Science

Having started out in math and the sciences, I soon learned a startling fact about academics: scientists generally are more literate in the humanities (literature, art, music, history, etc.) than literary types are in the sciences. In fact, in my experience, many English professors would be called illiterate in the sciences. This has tragic consequences in the culture. Math, after all, is a universal language. It should provide a common ground, a starting point, for all cultures wanting to dialogue with one another.

This point is made in a new biography of Einstein, clipped below.

clipped from www.npr.org A popular feel for scientific endeavors should, if possible, be restored given the needs of the twenty-first century. This does not mean that every literature major should take a watered-down physics course or that a corporate lawyer should stay abreast of quantum mechanics. Rather, it means that an appreciation for the methods of science is a useful asset for a responsible citizenry. What science teaches us, very significantly, is the correlation between factual evidence and general theories, something well illustrated in Einstein's life.