<p>You misunderstand my point. I never said time, patience, etc., are not important for what you want to do. My point is that whereas those are the components of writing advanced proofs that you can name, I can name quite more specific ones that have to do with the study of ancient languages, which makes the study of ancient languages more accessible to the generally educated person. I imagine there’s quite a bit of memorization involved, memorization being an easy to recognize component of intelligence that each of us has a firm grasp on in our daily lives, and hence are able to evaluate as a personal skill. Then there’s understanding the culture of the language, the component skills of which are probably not so distant from general reading comprehension and understanding contexts. These are not that foreign to me, and the activities of an ancient language expert don’t seem foreign either. Yet could you tell me what it’s like to understand complex math and be a mathematician? I don’t think you can, and that’s my point that your confidence in being able to be one may very well be unfounded, whereas a math major’s confidence in assessing his own skills vis-a-vis a language expert will be more justifiable.</p>
<p>Oh, and you obviously don’t know very much about the SAT.</p>
<p>Your not-so-subtle condescension is, at the moment, making me reconsider my decision to not minor in math (which will indeed cover higher-level proofs), despite the fact that doing so may likely result in the death of my sanity before I graduate. All this, simply to prove you wrong.</p>
<p>My mother will likely be pleased. You devil, you. ;)</p>
<p>Now if only I can take more than four classes a quarter.</p>
<p>TCBH: Modern art transcends the boundaries of human sense and imparts feelings and ideas directly to the audience through the, okay, I give up, there’s nothing I can defend about modern art.</p>
<p>So by the logic that math/science majors can do the coursework of other majors, and are therefore higher up in the “hierarchy,” does that mean that music, dance, and visual arts (animators, illustrators, and classical artists, NOT “modern” artists) are right up there with the math/science majors? They require unique skill sets that math/science and social science/fine arts majors generally wouldn’t have.</p>
<p>Great scientists who actually do any sort of real humanities work never identify themselves as exclusively “scientist” or “mathematician.”</p>
<p>My point is, people who seem to be good at both (according to you, scientists) are actually not scientists who are good at humanities. They are philosophers who are just better than most other philosophers.</p>
<p>@cormy3 – Wow I’m late to the *****-showing game. I think the reason you ticked so many people off is because of your complicit contention back on page 1 with Jane that Humanities and Social Science majors are “Pseudo-Intellectual” which sounds an AWFUL lot like saying that Math/Natural Science/Engineering majors are “better” than them. So they’re “Intellectuals” while we’re “Pseudo-Intellectuals.” I’m really surprised more people haven’t kinda…nailed you for this… you’re not the one who said it but it’s very implicit in your post that you’d agree to it.</p>
<p>You really think you’d be able to handle learning a complex ancient language? Alrighty Mr. God of College… support your position. I want a workable Translation of Linear A back here in a few years. Just a partial rosetta stone, doesn’t have to be the whole language, just a little bit of it. Don’t worry, I’ll wait</p>
<p>Meanwhile I’ll go on to get my Ph.D/Psy.D degrees in Clinical Neuropsychology and LGBT studies and be able to explain to you when you have a stroke affecting your substantia nigra from your work why it resulted in partial or complete Locked-In Syndrome and why the painkillers and anti-depressants they put you on pickled your nucleus accumbens, making them implicit “requirements for life.” Because you know… Psychology doesn’t have aspects of hard-science to it and we’re all just “Pseudo-Intellectuals” because our interests differ from yours. Your own insecurities around having to think critically/lend support to your arguments and your need to make yourself seem better than the rest of us is really telling… I could provide you with the name of a guy who’ll fix that right up for you, hush hush though… don’t worry, his name’s not Freud.</p>
<p>Or, the Philosopher-Kings could just tell you to…you know, stop being a wuss and face your death.</p>
<p>no, I agree with you, i have no problem with the math/sci core requirement at my school and have actually done fine with those classes. when i said “intensive math and science education” i meant, should we all become biomedical engineering majors despite our desired career path/interest. i’m not anti-math or science. especially since our country is so behind in those fields.</p>
<p>The SAT essay is worthless, that much is right. It has nearly zero predictive validity, which makes it pure rubbish as part of a test. It was a ploy used by the ETS to satisfy factions in the educational establishment that demanded the SAT include tasks akin to actual schoolwork. The motivation was to get away from the dead appearance of endless multiple choice questions, but the result was a useless test construct.</p>
<p>No matter, most colleges pay little heed to the entire Writing section, let alone the Essay portion. No damage done, except this reputational blemish in the eyes of naive yet mouthy critics like you.</p>
<p>The rest of the SAT, however, the Reading and Math, do a great job as predictors of college success. Together, they predict college GPA with as much accuracy as high school GPA. Quite a feat, if you consider the SAT is a 4 hour test, and high school GPA is a 4 year test.</p>
<p>Of course after they contribute to the humanities they no longer identify themselves exclusively as scientist or mathematician. What’s your point?</p>
<p>Bertrand Russell, math
Gottlob Frege, math and physics
Ludwig Wittgenstein, engineering
Rudolf Carnap, physics
Hilary Putnam, math
Q.V. Quine, math
Saul Kripke, math</p>
<p>These figures went on to make revolutionary contributions to philosophy. They all displayed extraordinary talents in the natural sciences while retaining those abilities in their later lives. They simply picked up and went to do philosophy. In the world of graduate school, a math/physics major can gain you acceptance into a philosophy PhD program. A philosophy major would have a hard time indeed applying to math or physics, or even fields like economics, PhD programs. Sorry buddy, but what these graduate schools are saying is that if you can excel in math, you almost certainly could have excelled in philosophy.</p>
<p>You misunderstand a very simple thing. It doesn’t matter about unique skill sets. If it were about skill sets, then every field has its own skill set, and everyone would be on par. Yet that wasn’t my point. I am talking about potential achievement despite skill set obstacles. Does the top math major have the potential to excel in english? Probably. Does the top english major have the potential to excel in math? Probably not.</p>
<p>Now let’s see what the analysis of your hypothetical should have been:</p>
<p>a. Does the arts major have the potential to excel in english? Probably.
b. Does the english major have the potential to excel in the arts? Probably not.</p>
<p>Arts > English</p>
<p>a. Does the arts major have the potential to excel in math? Probably not.
b. Does the math major have the potential to excel in the arts? Probably not.</p>
<p>Arts = Math</p>
<p>[ Arts = Math > English ]</p>
<p>Clearly, the arts are up there with math on a hierarchy. But would I put it up there on my hierarchy? I would have to answer no. There are two reasons.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In today’s world, the arts are uncommon enough as subjects of study that we may well have answered, in place of the haphazard conclusions drawn above, Arts ? English, and Arts ? Math. This would, obviously, screw everything up. There just isn’t enough exposure to the arts to answer with much confidence whether the math or english major has the potential to excel in them.</p></li>
<li><p>The previous problem was a technical one that could conceivably be overcome, perhaps by mandating all students take arts classes, and take them seriously. This second problem is more fundamental. In my view, despite the fact that the arts are also degree-earning college majors, the arts is very different from math or english. Essentially, I wouldn’t place arts on the hierarchy with math for the reason that I wouldn’t place arts on the hierarchy at all. Why? There is something about the arts that is orthogonal to the traditional academic disciplines. As such, I would feel uncomfortable ranking them on the same basis. Maybe an example would help illustrate my point: being left-handed and being a student. A left-handed person probably has greater potential to be a student than a student has to be a left-handed person. This is quite obvious. Yet would left-handedness be higher on a hierarchy than student-hood? Probably not, not unless you ignored common sense. Despite there existing a rather abstract relationship between the two, one which we can in fact know with great certainty, the two categories are simply too distant, too unrelated, too unalike, whatever, to be placed coherently on the same hierarchy. Same for the arts.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Those fields I listed next to their names? Those were their majors in college.</p>
<p>So what we have here is an abundance of natural science majors who transitioned nicely over to the humanities. Yet where are the humanities people who did the same to the sciences? Edward Witten was one, that was a very good example. Now let’s see something like a list.</p>
<p>Note that as of now, I’m making observations about the college majors. Though obviously involving people, as such a discussion must, I’ve said nothing intrinsic about the people who choose these majors. This is a thread about a hierarchy of majors, not of people, not of intelligences.</p>
<p>Stating that your claim is not true is not an assumption if I’m able to find at least one top english major who is able to excel in the maths.</p>
<p>You, however, seem to be making the claim that all humanities/social sciences major are inferior to math/science majors in any context, which is a position that needs far more backing than what you’ve already given.</p>