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Why Engineering Freshmen Should Take Humanities Courses
Lasrick sends in an article from John Horgan at Scientific American explaining why he thinks engineering freshmen should make a bit of space in their course-load for the humanities. Quoting:
"But it is precisely because science is so powerful that we need the humanities now more than ever. In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you're given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, 'This is how things are.' They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt and skepticism. The humanities are subversive. They undermine the claims of all authorities, whether political, religious or scientific. This skepticism is especially important when it comes to claims about humanity, about what we are, where we came from, and even what we can be and should be. Science has replaced religion as our main source of answers to these questions. Science has told us a lot about ourselves, and we’re learning more every day. But the humanities remind us that we have an enormous capacity for deluding ourselves."
Scientists should take courses on Rational Thinking. That's basically what you're after here, and it has the advantage of specifically targetting the problems you are trying to address, rather than taking the shotgun approach and trying to get every STEM student to become a Renaissance Man.
We do in Canada. Granted the course was a simple introduction, but it sure helped me understand the legal system and its underpinnings.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Humanities is religion for people who don't believe in a deity.
This may be the case in 101 classes. This is definitely not the case in upper level humanities classes. I majored in Philosophy and Computer Science. My Philosophy courses were much more rigorous in terms of logic and discrete mathematics than anything I learned in CS. My senior thesis was in the field of genetics, and it had nothing to do with ethics or other periphery issues. I studied under a man who was the protege of Thomas Kuhn, who if you were not aware, was a pretty big deal in science... as a philosopher.