Jan. 24 2014
My name is Xin Gao. I am new here are LaGuardia as an Assistant Professor in the Natural Sciences Department, teaching Physics.
Students in my classes are mostly engineer or Math and Science majors. Most of them have pretty good science and math literacy. I am not sure if students feel a tension between Science/Math and the humanities. I personally love literature and do not feel these two areas conflict with each other. The digital tools actually makes it easy for me to read. There are many free books online. Instead of carrying a heavy book in my handbag. I just open an app in my cellphone and start reading whatever I like on my way to work/home. Without these tools, I would not be able to spare time to read this much.
For students, I think digital tools will do the same to them. No matter the student is a Humanities major or a Science major, it is only easier for them to pick up some knowledge from the other side with today's new technological gadgets.
I think when people say "two cultures", they mean the way scientists think maybe different from the way humanists think. It is possibly true. But it doesn't mean these two thinking methods conflicts with each other. I truly believe one can be both rational and perceptual. It just depends on the situations. That's also why great scientist as Einstein can play the violin very well. In this sense, "two cultures" do not only conflict with each other, but also compliment each other.
We all have potentials. We just need to explore them and give them the opportunities to develop.
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ReplyDeleteI think you're right that today, this tension has largely disappeared. On the other hand, I have many students (not in STEM majors) who are very much math-phobic. Your observation that today's e-readers make it easier to read books is also interesting -- today even a scientist can carry around a library of humanities books, but in the past -- this is historically true -- one's library of the 'classics' was much more specialized; it created the identity of a the solitary humanist thinker, reading away amidst his or her collection of old texts. (Don't we think of humanists living in libraries, scientists in labs?) Today, even the spaces are more porous thanks to our active online lives. Finally, there is a fairly radical version of digital humanities which questions the need for libraries at all -- the vision is to have the library exist all around us, in immersive, connected environments (employing something like Augmented Reality, AR).... But perhaps having an e-reader on the train is already a good start toward dismantling the two physical spaces of the traditional 'two cultures'....
ReplyDeleteThank you, Richard, for the comment. I think this digital library thing really makes it easier to see what are the popular issues/topics people are concerned in a given period. It could be very useful to sociologist or others Humanists. There is definitely great potential in this area.
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