Against the liberal arts

Student Lounge College Life
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Oh yes, I would love to live in a society run only by technology, with no concept of virtue. That sounds just wonderful. :rolleyes: Also, shouldn’t you say TE society? As natural sciences and mathematics are essential branches of the liberal arts, both involving a general curriculum of wide-ranging fields as a foundation for education, it is amusing to hear you bashing liberal arts but extolling science and math. And you keep grabbing at “Womens studies,” but that’s a new, interdisciplinary liberal arts major not representative of the whole. More representative of liberal arts in general would be philosophy, mathematics, history, and physics.</p>

<p>Okay, allow me to demonstrate the necessity of philosophy by trying to make a society without philosophy. We’re going to go off and forge a new place, without liberal arts.</p>

<p>Okay, okay, a brand new society, a fresh start. Well, let’s see… First we need a government. Wait, we can’t have a philosophy of governance… No government, then. Wait, does that make us anarchists? Daaamn… At the very least, we need laws and maybe a court system. Legal philosophy? Nevermind. Okay, let’s put government aside for now.</p>

<p>We need culture. First up, language. What will we speak? Wait a second, that’s linguistics. Put that aside for now. Are we going to have a religion? No, we can’t have religion, that’s philosophy and theology. So no religion. But doesn’t that make us atheists? Can’t have that. Maybe we could just let people choose. No, no, that’s a philosophy of equality and religious tolerance. Let’s ignore the religious question for now.</p>

<p>An economy, we definitely need an economy. But didn’t we do away with social science? I guess we’ll just live in a primitive communal tribe model. No, no, that’s Primitive Communism! Can’t have economic philosophies seeping in. How about we just let everyone do what they want. No, that’s lassiez-faire! Forget economics for a while.</p>

<p>Johnny over there has a disease, where’s a doctor? Okay, there you are. What do you mean you don’t know anything about biology?? There must be some chemi-- no chemistry, either? I suppose we’ll have to go with the old healing plants method. Damn it, botany, too?! Well, maybe you can help Mike, he’s got some mental programs going on and could really use a-- psychologist… I see.</p>

<p>How should we treat each other? Are there human rights? No, that’s philosophy. Survival of the fittest out here. Does that make us Social Darwinists? Argh! Well, maybe if we knew the details of how past societies operated, we could see if there was a precedent in-- oh. History.</p>

<p>We’re not really a society with any of these things. Let’s get some people to study how we interact and how to best optimize these things. What we need are some… sociologists. Damn it. Okay, okay, we’re not much of a society, but we’re a group of engineers, and we’re ready to build!</p>

<p>Math? What’s math?</p>

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<p>LOL, BillyMc. :D</p>

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<p>BillyMC thinks he’s being really clever. i’m insulted by his post because he assumes that engineers and other important members of society have morals. you really think human rights won’t exist in a world w/o liberal arts majors? :rolleyes: get over YOURself. people like you are why engineering is getting so many budget cuts in our nation’s schools.</p>

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<p>wishwanderer, I think you missed his entire point.</p>

<p>Our world is governed by the intertwining philosophies of liberal arts and hard sciences. I don’t understand how you can dismiss all social sciences at once. What would our world be without economics to govern our markets, or political science to govern our legal systems? You talk about “gender studies” like it has the career equivalency of PoliSci, Econ, or international relations, but that’s simply not the case.</p>

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<p>Liberal Arts: Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences</p>

<p>Non-LA Majors: Business, Engineering, Agriculture</p>

<p>The Non-LA Majors rely heavily on Liberal Arts. While our society couldn’t be without agriculture and needs engineering, it also needs liberal arts.</p>

<p>Society - Liberal Arts = No Society</p>

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<p>your missing MY point BillyMC. of course everyone knows government economics etc are important. but guess what? the people forming the first governments in the world werent academics who spent have their lives studying government and economics. government and eco are simply human affairs and if you have a basic skill at making speeches and being decisive etc anyone can do them. </p>

<p>engineering, etc., on the other hand. no. everyone should receive a technical education whether they want to or not (which youll whine about) and then they can go on to become politicians or whatever else later and theyll be ALL THE BETTER for having studied something to make their minds get going. i bet many of your wonderful philosophers didnt spend that much time studying other peoples philosophy before they started writing. </p>

<p>my point is that the liberal arts DISCIPLINES THEMSELVES dont need to be abolished (i.e. obviously government linguistics w/e else) but people shouldnt be allowed to study them anymore because they can be performed by people with other educations. stop distorting my point to serve your wacko liberal viewpoint.</p>

<p>and your also ignoring the fact that most of the liberal arts majors i know are just in college to party and dont know what they want to do, but most engineers and some others know what they want to do, have internships lined up and even jobs etc etc. so quit ignoring the truth.</p>

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And Archimedes didn’t have a Master’s in Engineering…</p>

<p>Of course, who says government has improved since the first despotic ruler?</p>

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No, actually, they did.</p>

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I’ll alert the PhDs in History, Physics, Mathematics, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Chemistry, and Biology that they need to burn their degrees and go to a vocational school.</p>

<p>Society will be much better off.</p>

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You seem to be confusing “politically liberal” with “liberal arts.” I am not a political liberal. But what can go wrong with calling people who disagree with you “wacko”?</p>

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<p>Wasn’t one of your points earlier that liberal arts are useless because “all you do is study what other people have done?” You can’t rag on philosophy majors unless you’ve taken philosophy classes. Philosophy is DEDICATED to learning HOW we think, WHY we think, and why we behave the way we do. What makes you think that philosophy doesn’t “get your mind going?”</p>

<p>Some people’s brains aren’t designed to favor math and science. This is a basic principle of psychology. Saying that all of those people should be forced to learn engineering is an incredibly poor idea, because then we’d end up with a lot of engineers who struggle with what they’re doing. I would like for my society’s engineers to be those who naturally favor science and math, thanks. On the other hand, some of the engineering students I know are not exactly good in social situations (although I love them to pieces). Their brains can only think in terms of math and science, and they have difficulty relating to other people. If anything, I think they’d benefit from taking a little philosophy and learning how to think in different way.</p>

<p>We need people to study economics. If the people who ran our federal reserves simply “studied engineering,” we would have a fiscal collapse.</p>

<p>I’m a bio major, by the way.</p>

<p>PS…you clearly could use some critical thinking and skills of analysis Perhaps when you actually go to college, in a year and a half, you should take some liberal arts classes for yourself.</p>

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<p>sigh you must not be a very quick learner </p>

<p>here’s the sparknotes version of my point: </p>

<p>LIBERAL ARTS MAJORS: don’t have the mental capacity to perform the IMPORTANT jobs in the world, i.e. engineering, medicine, etc etc. but if we FORCE people when theyre young to love science and math they will have their minds expanded by the time they get to college. </p>

<p>Engineering/SOME Cs majors/doctors/etc: Can EASILY perform research in ANY of the fields you listed (history, sociology, bla bla bla) WITHOUT wasting time and money getting degrees in those things.</p>

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<p>(At wishwanderer - posted at same time as PaulandArt):</p>

<p>You are stereotyping 70% of our society as mentally incompetent. That says a lot more about you than about anyone else.</p>

<p>I am good at math and think I would have been good at engineering. I even considered it for a long time, so I’m pretty sure I have the “mental capacity” to be a doctor or an engineer. That being said, I decided I’d rather study ecological theory. I have friends who are also excellent at math and science, but would prefer to study another discipline and become lawyers. If you truly think that almost everyone else is below you, then you will lead a long and lonely life.</p>

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<p>Hahahahahaha, he’s not even trying to be taken seriously anymore.</p>

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Science and math are liberal arts fields. Medical doctors often major in biology and/or chemistry in undergrad… liberal arts. History and philosophy majors often go into law (pretty important). Math is integral for engineering, and I’m of the mind that a math major can handle engineering. Psychologists and sociologists help us understand ourselves and our society, which is pretty damn important.</p>

<p>And ideally, students would love all subjects from an early age. Though primary and secondary education is filled with liberal arts fields.</p>

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Yes… I’ll see a majority of engineers able to handle historical research and a lot of CS majors being better at sociology than sociology PhDs. Interesting…</p>

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He’s a high school student. And natural sciences are liberal arts, which he is condemning.</p>

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If you choose a doctor, make sure (s)he didn’t study any bio or chem. That would make him/her mentally inadequate.</p>

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Sweetie, :: pat pat pat on head:: run along now and come back when you know what you’re talking about. :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>OK, BEFORE THIS “DEBATE” GOES ANY FURTHER!</p>

<p>Note*</p>

<p>When an engineering student talks bad about “liberal arts” realize it doesn’t mean everything in the Liberal Arts college. Here’s a quick rundown:</p>

<p>Counts as Lib- art, music, women’s studies, literature, random culture classes, etc.</p>

<p>Does not count as Lib- Math, Science, Econ, Law, etc.</p>

<p>this needs to be understood before this goes any further. </p>

<p>(at least this is from my perspective. The OP is crazy so he may see differently.)</p>

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Counts as South America: Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, etc</p>

<p>Does not count as South America: Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, etc</p>

<p>At least this is how I see it.</p>

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</p>

<p>Not like it matters anyway. Even if we exclude math and science from the “liberal arts”, he’s still hopelessly wrong.</p>

<p>Also, I really love the tag list for this thread.</p>

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<p>think of it like this…</p>

<p>at Michigan its called the College of Liberal Sciences and the Arts, LSA</p>

<p>The S is cool
The A is not</p>

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<p>Conclusion: People that rail against Liberal Arts often don’t actually know what Liberal Arts are.</p>

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<p>There, that oughta do it.</p>

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<p>no…</p>

<p>We “rail” against liberal arts and not liberal sciences. Or just some liberal arts (if you consider them all liberal arts)</p>

<p>But, I don’t wanna be grouped with the OP. He’s too extremist for me.</p>