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Paulos’ description of the world being made of simplifiers (scientists) and complicators (humanities) was interesting. Is it really an accurate representation of humanists and scientists? I don’t think so. A novel can simplify an historical event (not necessarily to full accuracy, yet to a genuine essence), while physics can make dropping a ball down a ramp complicated.

Not that I am a total expert in either, but I question to what extent the humanities and sciences can help one another (social sciences are in the middle, and can take from humanities and sciences). I feel like what each set of disciplines does is so different from the other. I do, however, strongly believe that interdisciplinary work can become something useful in its own right. It creates something new, something different. Gender and sexuality studies is a great example here. I feel like the sciences, social sciences, and humanities all contribute something important.  Going a back a bit to last week, what makes liberal arts education so special is that you can have students who will be able to understand something from all three divisions, and then apply them in an interdisciplinary setting. This lets us have some of the independent college program classes. Or, my personal favorite, apply interdisciplinary thinking in a mono(?)-disciplinary class.

I liked how the essay talked about the transformation in the professors from seeing the students. It seems unusual to me that teachers actually would learn so much from their students. People talk all the time about how the learning often goes both ways, so it was nice to finally see a concrete example of this. What does this say about the whole education model of a student and teacher? How early should this exchange start? I know we can learn a lot of children, with their innocent and frank views of the world, but I don’t want a second grader trying to tell his or her teacher that 2+2 does not equal 4. Except I do like the idea of children being encouraged to respectfully challenge authority through independent thinking….