The Hubris of the Humanities

Wow. Just Wow.

Among the engineer / science / tech geeks I know, we've discussed this a lot. In general, most of them feel that at a minimum calculus should be a national requirement for a college degree. Many science people I know believe that those who studied humanities still need to prove themselves... that a humanities major is "easy" since "all" you have to do is read and write; skills that students have been learning for years. In the sciences, they are still learning the building blocks for research in college AND the students usually need to turn out research for graduation. So, by the end of college, humanities and science majors are on par, but not at the beginning.

I do not completely agree with this sentiment. I was a humanities major, and realize the different skills that I had to acquire in college. However, I started out as a chemistry major and had a full year of science, math and computer science at the college level.

Now Kristof expounds the two class system, of which few people transcend: the science geeks and the humanities geeks. Some of the great quotes:

"Now you can't turn around in the Times newsroom without bumping into polyglots who come and go talking of Michelangelo. But it took forever to turn up someone confident in his calculus - in the science section."

"In the U.S. and most of the Western world, it's considered barbaric in educated circles to be unfamiliar with Plato or Monet or Dickens, but quite natural to be oblivious of quarks and chi-squares."

"But there's an even larger challenge than anti-intellectualism. And that's the skewed intellectualism of those who believe that a person can become sophisticated on a diet of poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes. That's the hubris of the humanities."

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