More on liberal arts etc

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
> Date: June 27, 2017 at 4:25:11 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net, ip <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] More on liberal arts etc
>
>
> With regard to liberal arts ... As you know I have backgrounds in both computer/networking technology and law.
>
> One snowy evening in DC I was riding the Metro through Alexandria and I overheard two women talking.  One said to the 
> other: "Law school is the best liberal arts education you can get."  I quietly agreed.  And I thought further: 
> "Liberal arts is the weapon that science needs to overcome mythology, popular misconceptions, and those who denigrate 
> science for self-interested reasons."
>
> My wife (who holds a technical masters degree) and I are one of the larger donors to the theatre community in our 
> area.  We are joined as patrons by many scientists from the local campus of the University of California.
>
> Many of us have expressed the same belief: That in the competition between ideas the person who can best express his 
> ideas is going to have an advantage.
>
> If one wants to learn how to express thoughts there are few better teachers than playwrights like Shakespeare, 
> Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and so on.
>
> I personally aspire to be able to write with the levity of Twain, the wonderful sentences of Thomas Hardy, and the 
> force of Abraham Lincoln. I have been told that I have a long way to go.
>
> Scientific and technical authors in the US are almost as a rule boring and ponderous.  That may be appropriate and 
> acceptable in some circumstances, such as when enumerating the steps of an experiment and the data obtained.
>
> But when it comes a piece that is intended to persuade they bury or muddle their ideas; they fail to push their 
> ideas, much less their enthusiasm for those ideas, into the minds of their audience.
>
> Liberal arts give scientists and technologists the means to reach outside of their narrow group of peers and speak to 
> the rest of us, to inform the rest of us, and to convince the rest of us.
>
> Our political culture is turning against science in part because those who speak against science are better skilled 
> at persuading than those who speak for science.  Liberal arts education gives us the tools we need to fight back and 
> win.
>
>        --karl--
>
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>
> -- 
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