western countries

And quite a few politicians have an equivalent of economics degree.

Those fields are in neighborhood of STEM more than old "liberal arts" standard of language, foreign language, art (painting or music) and history. (Note: no ethics or philosophy.)

Physics, math, chemistry, logic, biology, history, geography, geology, astronomy, even economics are "accountable to reality". They are all liberal arts. Your idea of liberal arts is incomplete.

Are you accepting the dichotomy of STEM and Liberal Arts, and then categorising math as a liberal art?

Do you know the M in STEM stands for 'Mathematics'?

I think it's pretty clear from my posts that I'm not accepting this dichotomy - the "S" is science. Most sciences and math are firmly in the realm of liberal arts. I believe the argument is over how much T & E there needs to be in school and college education.

> even a Physics student will take some liberal arts classes as electives

I think you're missing my point. In the North American definition of the term, a physics degree is also a liberal arts degree. Physics is a natural science. North American liberal arts colleges offer physics degrees.

Liberal arts education is in contrast to applied or technical educations. For example, aerospace engineering, which is physics applied to a specialized domain.

Your definition of liberal arts seems to be "anything that doesn't involve too much math." Which is a weird kind of snobbery. (I'm speaking as an engineer btw).

> even a Physics student will take some liberal arts classes as electives

ok, yes, STEM students study a little bit liberal arts

> generally not the case that a student of Fine Arts is going to take Calculus

But now you're asking a liberal arts student to study Calculus and derivatives, which are not easy topics and not something that useful in day to day life.

This is a blatantly double standard in your argument. Few STEM students go that deep in liberal arts to the "level of Calculus". It's like asking a STEM student to read Kant.

"level of Calculus" is not very deep, Calculus is a first year college math course at best, most who study stem take it already in high school, it is hard to get much shallower than that and still call it a college course.

one could say Kant isn't very deep either, you study in your first year philosophy. but few STEM students know about it.

Unlike Kant, knowing calculus will help you with balancing books. (And many other useful real world stuff.)

If you want to add something useful to the mix, try law, ethics (technically a subset of philosophy), logic (as analysis and rationality, manipulation) and acting. Group work can be exercised in any field, therefore including basic management.

> knowing calculus will help you with balancing books.

How? I can see how calculus is used in quantitative finance, but double-entry bookkeeping predates the invention of calculus.

I did basic accounting without needing any calculus. In fact I only used calculus after trying some machine learning. 90% of the population doesn't use calculus in their life.

>But now you're asking a liberal arts student to study Calculus and derivatives, which are not easy topics and not something that useful in day to day life.

Calculus is a high school subject where I live, at least single variable calculus, it's not that hard.

neither is Kant or Marx, both studied in high school where I live, but STEM students usually know nothing about it.

Maybe my education doesn't mirror most STEM people's, but I took philosophy, literature, history, etc. courses as part of my Bioengineering degree. I could also take capstone courses from various arts programs as electives, despite them being "deep in liberal arts". I enjoyed those courses for the most part, and I think we should have STEM students reading Kant. I don't agree with the STEM or nothing argument, but baseline statistics and classical science should be a requirement for everyone.

In my experience, the double standard usually goes the other way.

Many of the liberal arts electives I could choose from (as a physics major) were foundational requirements in that major. For example, in a literature class I took, the instructor was surprised many of us had not also taken Literary Criticism 101.

On the other hand, an English major friend of mine was able to take a physics course nicknamed "Physics for Poets", where rounding g to 10m/s/s was acceptable.

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