Stephen Downes
Stephen's Web
Are We Beyond the Two Cultures?
I have always considered it one of my strengths that I have a scientific knowledge that is almost the equal of my conceptual and philosophical knowledge. C.P. Snow emphasized the importance of this fifty years ago (when I was a child of 30 days): "At some point scientists had ceased to be considered intellectuals, Snow noted, and though any educated person was required to know Shakespeare, almost none knew the second law of thermodynamics." See also John Connell. My introduction to the idea was from Heinlein's Notebooks of Lazarus Long: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects!" (please don't write to complain about the reference; it's Heinlein and it was the 1950s. 'Nuff said). Unattributed, Seed, May 8, 2009 10:47 a.m.. [Link] [Tags: Patents] [Previous][Next]Comments
Re: Are We Beyond the Two Cultures?
Hi Stephen,
No complaint here - this quote is from "Time Enough for Love" by Heinlein.
Best wishes,
Don [Comment]
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Re: Are We Beyond the Two Cultures?
It has gotten to the point that now most people don't know what questions to ask about a grade school physics problem.
Gravitational Collapse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXAerZUw4Wc
How do you build a 1360 foot skyscraper without figuring out how much steel and concrete to put on every level? Why do people expect it to be possible to figure out whether or not a NORMAL airliner can destroy it in less than 2 hours without that information?
And yet now we can make NETBOOK computers more powerful than the mainframes from the 1980s for less than $300. So how many people can figure out what to do with technology this powerful?
40 years after the Moon landing and our so called scientists don't talk about the Planned Obsolescence of automobiles and our economists don't tell consumers how much they have lost on the depreciation of that garbage. John Kenneth Galbraith talked about PO in 1959 also.
psik [Comment]
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