[SIGCIS-Members] Science wars quote that scientists can teach English but not vice versa

[Thomas Haigh]

Thanks James,

 

For the benefit of the list:

"If, taking a fanciful hypothesis, the humanities department of MIT (a
bastion, by the way, of left-wing rectitude) were to walk out in a huff, the
scientific faculty could, at need and with enough released time, patch
together a humanities curriculum, to be taught by the scientists themselves.
It would have obvious gaps and rough spots, to be sure, and it might with
some regularity prove inane but on the whole it would be, we imagine, no
worse than operative. What the opposite situation-a walkout by the
scientists-would produce as the humanities department tried to cope with the
demand for science education, we leave the reader's imagination.. The notion
that scientists and engineers will always accept as axiomatic the competence
and indispensability for higher education of humanists and social scientists
is altogether too smug."

My searches for terms like "teach" and "English" and "sick" went just around
the words here. In that sense it's cattier than I remembered - the humanists
are walking out in a huff rather than being hit by a plague.

 

Best wishes,

 

Tom

 

From: Members [mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of James
Sumner
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2016 3:04 PM
To: members at lists.sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Science wars quote that scientists can teach
English but not vice versa

 

Hi Tom

This is in Gross and Levitt's Higher Superstition, page 243: "If, taking a
fanciful hypothesis, the humanities department of MIT (a bastion, by the
way, of left-wing rectitude) were to walk out in a huff..." 

Best
James

 

On 21 Oct 16 20:32, Thomas Haigh wrote:

Hello SIGCIS,

 

I was looking for a quote I recall reading in the days of the "science
wars," probably late-1990s, from a scientist saying something like: "If all
the English professors got sick and we were called in then we would so an OK
job teaching Shakespeare etc. based on what we know and the inherent
triviality of the humanities. Whereas if the physics professors got sick
then the humanities people would be completely unable to step in, because
science is hard."

 

I tried constructing Google searches and doing Amazon's search inside the
book on Sokal & Bricmont's Fashionable Nonsense and similar targets, but
didn't locate it. 

 

NB: I'm just looking for the source here, not for people eager to reignite
the science wars by arguing for or against the proposition.

 

Best wishes,


Tom






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