Comment by Crake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Crake | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, clearly critical thinking and the scientific method have nothing in common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking#Skills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Elements_of_...

Obviously, no scientist or engineer has ever stopped to ask themselves "why does it..." or "what if it doesn't actually do..." or "maybe it's not x, but y instead?"

It'd be wise to remember that the sciences were once called "natural philosophy."

Liberal arts courses on the other hand are mostly memorization and regurgitation of the ideology currently favored by the academia's current regime. Before they moved to "~ studies" majors, liberal arts majors used to study the works written and drawn by scientists and mathematicians and engineers. It's easy to see why the humanities would prefer "critical thinking" to be redefined as something fuzzy enough to require no original thought or even an attempt at reaching a logical conclusion.

I'm not a scientist, so it's harder to speak to that, but as an engineer, I can definitely say that engineers are in general more interested and more skilled at asking questions of "how" rather than questions of "why".

When I studied the humanities, I read Euclid, Galileo, Darwin, etc. The history of science is an essential part of the humanities. Unfortunately, it is not part of "STEM" in the sense that politicians use that term.

Scientific revolutions are definitely a case of "natural philosophy", but that differs dramatically from "normal science" as described, for example, in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I am likewise concerned that movement towards a jobs-oriented STEM curriculum will actually retard the progress of the sciences, by producing more functionaries and fewer deep-thinking scientists capable of innovation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science

Exactly.

One of the major discussions in my engineering program is that there isn't a "right" answer like there usually is in regular math.

Instead, there's a "best answer given the current circumstances and limitations."

It becomes entirely about the How and the Why.

In my experience at a college with a large engineering program, the S and M parts of STEM has a large emphasis on critical thinking and the TE do not. That's only one data-point though.

Also the school was so heavily STEM focused that I wouldn't trust any of the liberal arts students there to reason their way out of a paper-bag.

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