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# 001 Liberal Arts Major
If you take out spaces and such, I've now written half a Master's thesis on this topic. What do I win? Or, perhaps more appropriately, what do you win for reading it all?
Liberal Arts Major
Whoa, hey now Ogor, are you saying that the collected works of Dickens is not crucial to being able to determine the components of acceleration in a plane curve, as well as determining its curvature, at a given time?
>_>
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
This is totally anecdotal, but for me personally, having done both, I'd much, much rather tackle math on my own than literature.
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"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
This is all well and good. But the statement was more existential than anything else: reading is functionally a unilateral action and so individuals can do it just fine. They may prefer to do it in groups or with a professor, and they might be able to get more by doing so, but regardless they can still do it on their own. Some people are just flat out unable to do math without guidance. And it's truly the odd ball that can teach themselves how to write proofs well.
For me, I don't too much care for literature in the classroom setting. One of my classes last year, Masterpieces of Scandinavian Literature, exemplified why: during a discussion of Dr. Glas, which tells the story of a lunatic who poisons some dude in order to "save" the dude's cheating wife, some were maintaining that Dr. Glas was some kind of feminist hero instead of, you know, a sociopath. Boggles the mind. But anyway, it's having to be subjected to things like that that turn me away. Math, though, is a totally different story. Sure, when you have an incompetent teacher it's rough. But compare teaching yourself math to learning math from someone who happens to be competent at both math and teaching, especially when proofs enter the picture, and it's a whole different ball game.
I taught myself calculus through integration, for instance, but I only really appreciated it when I took calculus III in college and had what was essentially a real analysis approach to the topic. Sure, all of that material was available online or in books I could get online. Yet it's one thing to scour through books for an illustrious depiction of limits and neighborhoods and it's another thing to have your professor sketch out some limits in R3 on Mathematica while explaining in great detail the intuition behind the notion of a neighborhood.
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
And - from the perspective of society - it's better for them to adopt this viewpoint in a setting where there's no one to offer a differing opinion? <_<
I agree that literature classes generally suck, but I'd also argue that when you do it on your own, you're just reading - there's no analysis involved, at least none that is meaningful. Again, just based on my personal experiences - for all I know there are people who get a lot out of doing it on their own.
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"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
It's hard to determine what is and isn't better from the "perspective of society", especially in such an insular situation where it's unclear what the social benefit might be from any perspective. Otherwise, I understand what you're saying, however, I question the value of opposition in a classroom setting. I mean, even in this particular instance I was unable to sway the crazies from their crazy opinions, classroom and all. Another factor is the dynamic between group and personal activity: participation is not evenly distributed, and those most likely to speak out in class are also those most certain of their opinions. It takes a specific setting to get people to (a) care about forming new opinions and (b) open to actually doing so. The students, the professor, and the forum structure all have to be predisposed to this. How many non-English majors go into a literature class and actually think "Gee, today I'm going to open my mind to new perspectives!"? Hell, how many English majors do that?
Actually, age, maturity, and background play a role in this as well. Freshman are going to be more headstrong and set in their views of literature than, say, a middle-aged person taking the class specifically to broaden their horizons. But how many middle-aged people are getting BAs?
I'm not disputing the potential value of literature classes. They have value. Some people - the Dr. Glas = Xena, Warrior Princess people - don't know how to take advantage of them. Others just aren't interested in them. Still others will use them to their full potential. The key, like I said above, is ability.
Everyone reads. Some people read better or worse than others, yes, but if you have the patience and the desire you can slog through even something as painful as Being and Time. Maybe you won't understand much of it. But if you're literate you'll at least get the title. On the other hand, not everyone has the ability to learn math on their own. Unless they have someone explain it to them and work with them enough concepts like y = x^2 => a parabola will go way over their heads. And still, there are people who can "learn" math solo but can't grasp it on an intuitive level from reading and practice alone: for instance, people who could tell you what a prime number is, but who would have trouble producing or even understanding a proof of infinite primes. This is the parallel to the readers who don't analyze or really understand what they're reading.
But for math, in addition to these guys, you also have people who are just stone cold to learning math on their own. The parallel to this quality in literature is called illiteracy.
I'd also argue that when you do it on your own, you're just reading - there's no analysis involved, at least none that is meaningful. Again, just based on my personal experiences - for all I know there are people who get a lot out of doing it on their own.
This is probably true - even the most erudite readers don't always analyze what they read. But then again, some do. And some books you just can't help but analyze. Try reading The Da Vinci Code without wondering who reads this stuff. Again though, this is tangential to the issue.
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu