I hear what you are saying but still disagree to some small level. I do think art takes some innate ability that can’t be learned from a book or a class. But, as you said upthread, at the same time, Art without training is not going to be that good. So, it is a balance.
Instead of “Art” I might be more willing to meet you full way with writing. Anyone can learn to write well but only a really really really good writer will be hired to write for Slate or The Atlantic.
I agree with you 100% however that we need to encourage people to try and do things and help them stick with it even if they are not a “genius” at it. I allways want to help people and to encourage them to learn more and do more.
The point you make about taking wedding photos or, if I get a little better at painting, painting portraits… yes, I could do that and make a little money, a second income. I don’t need a painting hanging in a museum to be satisfied or to enjoy doing something artistic.
Anyone working outside their own field is at a distinct disadvantage, and should show some humility. Unfortunately because of the very different social standings between STEM and social sciences, a lot of scientists or engineers think a moment’s reflection on their part must trump any analysis or debate which has gone before in those subjects, so there’s no need to study any of that stuff to nevertheless hold strong opinions.
If it’s a famous scientist, such worthless musings even make headlines.
It’s true that kids and parents may not be able to recognize talent. But professionals can. Managers can screen kids who have basic acting talent in one sentence. Clearly some people can do music and art inherently, and most can’t.
Talent extends to STEM areas also. Feynman could do calculus at 15 or so - he just saw it.
But of course much science has little to do with number crunching. And high level talent in mathematics has little to do with it also. Calculus and topology is a long way from algebra.
Talent makes what is hard for other people easy and joyful to do - not that perfecting your talent doesn’t take hard work.
When I was at MIT there was a quite active department of Philosophy, which I pseudo-minored in. (Not official, just took lots of classes.) I don’t recall anyone laughing at philosophers.
Computer scientists learn critical thinking from having our mistakes pointed out to us by our computers. Peer review and experiments point out the failings of all kinds of scientists. If a mathematician screws up a proof, the reviewers will gladly point out the problem, and not in a way that can be argued with.
The quality of art is a matter of opinion. The correctness of a proof isn’t. (Elegance, perhaps.)
I’m reminded of Ted Cruz’s statement that we need more welders and fewer philosophers. Someone should tell him that without philosophers - specifically *rational *philosophers - there would be no welders, nor any need of them.
**The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking **defines critical thinking as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a question of “greater” or “lesser”, but rather different. STEM students and professors’ fields tend to revolve around rigorous logic, much like mathematics. There’s typically a right solution, or if there are multiple correct solutions, there are usually ones that are optimal for certain parameters.
Humanities students and professors are more used to thinking outside that rigorously logical box. Since in most cases, the answer isn’t really provable, their concern is making sure that their solutions are plausible and reasonably backed up, as in many cases, there’s not a *single *right answer, or if there is, it can’t be reasonably known.
So from the perspective of the STEM types, the humanities types seem to be absurdly loosey-goosey. The STEM sorts are used to looking for provable, efficient and correct solutions. This takes critical thinking to be able to winnow down potential avenues of solution and to evaluate potential solutions impassively.
From the perspective of the humanities types, the STEM sorts seem almost hamstrung by their insistence on correctness and optimization. But doing what humanities types do takes critical thinking, but it’s applied more toward the validity of ideas and concepts at a more conceptual level than the STEM types.
To paraphrase Manda Jo in a way, the way this kind of thing manifests is that STEM types tend to hold a lot of disdain for the more “soft” sciences, as they’re so inherently loosey-goosey relative to the STEM fields’ focus, that they’re felt to be somehow “wrong” or less deserving. And the humanities types have a similar feeling, except in reverse- the “hee-hee, I’m bad at math” types don’t hold the STEM mindset to be nearly so valuable as the STEM types.
And I think talent definitely exists, but it’s not as easily identifiable as you might think. I’m an awfully good database programmer now that I’ve done it for a while, but you might not have realized it in college when I was taking my database classes. It took me a little while to actually integrate the actual programming part of it with the mathematical part of it (set theory and math) and figure out what I was doing and why. Once I figured that out, I got a lot better really fast.
Feynman could do calculus at 15, but it may take some other guy a semester or two in college before that light goes on in his head.
I admire the greats like Feynman (or E.O Wilson, Barbara McClintock, or Ernst Mayer). But I’m humble enough to know that I am not a “great” and never will be one. I’m not trying to be one. And that’s fine with me. When I was a little girl, I never said to myself, “I want to be one of the greats!” I just wanted to go out into a salt marsh and study fiddler crabs.
You don’t need to be talented to study fiddler crabs. Or model nutrient and sediment dynamics in coastal estuaries. You just need above average math skills and the ability to retain information.
I hate when people equate STEM fields with genius. Only a small proportion of STEM practitioners are actually doing any innovation. Everyone else is just carrying water. You SO do not need to be Feynman to carry water. And you can call yourself a scientist and still be a water-carrier. There is nothing wrong with being merely adequate as long as it brings in a paycheck and a sense of satisfaction.
(And “crunching numbers” is shorthand for whatever it is I do. Sorry for not using a better descriptor. I wasn’t an English major, after all.)
I know a lot of doctors and engineers who dabble in art as a hobby. I don’t know many professional artists who dabble in medicine or engineering as a hobby.
If every professional artist dropped dead, lots of amateurs would switch professions. If every professional scientist dropped dead, it would take decades to train replacements.
You’re giving the noob artist 6 months to get to professional level? When the professional artist has been working for years, sometimes decades?
Anyone can draw. Every child will draw and their art gets better and better and better as they get older. And then there comes a time when a kid is 13 or 14 or 15, and they realize that their art isn’t very good, and they stop drawing. Every kid draws, but it’s a rare adult that draws. Why is that?
The difference between the adult artist and the adult non-artist is that the artist continued to draw as a teenager, and continued as an adult, and learned how to make stuff that looked like what they wanted to make. The non-artist got frustrated when they couldn’t draw a face that looked like a face, and gave up.
And the same thing with rebuilding an engine. How many engines have you rebuilt? Some people have a natural aptitude for fixing machines. Plenty of professional mechanics don’t. They’re mechanics because they’ve got to do something to pay the bills, and they’ve been working on cars for a long time, and they know what to do, and it pays better than digging ditches.
In my experience there’s not as much “natural aptitude” as people think. What mostly exists is people who find particular subjects interesting, and so they’re willing to work at those subjects when most people give up. You could be a skilled mechanic if you started repairing engines at 13 and worked at it for decades, no matter what your aptitude. Yes, there is such a thing as god-given talent, or lack of talent. That can be overcome with persistence. Maybe you’ll never rise to the top of your field without being touched by the hand of God.
To use a sports analogy, there are some players in professional sports who are known as workers. The guys who practice and hustle, they may not have the natural abilities of others, but they outwork everyone. Then there are the natural athletes who don’t have to work hard, their talents put them ahead of everyone else. But the real superstars are the ones who are both, with a natural talent and an incredible work ethic.
Maybe if you took an average guy and trained him as a journeyman artist or mechanic or musician or architect he’d never be a superstar in his field. But he’d be able to do the work to be reasonably competent. This is how professions used to work. You got a job because your father had the same job, and you learned it from childhood. Your aptitude was irrelevant. Maybe you were an average tailor who made unremarkable clothing, but anyone who put in the time could learn to sew clothing together.
A big part of life as an adult is that we stop doing things we don’t want to do if we aren’t forced to do them. So if you haven’t drawn since you were 13 years old it shouldn’t be surprising that you draw like a 13 year old. If you’ve never fixed an engine it shouldn’t be surprising that you can’t fix an engine. Work 8 hours a day for 5 years drawing or fixing engines, and you’ll be able to do it. Maybe not as well or as fast as the guy with “natural aptitude”, but so what?
On the other hand, if you don’t want to spend hours learning how to draw, you don’t have to. But people who can draw a face that looks like a face weren’t born knowing how to do it, they acquired that skill by practicing. You could have learned how, but you didn’t put in the effort. And so now you’re an adult who can’t draw, or ice skate, or replace an engine, or code software. Well you’ve only got 70-80 years on this planet, so it’s fine to concentrate your efforts wherever you like. But you could ice skate if only you took the time to learn, even if you’re never going to be Wayne Gretzky, there are plenty of professional ice skaters who’ve literally dedicated their lives to ice skating who aren’t Wayne Gretzky either.
When civilization crumbles I will certainly want my pile of books (and my solar-powered Kindle), but will need the folks who know how to make electricity, antibiotics, extract appendixes, and build good shelter.
Assessment of critical thinking is a slippery endeavor. My college is rabidly obsessed with measuring our students’ critical thinking and pours zillions of dollars and time into it, but has trouble even articulating what critical thinking* is*. IMHO, assessment of thinking in any field can only be a snapshot taken at a certain time and place.
Now imagine a world with no art, because no engineer created canvas or paint, no novels, because no one invented the printing press, no graphic novels, because no one invented the ability to print pictures, no jazz, because no one created the saxophone, no rap, because there is no microphone, no punk rock, actually lets just let there be no punk rock.
Without Stem there wouldn’t be an excess of resources such as food, housing, and whatnot able to support a person who spends all their time writing fiction or painting pictures.
The question was whether talent exists. Sure people do things for fun even if they have no talent for it - look at the 90% of ebooks out there. Which sell 5 copies if that. That’s what hobbies are all about.
I know lots of people in STEM fields aren’t geniuses - I’ve reviewed hundreds of papers.
I was using Feynman as an example of someone with talent in an area of math I’m competent in but have no talent in. And there is talent and Talent. I’ve been on sets where all the actors had talent - they got picked to be on the show - but one was way above the others. And she became a reasonably big name. This is what “Amadeus” was about. Both Mozart and Salieri had talent, but only Mozart had TALENT. And it wasn’t from working harder.
The big difference between those of us with talent in STEM area and those with talent in humanities (small t) is that we get paid better. I work in Big (or moderate) Data so I do lots of number crunching also.
No. Engineers are “smart” because they actually have to come up with creative solutions to build complex things that actually work. Liberal arts and humanities students just have to pontificate about bullshit until they find jobs in sales or are forced to go to law school.
What “solutions” to which “problems” do you envision humanities students solving with their “out of the box thinking”?
An excellent example of the sort of statement that we hear all the time and why training in critical thought is, well, critical.
I suspect a rational philosopher would turn this into mincemeat [or would they be like a barber faced with the question ‘Do you think I need a haircut?’]
A couple of years ago I attended a lecture given by chemical engineer. The gist of her presentation was that scientific innovation is often inspired by science fiction (not the other way around). Humanists do the “dreaming”. Engineers/scientists then make those dreams a reality. During the Q and A, people from a variety of scientific fields stood up and talked about how they would have never gone into science if it hadn’t been for the books they read as a kid or the movies they watched. It was kind of a cool thing to experience, seeing everyone’s minds open just a little.
I used to hate on the liberal arts and humanities (cuz hating can be so much fun). But not anymore.
I think you did a good job of explaining that. I have a minor disagreement on a couple of points… (I only have time/interest for a brief response at this exact moment)… overall I agree and think it was a very good response. Like, really good. Gave me a lot to think about…
Yeah, I agree, I mean I really actually agree, all that stuff is really really important and really really hard/talented to create. We need a world with both type(s) of people.
And when they are very good sales people or very good lawyers, it’s because of their humanities training, not in spite of it. Context and communication, nuance and complexity. These are real skills that some people have and ithers do not. One way to develop and refine them is through the study of the humanities.
That’s definitely true - but lots of science fiction is still inspired by science. It’s the circle of life.
Of course in sf the science is extrapolated - but you can see the trends and where the ideas came from.
