[HN Gopher] The Two Cultures ___________________________________________________________________ The Two Cultures Author : raviksharma Score : 40 points Date : 2023-05-11 20:44 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | ugh7 wrote: | [flagged] | ZunarJ5 wrote: | This is starting to trend in the opposite direction, however I | find the problem is more along these lines: | https://massivesci.com/articles/chaos-in-the-brickyard-comic... | prottog wrote: | Since the Industrial Revolution, scientific progress has far | outstripped progress in the humanities. We've gotten very good at | answering the how, but not the why (or why not). | PeterWhittaker wrote: | I guess that depends on your POV: I'm pretty much a | reductionist, so I find the various hypotheses re where the | universe and life come from to be quite compelling. | | There is no why, really. | | The more interesting question revolves around should, from an | ethical/moral perspective. The analytic tradition so favoured | in the UK since Hume has been shown to be cracked (read, e.g., | The Women Are Up To Something). Since WWII, progress has been | made on that question, but Hume's acolytes still cling dearly | to mind, perhaps because of that same reductionism. | pessimizer wrote: | The humanities were discarded for entertainment and marketing, | and the criticism of entertainment and marketing, ultimately | based on predicting/motivating sales and attempting to explain | when those sales predictions turn out to be wrong. | pitched wrote: | > So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the | majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about | as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have | had. | | This is a very nice way to try and explain Dilbert-style Pointy | Haired Bosses. | hammyhavoc wrote: | [flagged] | karaterobot wrote: | > Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company | how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. | The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking | something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a | work of Shakespeare's? | | But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking | someone to _explain_ a very specific thing (one particular | physical law), and in the other you 're asking if they have been | _exposed_ to any example from a large set of things (any of | Shakespeare 's plays). If he'd asked "how many of you have | _heard_ of the Second Law of Thermodynamics ", or if he'd asked | "how many of you can describe the plot of Coriolanus" the | questions would be closer to equivalent. | | Nitpicky, but relevant in the sense that it's not a fair example | as originally stated. | M3L0NM4N wrote: | I don't think that's nitpicky, I think that's a very clear | flaw. | jameshart wrote: | I think Snow is assuming that given that audience (academics | educated in the traditional humanities) that if someone affirms | they have 'read' something they can be assumed to also know | what that thing was about. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-11 23:00 UTC)