In response to Michael’s post, “Experiential Learning” (Proper grammar for quoting blog post titles?) http://morepageswithmaps.blogspot.com/2010/09/experiential-learning.html#comments
The Objective Arts
I read a lot growing up because it was fun and easy for me. Reading was strongly encouraged in my house. My parents encouraged me to join humanities and communication arts magnet programs, which seriously strengthened my reading and writing capabilities. I think this has definitely improved my capability for abstract thought. Discussion-oriented classes engage me more than lecture-based classes, as long as the professor knows what he's doing. I can’t learn by just listening and taking notes, though I do appreciate the power of a great lecture.
Since middle school I've had trouble with the more analytical disciplines because actually doing math and science often bores me, and because I have the annoying tendency of only wanting to practice what I naturally excel at doing. However, I often enjoy learning about certain mathematical and scientific concepts (it’s actually doing math and science that bugs me).
Some disciplines, like physics and biology, interest me but require too much of something I don't like (math and memorization, respectively) for me to pursue them to the same degree that I pursue the humanities. However, sometimes I enjoy learning about them in the classroom, and especially via informal discussion and reading on my own time. I've often yearned to be disciplined enough to tackle the hard sciences so I would fully understand all the interesting stuff they can offer. Alas, you have to sit through a lot of boring crap before you're ready to know anything interesting ( I'd say this applies to the humanities as well).
Liberal arts classes may not be as subjective as you think. If you consider the philosophy toolkit version of subjective/objective (see page 5) then a claim can be objective even if it is not the only one of its kind, as long as there exists a public method for investigating its cogency. So just because a historical event or philosophical text has multiple interpretations doesn’t mean you can claim anything you want. You have to support any claim you make with verifiable truths. And in so-called “objective” disciplines, the upper levels of math and science can offer room for creativity and interpretation (ex. writing algebraic proofs). And often this open-endedness can be frustratingly ambiguous (so I’m told).
With that said, I do sympathize with your frustration regarding the liberal arts. When I took Philosophy 101 and Introduction to Hinduism one semester, I felt myself missing math for the first time ever. Though originally I wanted to be a Philosophy major, I’ve discovered that I enjoy cultural studies more on the whole, in part because they strike a nice balance between interpretation and fact that I can’t quite get from Philosophy.
Michael, I hope this ramble has been somewhat helpful to you.
Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa
Nicely put.
ReplyDeleteTwo thoughts:
1) Aristotle observes that we should not expect greater precision in an inquiry than the subject matter warrants -- the reason we don't use the same methods in, say, literary analysis that we use in chemical analysis is not because literary critics are strange or perverse, but because what they study (literary explorations of life) demands a different approach.
2) Though their styles, vocabularies, and some methods differ (e.g. above), all disciplines that inquire into the nature of things are, historically and/or conceptually, branches of philosophy. That is, most of what's in the toolkit is fundamental to any inquiry at all. This is to say that philosophy is not really one among many fields. Whatever you major in, if you're doing it seriously you're engaged in philosophy.