<p>Agreed. The point that derives from this importance is that there are different disciplines of study, each of which study something of “nature.”</p>
<p>Another example is weather. We certainly understand the “physics” that underlie how wind occurs, what causes it, diffusion of molecules, movement of heat, but these are not all of nature. There is also condensation, precipitation, air currents, etc. that, though we understand the concepts underlying it, we still do not understand the final outcome of it. We can’t predict the weather accurately or know for sure in what direction a hurricane will drive, yet we understand all the physics behind it and how it develops and gets to wherever it is (whether that be location or development (tornadoes)).</p>
<p>Okay, it’s great that everybody is so enamored of their science major(s)–and can speak about it (them) with such passion.</p>
<p>However, as a former math major (for two years) who then switched into a business (accounting and finance and operations management majors) degree, I have to tell you a few things I found interesting:</p>
<p>(1) some business courses are much more difficult than 3rd semester differential calculus (international tax accounting, for one)</p>
<p>(2) the usefulness of what I learned in my advanced math classes is almost nil compared to what I learned in almost any business class in terms of what I use in my career; and</p>
<p>(3) by far and away, classes in music composition or artistic creations (that involve truly original creations) are much more difficult than any major (business or engineering or math or physics) that doesn’t necessarily require new original thought–mostly because this was never taught at any time in high school.</p>
<p>I guess the sciences, if I had to choose. Vocational majors like engineering and accounting just seem kind of mediocre, while liberal arts majors seem kind of useless. Not that I actually judge people by their major.</p>
<p>1) First, I’d like to say that the comparison must be made on a whole-basis; business-classes overall vs. insert technical major-classes overall. The word “some” doesn’t provide much description to compare & contrast. In fact, speaking of “some,” could you quantify this for us based on your personal experience? Secondly, very many would not deem differential calculus as difficult (not a personal reference). </p>
<p>2,3) A math major would of course seem to hold the most minimal (oxymoron?) practicality & usefulness in our everyday lives. This should be obvious since all it is are numbers. Throw in various engineering disciplines, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology, neuroscience, etc. and you’re on a different plane. As well, technical majors certainly do require original thought - in fact, this is what underlies it all. To truly study & understand it, it requires effort in thinking by yourself, and if you go ahead for a graduate degree you’ll be taking part in research, which is completely original thought.</p>
<p>From what I’m seeing, a lot of your opinions are sheltered by personal bias due to your individual/unique experiences with the two subjects, coupled by your individual personality (maybe engineering just wasn’t for you, or didn’t intrigue you, or whatever). Just my observation.</p>
<p>this is an exaggeration. when you are studying classical electromagnetism, linear algebra, or semiconductor physics, you are learning things that other people have discovered. in your homeworks and on exams you do problems whose answers have already been figured out. all you need to do is to swallow theory . . . no original thought required!</p>
<p>^^ This is wrong. The above requires the student to actively think and reason in order to use a concept to solve a problem. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I’d argue that many (not all) non-technical classes simply require the student to memorize texts and repeat that information in the form of essays and long-answer exams.</p>
<p>Winbacker is right in line. Every new problem is fresh and every new problem must be approached in a unique way different from neighboring problems, which requires you to think by yourself. The fact that there IS an answer doesn’t mean you are not thinking on your own. If you wanted to argue this point then you would have to discredit Newton. The laws of inertia have always been true/existent, Newton just described it - same thing. And as I said, graduate degrees require that you take part in research (and if you’re pursuing a PhD, the research project must be self-proposed - aka your own). Research is all about originality - that is the basis of it. A serious undergraduate student would take part in teams to work on engineering projects. Developing these projects, whether it be a robot, vehicle, bridge, etc., requires a compilation of individuals thinking on their own, applying the knowledge that they have learned in class - robot: EE to implement the circuits, CompE/CS to develop the programs necessary to run robot, ME to design the functionalities, ChE to figure out what materials are best to use (e.g. durability), etc.</p>
This is absurd. We know the physics behind all of those things, and if we had sufficiently powerful enough computers to gather up every bit of data, we could accurately predict what will happen. Problem is, no one’s really figured out a good (and economical) way to do that. This is in the same way that silence_kit was describing most biophysics systems… it would be very difficult with our current technology to find a good reason to get all this processing power and focus it on a small but fiendishly complex system.</p>
<p>Things like thought are explainable by physics. As I mentioned in my earlier post, it’s a system that is there and we know roughly what it will turn out to actually be like. We get surprised sometimes, but that means nothing. Everything always turns out to be based on the laws of physics and we use mathematics to help ourselves figure it all out. When you said that we need to study other ‘fields’ such as organs, tissue, and other biology sort of sciences, you must realize that at the most fundamental level, this is physics.</p>
<p>To whoever mentioned it, there are particles that were predicted by mathematics before they were actually discovered. I’ll give you one of the best examples: Dirac’s equation, which essentially predicted the existence of antimatter particles. There are a lot of cases like this, and so we can say that if it is sensible enough, then we choose to believe in it enough to try and test it out experimentally. Of course, just because your experimental results concur with your theoretical predictions doesn’t mean that your theory is correct or if it’s giving the right explanation of the phenomena. But we have to put our faith in something until we see that it surely fails (or succeeds so well that the resulting explanations are irrefutable in any case), that’s how science progresses. I can’t say this enough however: we do not know what we don’t know… as in, it’s only logical to assume that we will know a hell of a lot more than we do now in 500 years, and that perhaps we will be closer to answering bigger questions than we can even imagine.</p>
<p>Even your argument of consciousness and thought aren’t entirely correct. We have PET scans and MRI scans that can detect what you may be doing inside that little nugget of yours by looking at the scans. We can change your moral tendencies by applying magnetic force to certain parts of your brain, and we can even instill a ‘divine’ presence by picking out another region of the brain. I’ll let you use your own imagination and let that idea evolve in regards to the future with one remark on my part: we are learning more and more in this field and the possibility of being able to describe and understand how our brains work and how to interpret conscious thoughts from the ‘crude electrical circuit system’ that we see now is very real. My personal belief is that it will happen, but it may not. However, preaching some arbitrary limits to science and mathematics is a very illogical argument. Time and time again, science and math has been proven to show things that we could never have even imagined before. In the distant past, someone said that the earth was flat, that the universe revolved around us, that airplanes will never work, that atoms are the smallest particles, etc. In a lot of cases, the critics have been proven wrong. And if they haven’t, that means science and mathematics just haven’t gotten to it yet.</p>
<p>To me, it’s silly and unreasonable to argue against it.</p>
<p>hadsed, you’re at a terrible misunderstanding and your entire post is a straw man argument. I feel it would be overwhelming to try to nit & pick at your post and clear up your misconceptions; I feel you are confused/lost as to the original aims of this debate (and also what was said) (or I am confused/lost as to your original aims of this debate - either or, they mean the same thing).</p>
<p>I am not in college, but I expect that I will respect all majors. Unless you’re in a specific major, you’re going to find its upper division classes difficult (I assume).</p>
<p>I really really respect people who double major in something that promises to make them very well off and something liberal artsy. That way, they don’t compromise on anything. They follow their intellectual passions thorough their liberal arts major and ensure that attending college pays them rich dividends in the future.</p>
<p>Hadsed, you are the winner of the debate for sure and it would be pointless to continue to argue with engineerhead as he isn’t arguing the same thing as you. To be honest, I don’t even know what he’s arguing. It’s funny isn’t it? How something can make so much to one person and no sense at all to the next. Can that be explained by physics? I would argue at the deepest, fundamental level it can, while it appears engineerhead would disagree.</p>
<p>Hadsed, basically I think what we’re both trying to say is that, although a subject like biology is its own subject, underlying all biological functions are physical interactions between matter, in other words, physics. Same with chemistry. Every chemical reaction is made up of physical matter and preceded by some type of physical energy. Chemistry, biology, and psychology are all their own subjects in a way, but none would exist without the physics that underlie them. However, physics can exist without biology or psychology. Is this making sense? Apparently engineerhead doesn’t quite get it, but does anyone else?</p>
<p>Well summed up Inmotion12, perhaps a few ad hominems here and there, eh - sorry, did calling you out nerve you a bit? Next time, apply the how vs. why correctly and there’ll be no problem wit cha I love stirring the pot. (Btw, I think your nose is a little brown… let me wipe that for ya.) Considering I started the debate, I’m pretty sure the understandings should revolve around me, not those who challenge it (aka I choose/chose the topic). If someone is trying to follow along and swerves off the road, then it’s on him not me.</p>
<p>Inmotion12, you are also extremely confused. Perhaps you should take the time to read over my posts again as well. You’re providing claims that I have already stated myself (just as hadsed has done), as if I disagree with them. </p>
<p>Btw, you didn’t answer me. Where’s the equation to determine why you banged your hand against the wall? An equation can’t determine the real-time decision making of individuals, each with unique personalities. Human spontaneity can be completely random. You may do something one way, but if you were to go back in time who’s to say you wouldn’t do it another way?</p>
<p>you assert this, but i don’t see why it has to be true.</p>
<p>just because we don’t understand exactly what goes on in the human brain at a physical level or because looking at what happens in the human brain at a physical level isn’t useful (this could be like looking at a microprocessor at the transistor level and trying to figure out what it does–not very insightful & easy to get lost in the complexity) doesn’t mean that these things don’t take place at a physical level.</p>
<p>i don’t see how you can say with any confidence scientifically that the brain isn’t and never will be reducible to physics.</p>
<p>also, winbacker & engineerhead, i’m a student getting really good grades in a top 5 undergraduate engineering program, and i can say that i am not expected to come up with original thought in my classes. you guys are way exaggerating what it takes to study engineering.</p>
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<p>there are only so many problems you can ask in a lot of engineering or science classes. for example, in quantum mechanics, there are only a few potentials that you can solve exactly. these are the ones that come up on tests & homework.</p>
<pre><code> The world we live in is immersed in the “original thought” of scientists and engineers. Buildings, inventions and processes that surround us have been created by the “original thought” that is produced by eng-sci principles.
This is in stark contrast to non-technical degrees where the student memorizes non-quantitative information and repeats it on essays/finals. Just because these courses allow for a significant degree of subjective interpretation without penalty, does not mean they are full of “original thought”; in this case “original thought” is largely meaningless.
</code></pre>
<p>Undergraduate students rarely invent, build, or design something original that advances science. Original scientific research that advances science takes place in graduate school and/or R&D environment. The purpose of undergrad is to teach one the basics of science so that later on one may advance scientific knowledge utilizing those basic tools. No one is reinventing or discovering a square wheel in undergrad.</p>
<p>The “non-technical” degrees have a similar approach. One is taught the basics in order to understand and analyze the current situation. History is not about regurgitating facts about the past but also about making connections from the past to the present to discover patterns. English, philosophy, sociology, etc. also utilize similar approaches (analyzing documents/literature/art/etc., finding patterns and meanings, applying applicable concepts to the present). </p>
<p>Many of you fail to see the connections between all areas of knowledge, and frankly, is not surprising. The current crop of scientists and engineers are highly trained automatons that wrongly believe their self-worth is determined by the difficulty of their training and the salary they are given (probably by a wealthy business major - irony). Honestly, we are not that special; let’s get over ourselves.</p>
<p>In any case, this thread has outlived its purpose.</p>
I love stirring the pot. (Btw, I think your nose is a little brown… let me wipe that for ya.) Considering I started the debate, I’m pretty sure the understandings should revolve around me, not those who challenge it (aka I choose/chose the topic). If someone is trying to follow along and swerves off the road, then it’s on him not me.</p>