<p>At first I got kind of scared with the 12 humanities term requirements. Now I realized, however, it's not as bad as it seemed. I looked up the courses and many of them were something in the lines of</p>
<p>"History of astronomical sciences"
"Science and Law."</p>
<p>My first question is, (1) can you go along and chose something like 10 of these "humanities" courses that directly relate to science. I am not a big fan of, for example, history (and the essays that go with it), but I would be interested in the a course of, idk, Renaissance science history or something.</p>
<p>(2) Also, is there a specific humanities class that teaches you technical language and gives you tips / teaches you to properly write and format scientific research papers, investigations or reports. </p>
<p>(3) Finally, do economics count as a humanities course =P? Thanks.</p>
<p>1) No- you have to take at least 4 “social sciences” like economics. You can take a fair amount of HPS (History and Philosophy of Science) courses though.</p>
<p>2) Yes- these aren’t included in the 12 hum requirement. Each division has its own- for engineers there is E10 (technical writing) and E11 (technical presentations)- I may have the number backwards there. I know math has its own, and I believe chem does as well.</p>
<p>For an in-depth treatment of what, exactly, the 12-course/108-unit requirement involves, refer to the Caltech Catalog, available online [url=<a href=“http://pr.caltech.edu/catalog/pdf/catalog_08_09.pdf]here[/url”>http://pr.caltech.edu/catalog/pdf/catalog_08_09.pdf]here[/url</a>]. The explanation of the H&SS requirements are on pages 89 and 90 of that pdf, in the section “Information for Undergraduate Students”, subsection “Graduation Requirements, All Options”, subsubsection “Core Institute Requirements, All Options”, subsubsubsection “Humanities and Social Sciences Requirements”, subsubsubsubsection “just kidding, there isn’t a subsubsubsubsection”.</p>
<p>If you want to take the most science-y humanities possible, you definitely can have that at Caltech. You can take econ courses that are just about fixed point theorems and convex optimization in funny spaces (Ec 121ab, the game theory class,…) to fulfill the social science requirement (no joke; they are math classes). And as for the humanities, if you focus on technical (i.e. analytic) philosophy and the history and philosophy of science, once again you can pretty much avoid the “fluff” – if you’re thinking about things like poetry and essays about the Magna Carta.</p>
<p>That said, some of the fluff is pretty good too, if you change your mind… :-D.</p>
<p>You’re right of course, Ben, as always. My son is a student there now, and the economics courses are very much math. And alot of the humanities classes are terrific, and taught by some extremely smart, interesting, and accomplished professors. I found it interesting that recently an economics professsor was lead investigator in a paper published in Science.</p>