I recall Stephen Fry's great comments on Steve Job's "Apple stands at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts." statement.

But it has always bothered me that the age of reason also means the age when the scientific principle and liberal arts not only split but often end up with an "us vs. them" relationship.

This may be one of the least coherent and strangest things I've ever tried to express on the Internet. But I suspect that if we as a civilization were not capable of making a distinction between the hard sciences and the liberal arts, then Steve Jobs would have sought early medical treatment and would be alive today and for many years more.

Allow me to try and explain. The leading smart people used to be expected to know both the "science" of the day and the arts.

But then we get the age of reason and people start to specialize in one or the other, but rarely both. And we do end up with two separate and often defined against each other areas of knowledge.

Does this make sense? Just google image search for Millau Viaduct and tell me that product of engineering isn't also art.

I think the world has lost something by this split. I think engineering and science have lost a bit to. But I also suspect the liberal arts have lost a lot by not requiring a thorough knowledge of the hard science as a foundation.

Hell, I wish doctors were required to learn and know A LOT more math and statistics.

Somewhat ironically math is still considered an art at our universities.

But by not requiring a deep, and I mean deep knowledge of hard science for any liberal arts degree, our great institutions have created an artificial separation between learned people.

And there's also this distinct sense of mystique, an accidentally created legend about non-science "knowledge". This sense that the demon haunted world contains nuggets of powerful knowledge which would be evaporated if the light of the candle that is science would shine on them.

This mythical belief plagues society in surprising ways.

I think Steve Jobs decision to first try "alternative medicine" is party because of this.

And while every typical western (North America and Europe) university has "core" requirements, I think that's a joke. I think if instead everyone had to learn an almost equal share of hard science and liberal arts for any degree, then we'd have a better civilization.