The smart-people blogosphere is all abuzz about questions from the French college entrance exams, with comments from Matt Yglesias, Dana Goldstein, and Kevin Drum, among others. The general tone of the commentary is summed up by Goldstein’s question: Could you ever imagine the SAT or ACT asking students to write an essay on such complex, […]
Category: Humanities
Sciences vs. Humanities, Primary vs. Secondary
Thoreau offers without qualification some observations about the different approach to books taken by sciences vs. humanities. Specifically, he notes that despite frequent claims that it is the Most Important Book Ever, nobody actually reads Newton’s Principia Mathematica This is totally different from humanities. In humanities, people make a point of reading the original thinkers. […]
Grammar Nerd Poll
This has nothing to do with the substance of Steve Benen’s post about conservative preparations for judicial confirmation hearings, but the quote he used from a New York Times article is the proximate cause for this Grammar Nerd Poll: What is the plural of “memorandum”? A) “Memorandums” B) “Memoranda” C) “More than one memorandum” D) […]
Malcolm Gladwell Is No Charles Barkley
I’m never quite sure what to make of Malcolm Gladwell. Lots of smart people seem to be favorably impressed by his writing and ideas, but whenever I actually read anything by him, there doesn’t seem to be much there. Take, for example, this New Yorker piece on basketball as a metaphor for innovation. As seems […]
The Art and Science of Naming Things
We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein’s Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts. One of the differences he mentioned was the […]
Strunk and White Is Not for You
I tagged Geoffrey Pullum’s rant against The Elements of Style for del.icio.us a few days back, because it struck me as interesting, but I didn’t have time to say more. In the subsequent days, I’ve seen a bunch of “Preach it, Brother Pullum!” responses, most recently from revere. I’ve also received the copyedited manuscript of […]
Definitions
My computer is starting to run slow in that way that indicates that either Microsoft has released an important update, or it’s just been on too long without a reboot. Either way, I need to clear some browser tabs before restarting, and there are a bunch of articles that I thought were too interesting to […]
Two Cultures in Beginnings and Endings
Not long after I posted my comments about textbook prices, I went to a panel discussion on teaching, where a social scientist made an interesting observation about the ways different disciplines interact with books. In the humanities, the whole point of the class is to discuss the books. Nothing useful can be done until and […]
Science Is What Makes Us Human
In his inaugural address, President Obama pledged to “restore science to its rightful place.” Following up on that, the Corporate Masters have launched the Rightful Place Project, asking bloggers, readers, and scientists to define the rightful place of science. Many of these responses will focus on narrow matters of policy, but as many have said […]
Why I Won’t Make It as a Philosopher
I think I missed this the first time around, but this weekend, I watched the bloggingheads conversation about quantum mechanics between Sean Carroll and David Albert. In it, David makes an extended argument against the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics (starting about 40:00 into the conversation). The problem is, I can’t quite figure out what […]