Ok Steve, First some elaboration:
In 25 BC, Vitruvius (considered the founder of the discipline of architecture) stated: "The ideal architect should be a man of letters, a skillful draftsman, a mathematician, familiar with historical studies, a diligent student of philosophy, acquainted with music; not ignorant of medicine, learned in the responses of jurisconsults, familiar with astronomy, and astronomical calculations." In 2004(5?) Christopher Alexander (architect) spoke to an audience of 1000 or so software developers; noting that professional architects are responsible for 10 percent of the built environment while software developers would be responsible for, essentially, 100% of the environment within which we all live, work, and play. Is it unreasonable to expect software developers to have an equivalent, in terms of modern knowledge, educational foundation? The term "modern polymath" has gained significant traction in the business and the design press. Business attention comes from an awareness that in order to thrive, to innovate, in a highly dynamic and complex context, decentralization of analysis and decision making is essential. But, this requires a qualitatively different kind of employee — one with both breadth and depth of knowledge. Moreover, both in business and design, work is done by teams — multi-disciplinary teams; teams that must transcend individual silos of expertise. A modern polymath is someone with significant, integrated, breadth of understanding with multiple (albeit to different degrees) instances of depth. The visual metaphor is a "broken comb." Much more could be offered in terms of identifying and arguing for the need of broadly educated individuals and extension of that need into almost any discipline. Now the jumping up and down with a bit of YELLING. AS THEY HAVE EVOLVED, CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITIES CANNOT GRADUATE INDIVIDUALS THAT EVEN APPROXIMATE MODERN POLYMATHS. I could list numerous reasons for this assertion, but will, instead, offer a single illustration. The program that I delivered at Highlands (co-taught with Pam Rostal) was designed to graduate software developers who were modern polymaths. We devised a set of 321 "competencies" and students had to demonstrate their mastery of each at up to five different levels ranging from "rote application under supervision" to "making a contribution to understanding." Competencies ranged in subject matter from Anthropology to Zooloqy. We also utilized 'just in time learning' and tinversion of the teaching approach: graduate level first, fundamentals later. It worked. The first year we had half the students (Freshmen to Graduate level) presenting refereed papers at two conferences with the highest rejection rate of all conferences at that time. All of our students were offered mid-level positions in industry - very notably at a national, not just local level) in software development — not entry level. [An article for the Cutter Journal on this subject should appear in the next few weeks. I will share with anyone interested when it is published.] The point of this reminiscence: As an experiment we put the knowledge base expected of our students in the form of traditional 3-4 credit courses. The number of courses and credits required was the equivalent of 4 undergraduate degrees and 3 Masters Degree programs. Our program could not be replicated at any other university as it violated EVERY precept of university teaching and organization. davew On Tue, Mar 5, 2019, at 9:29 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Nick - > > I think you described the difference between vocational training and an > education. Hazing seems more relevant to fraternal organizations and > perhaps working as a GRA or TA? > > My university motto was "to become more educated is to become more > human" and my Philosophy 101 professor made a very strong point of that > to the class. I don't know if it effected anyone else like it did me. > I had been angling toward sharpening my head to the finest point > possible on the natural sciences (physics in particular), mathematics > and some of that new-fangled computer-engineering stuff. His > admonition, along with a number of professors who made their subjects > much more interesting (and relevant) than I had ever encountered in > public education to that point caused me to take a very broad selection > of liberal arts courses which I feel almost exclusively enrichened my > life (personal and professional) to this day. > > I chose to study (a minimum of) Latin (as well as Greek and Esperanto) > to add to my street/border Spanish and I think I would have been served > (yet more) well by having more language education expected of me. > Dentists absolutely need to understand Calculus (and Tartar) as do > dental hygenists (bad pun), and doctors of course should understand the > chemistry of organisms (more bad yet). > > Dave - > > I for one would be interested in some elaboration on your point(s), or > at least to watch you jump up and down? > > - Steve > > > Nick, you pose an interesting question. From one perspective, that of an > > idealist who believes in the old version of a liberal arts education and > > the modern notion of a "modern polymath" I would answer yes to your > > question. As a veteran of academia i would emphatically jump up and down > > and say no - it is nonsense. > > > > I could elaborate on my answer, should anyone be interested. > > > > davew > > > > > > On Tue, Mar 5, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > >> Did I really REALLY have to learn Latin to be an Educated Man. Read in > >> two languages to get a PHD? Do you really have to get an A in organic > >> chemistry to be a good doctor? In Calculus to be a dentist? > >> > >> How do we tell the difference between hazing and education? > >> > >> n > >> > >> Nicholas S. Thompson > >> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > >> Clark University > >> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > >> > >> > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of u?l? ? > >> Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2019 2:40 PM > >> To: FriAM <[email protected]> > >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] are we how we behave? > >> > >> I can't help but tie these maunderings to the modern epithets of > >> "snowflake" and "privilege" (shared by opposite but similar > >> ideologues). I have to wonder what it means to "learn" something. The > >> question of whether a robot will take one's job cuts nicely to the > >> chase, I think. How much of what any of us do/know is uniquely (or > >> best) doable by a general intelligence (if such exists) versus specific > >> intelligence? While I'm slightly fluent in a handful of programming > >> languages, I cannot (anymore) just sit down and write a program in any > >> one of them. I was pretty embarrassed at a recent interview where they > >> asked me to code my solution to their interview question on the > >> whiteboard. After I was done I noticed sugar from 3 different > >> languages in the code I "wrote" ... all mixed together for convenience. > >> They said they didn't mind. But who knows? Which is better? Being > >> able to coherently code in one language, with nearly compilable code > >> off the bat? Or the [dis]ability of changing languages on a regular > >> basis in order to express a relatively portable algorithm? Which one > >> would be easier for a robot? I honestly have no idea. > >> > >> But the idea that the arbitrary persnickety sugar I learned yesterday > >> *should* be useful today seems like a bit of a snowflake/privileged way > >> to think (even ignoring the "problem of induction" we often talk about > >> on this list). Is what it means to "learn" something fundamentally > >> different from one era to the next? Do the practical elements of > >> "learning" evolve over time? Does it really ... really? ... help to > >> know how a motor works in order to drive a car? ... to reliably drive > >> a car so that one's future is more predictable? ... to reduce the > >> total cost of ownership of one's car? Or is there a logical layer of > >> abstraction below which the Eloi really don't need to go? > >> > >> On 3/5/19 11:04 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > >>> Interesting to see the "new bar" set so low as age 30. Reminds me of > >>> my own youth when the "Hippie generation" was saying "don't trust > >>> anyone over 30!". Later I got to know a lot of folks from the "Beat" > >>> generation who were probably in their 30's by that time and rather put > >>> out that they couldn't keep their "hip" going amongst the new youth > >>> culture. > >>> > >>> ... > >>> My mules are named Fortran/Prolog/APL/C/PERL and VMS/BSD/Solaris/NeXT > >>> and IBM/CDC/CRAY/DEC and GL/OpenGL/VRPN/VRML. I barely know the > >>> names of the new > >>> tractors/combines/cropdusters/satellite-imaging/laser-leveling/??? > >>> technology. > >>> > >>> Always to be counted on for nostalgic maunderings, > >> -- > >> ☣ uǝlƃ > >> ============================================================ > >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe > >> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > >> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > >> > >> > >> ============================================================ > >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > >> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > >> > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
