Comment by chicob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chicob | Hacker News Reader

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I suspect the Humanities seem to be at an advantage here. In the Arts, students learn about the basic physiology of the human eye, the Physics behind color and also some Geometry. In Sociology, surely there must be some Statistics course. In Archeology, Nuclear Physics, Plate Tectonics and Astronomy are unavoidable.

In Physics, it is almost impossible not to make use of History timelines for the sake of understanding the evolution of ideas. But that's that.

I think some course in the History of Science would be highly valuable in STEM. Philosophy of Science would also be very beneficial.

There are many writings by Bertrand Russell that would fit in Math courses and that have a lot to do with Philosophy and that are very pertinent to any math student.[1][2]

In my opinion, one of the books that better makes the bridge between the Humanities and Science is Florian Cajori's History of Mathematical Notation. No only it is a very interesting book, shedding light at the intimate relationship of our symbol lexicon, our skills at abstraction and the progress in Mathematics, but it also teaches about cuneiform writing, rhetorical Math teaching in ancient Egypt, and how fundamental the invention of typography was for the stability of Mathematical notation.

A Professor I once knew lend me his only copy just because I mentioned the topic, and after skimming through I knew I had to buy my own. (For all of those of have lent books, you must know how much of a gamble it is, specially when the person you're lending the book is some random student!)

[1] Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html)

[2] On Denoting (http://bactra.org/Russell/denoting/)

I think math majors in many universities do have to take a History of Mathematics course. I do wish it was taught in more subjects. 'History and Evolution of Computers' should make a good addition to the undergraduate CS program, where I think many useful, practical solutions come from revisiting approaches tried in the past.

Also interesting would be a course charting the step by step development of a large, significant software project like the OS/360 or any thing like that from conceptualisation, to design/ development, management of process, people and documentation, maintenance, user experience, etc. How software grows and evolves and transforms, how various people and actors influence that process.

The whole damned species could use more study of history. I can't count the number of arguments I've seen where some basic understanding of the shape of history would immediately invalidate a person's position. On both sides of pretty much every issue. But, you know, arguing is not about discovering the truth, it's about furthering your own interests.

> In Sociology, surely there must be some Statistics course.

I a look at my local university's requirements - I knew that Stats was a requirement for psychology (my minor), but oddly enough, it's apparently not for sociology. That's bizarre.

I do agree with you on the rest though - for the longest time "Science" was "Natural Philosophy" - arts and science were all a mishmash, and as an arts student you see that progression far better - there's a focus on the methods of thought of before and of now, as opposed to a science education, which is a progression of complexity in regards to the current state of the science. I don't know if you spend much time looking at what came before, unless those ideas or models still can hold true.

>In Physics, it is almost impossible not to make use of History timelines for the sake of understanding the evolution of ideas. But that's that.

History is treated as an interesting pastime, there are a lot of physicists who enjoy it but understanding the "evolution of ideas" is not useful for work.

Don't you think reading the Principia will help the physicists? The study of its beautiful geometric reasoning ought to be of benefit to the physics student.

Similarly the learning how the treatment of electrodynamics and thermodynamics has evolved in the last 150~200 years, in terms of the formalisms and mathematical tools used could be educative.

Principa is almost impossible to read by modern standards, and the information it contains is explained far better elsewhere (after all there has been a lot of time for improvements in our understanding.) Studying historical physics texts is educative in the sense that it literally teaches you facts ("this person believed this thing on this date") but it's not the best way to learn the physics. Like I said, history of physics is usually taken up as a pastime by physicists who already know the physics. It is an enjoyable thing that is valuable on its own.

Every physics professor knows about Principa, and they know where to find Maxwell's original papers, and so on, and there's a good reason why that's not how they teach.

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