Report: public perception of the humanities

[Ruralguy]

Petroleum has been on a down slope for years. Why do you think Emiratis are so interested in peace? It brings opportunities for diversification.

There will be a need for resource engineers though. I'd bank on water. We kind of always need that.

[dr_codex]

And the elephant in the room is ???

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unfortunate-fallout-of-campus-postmodernism/

That's an embarassing article. I thought that Scientific American was better than that.

[marshwiggle]

And the elephant in the room is ???

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unfortunate-fallout-of-campus-postmodernism/

That's an embarassing article. I thought that Scientific American was better than that.

What's bad about the article? What facts are incorrect? What logical fallacies does it contain?

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

They didn't see that coming. Do they deserve the same derision normally aimed at the humanists?

Sort of.
Petroleum-related fields are notorious for their boom-to-bust roller coaster. Moreover, this industry has strong preference to recruit fresh graduates. As a result, improving situation does little for people who graduated in the wrong time (one of my professors repeatedly complained about being permanently excluded from the industry by the late 1980s price collapse). So, borrowing 70k (as per article) to get into such volatile field is rather bad idea. This particularly applies to math-light parts with few transferable skills. In contrast, geophysists I know are en-masse migrating into data science (this includes good undergrads).

There will be a need for resource engineers though. I'd bank on water. We kind of always need that.

In many universities environmental engineering is the weakest among engineering programs. So, getting into explicitly water-related program is often a bad personal choice, even if one wants to work in the relevant fields.
Also, I don't expect water to trade at even $20 per barrel preventing it from ever becoming as lucrative career as hydrocarbons.

[mamselle]

And the elephant in the room is ???

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unfortunate-fallout-of-campus-postmodernism/

That's an embarassing article. I thought that Scientific American was better than that.

What's bad about the article? What facts are incorrect? What logical fallacies does it contain?

Well, for a start, the author doesn't even seem to know what postmodernism is, or what it teaches.

I don't like certain aspects of it, and I've had to go mano-a-mano with deconstructive reviewers who didn't recognize a reconstructive agenda (or didn't find it credible, but I think they just didn't know what it was) in an article I did awhile back. So I don't turn the postmodern lens on everything, either.

But I do know what it is, and basically what it's about. The author seems not to have a clue.

M.

[Ruralguy]

By the way, Scientific American hasn't been better than anything in at least two decades.

[polly_mer]

They didn't see that coming. Do they deserve the same derision normally aimed at the humanists?

Sort of.
Petroleum-related fields are notorious for their boom-to-bust roller coaster. Moreover, this industry has strong preference to recruit fresh graduates. As a result, improving situation does little for people who graduated in the wrong time (one of my professors repeatedly complained about being permanently excluded from the industry by the late 1980s price collapse). So, borrowing 70k (as per article) to get into such volatile field is rather bad idea. This particularly applies to math-light parts with few transferable skills. In contrast, geophysists I know are en-masse migrating into data science (this includes good undergrads).

There will be a need for resource engineers though. I'd bank on water. We kind of always need that.

In many universities environmental engineering is the weakest among engineering programs. So, getting into explicitly water-related program is often a bad personal choice, even if one wants to work in the relevant fields.
Also, I don't expect water to trade at even $20 per barrel preventing it from ever becoming as lucrative career as hydrocarbons.

Yes, people who did their research and want to work in the petrochemical industry or the environmental engineering areas would go into chemical engineering and do their internships in the relevant industries.  Taking an extra certificate in environmental resource management or a specialty in petrochemicals would also be a good idea.

People who just want to be engineers for the high paying jobs are better off majoring in mechanical engineering or applied physics.  Again, using the internship/co-op time well will likely provide the necessary computational skills and experience to get a good job doing something.

[Ruralguy]

I don't seriously think water resource management is going to be relatively lucrative in , say, most of the US (save for maybe desert west) any time soon. However, I suspect it to be increasingly lucrative, if you know what you are doing, and the geographic region is a reasonable enough place to be working in,  in parts of the Mideast, for instance.  I'm just playing the long game. We absolutely need water and oxygen. Our need for that never changes, and the population always grows. Also, water is fairly temp sensitive.  Our relative need for petrochems has decreased with time, and probably will continue to do so. 

This is not not to say that the typical enviro program in the US is going to be the ticket. But it may be important over time for this situation to change.

[marshwiggle]

And the elephant in the room is ???

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unfortunate-fallout-of-campus-postmodernism/

That's an embarassing article. I thought that Scientific American was better than that.

What's bad about the article? What facts are incorrect? What logical fallacies does it contain?

Well, for a start, the author doesn't even seem to know what postmodernism is, or what it teaches.

Here's what wikipedia says (to use a common understanding of the term):

Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, often criticizing Enlightenment rationality and focusing on the role of ideology in maintaining political or economic power. Postmodern thinkers frequently describe knowledge claims and value systems as contingent or socially-conditioned, framing them as products of political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. Common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, and social progress.

That explanation seems to me to fit the author's argument.

[mamselle]

So, basically, first, if you have to resort to a Wikipedia definition, you're saying you don't know what postmodernism is, does, or says, either.

And, second, the part you've cited sounds like the summary that very conservative theological groups accord the topic when explaining it to students who hope to discover and display its fallacies for useful apologetic theological and missiological statements.

So, um, no.   

Meanwhile: Another voice in the issue: the perception of scientific findings, in some ways a humanistic element of its own, is now officially discredited (basically, if it doesn't say what the agency wants it to say, a scientific position can just be ignored):

   https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/in-a-parting-gift-epa-finalizes-rules-to-limit-its-use-of-science/

I can hear Sheila Jasanoff howling about this now...

M.

[Hibush]

Meanwhile: Another voice in the issue: the perception of scientific findings, in some ways a humanistic element of its own, is now officially discredited (basically, if it doesn't say what the agency wants it to say, a scientific position can just be ignored):

   https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/in-a-parting-gift-epa-finalizes-rules-to-limit-its-use-of-science/

I can hear Sheila Jasanoff howling about this now...

M.

Are you saying that the departing administration was staffed by (unwitting?) postmodern humanists?  That is indeed a perspective  I had not considered.

[marshwiggle]

So, basically, first, if you have to resort to a Wikipedia definition, you're saying you don't know what postmodernism is, does, or says, either.

Does Britannica.com count as a more authoritative source?

Postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.

Here's how they contrast postmodernism to Enlightenment thinking:

1. There is an objective natural reality, a reality whose existence and properties are logically independent of human beings—of their minds, their societies, their social practices, or their investigative techniques. Postmodernists dismiss this idea as a kind of naive realism. Such reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language. This point also applies to the investigation of past events by historians and to the description of social institutions, structures, or practices by social scientists.

2. The descriptive and explanatory statements of scientists and historians can, in principle, be objectively true or false. The postmodern denial of this viewpoint—which follows from the rejection of an objective natural reality—is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing as Truth.

3. Through the use of reason and logic, and with the more specialized tools provided by science and technology, human beings are likely to change themselves and their societies for the better. It is reasonable to expect that future societies will be more humane, more just, more enlightened, and more prosperous than they are now.  Postmodernists deny this Enlightenment faith in science and technology as instruments of human progress. Indeed, many postmodernists hold that the misguided (or unguided) pursuit of scientific and technological knowledge led to the development of technologies for killing on a massive scale in World War II. Some go so far as to say that science and technology—and even reason and logic—are inherently destructive and oppressive, because they have been used by evil people, especially during the 20th century, to destroy and oppress others.


4. Reason and logic are universally valid—i.e., their laws are the same for, or apply equally to, any thinker and any domain of knowledge. For postmodernists, reason and logic too are merely conceptual constructs and are therefore valid only within the established intellectual traditions in which they are used.

5. There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that are in some sense present in human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social forces. Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially determined.

There are a few more. Those seem pretty consistent with the Wikipedia summary.

[mamselle]

Meanwhile: Another voice in the issue: the perception of scientific findings, in some ways a humanistic element of its own, is now officially discredited (basically, if it doesn't say what the agency wants it to say, a scientific position can just be ignored):

   https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/in-a-parting-gift-epa-finalizes-rules-to-limit-its-use-of-science/

I can hear Sheila Jasanoff howling about this now...

M.

Are you saying that the departing administration was staffed by (unwitting?) postmodern humanists?  That is indeed a perspective  I had not considered.

Ha! Well done.

M.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

I don't seriously think water resource management is going to be relatively lucrative in , say, most of the US (save for maybe desert west) any time soon. However, I suspect it to be increasingly lucrative, if you know what you are doing, and the geographic region is a reasonable enough place to be working in,  in parts of the Mideast, for instance.  I'm just playing the long game. We absolutely need water and oxygen. Our need for that never changes, and the population always grows. Also, water is fairly temp sensitive.  Our relative need for petrochems has decreased with time, and probably will continue to do so. 

This is not not to say that the typical enviro program in the US is going to be the ticket. But it may be important over time for this situation to change.

We absolutely need food. The climate change makes conditions worse in many traditional agricultural regions. This does not make farm worker career increasingly lucrative.
Getting water in the arid parts of the US was a technical problem in 1930s. Nowadays, it is mostly a legal problem dealing with seniority of water rights and states' legal obligations to their downstream neighbors.
This does not mean that there is no demand for people in the relevant fields. Instead it means that:
a) going into field just based on the long-term trends alone is generally a bad idea. Program-specific research of outcomes is absolutely necessary. E.g. based on the course offerings, the recently-closed Vermont geology program (see "dire straits" thread) had negligible chances of placing its graduates in comparatively lucrative mining/petroleum industries.
b) as Polly has mentioned it is often way better to look into other engineering programs without words "water","environmental", "resource" in their name to get into jobs related to these words.

[Hibush]

We absolutely need food. The climate change makes conditions worse in many traditional agricultural regions. This does not make farm worker career increasingly lucrative.

Indeed. Not being a farmworker or subsistence farmer has been a generational imperative for the last century or two. Even developing countries have to import agricultural labor from a place that is even worse off.

On the other hand, engineering of devices that reduce labor needs at all scales of agriculture is really hot. That engineering uses  the latest developments in optics, communications, sensors, big-data ai prediction, etc. Very few prospective students labor in the fields as teenagers and decide to become mechanical engineers to make their terrible old job obsolete.