The "Fuzzies" Meet the "Techs"

By Ellie McGrath

Colleges are reuniting the humanities and the sciences

C.P. Snow, the British scientist and novelist, sounded the alarm in the 1950s about the dangers of two cultures: "Literary intellectuals at one pole, at the other scientists." Since then, microchips, satellites and nuclear power have become realities that define everyday life; yet many supposedly well-educated people do not understand how they work. Despite the growing use of computers in classrooms, American universities are still graduating millions of technological illiterates.

What Snow called a "gulf of mutual incomprehension" yawns ever wider, according to Stanford Engineering Professor James Adams, who describes the problem as a conflict between the "techs" (engineers and scientists) and the "fuzzies" (liberal arts students): "The techs are considered by the fuzzies to be nerds. The techs, in turn, consider the fuzzies as only marginal at reaching logical conclusions, probably unable to keep their bicycles in operation and completely unable to support themselves after graduation."

In 1980 a survey funded by the National Science Foundation of 215 institutions concluded that the average humanities major spent only about 7% of his college education studying science. Hence the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is making grants of more than $3 million to 32 of the nation's top liberal arts colleges in order to introduce the reasoning methods used in applied mathematics and the development of technology into today's liberal arts curriculum. Sloan will provide $250,000 each to ten colleges, including Williams, Mount Holyoke and Wellesley, and $25,000 to others, such as Dartmouth and Bowdoin, to attack the deficiencies of their curriculums. M.I.T. will receive $47,000 to help other colleges prepare tech-oriented courses and retrain faculty.

Only a handful of schools have well-established programs to try to overcome technophobia. In 1975 San Francisco State University started its NEXA program (taken from a Latin word meaning to bring together things that have been separated) to reunite the humanities and sciences. The program, which emphasizes the history of ideas, has about 500 students a semester. Stanford's Program in Values, Technology and Society (VTS) began ten years ago to present technology in the context of social issues. VTS has 30 instructors from a variety of disciplines, 850 students a year and about 45 courses, including one on "The Nature of Engineering." In a recent class, Professor Adams made his students consider a down-to-earth question: How much water is used every day by the nation's flush toilets?

The estimate: 7.5 billion gal., a significant share of the 36 billion gal. that the U.S. uses every day, besides that employed for irrigation and generating power. Adams used the example to show that students have to think in quantitative terms to understand social problems.

Several schools are introducing the concept of mathematical analysis to liberal arts and requiring students to take more science courses. At Wellesley, freshmen and sophomores next fall will be able to take an introductory course in technological studies. The aim is to apply several disciplines to practical problems. Analyzing long-distance telephone services, for instance, students will have to evaluate cost and convenience, study elementary electronics, satellite operations and microwave systems, and examine management practices in order to choose the best company to do the job.

One goal of the new liberal arts curriculum is to change the way students approach problems. Wellesley Senior Michelle Goodman, a political science major, took a course in computers because "my father made me." She now admits that her new skills have "readjusted my thinking." The experience, she says, has made her a better judge of the data so prevalent in her field.

At Oberlin, Mathematics Professor Samuel Goldberg teaches students how to "weigh risks and make complex decisions and not be overwhelmed." His system of analysis, balancing probabilities and consequences, can be used to help make important personal decisions, such as whether a cancer patient should have chemotherapy, and to tackle public policy questions, such as whether to build the B-l bomber.

Remodeling a curriculum also means retraining a faculty. Carleton College in Minnesota will hold a series of seminars to expose faculty members to new uses of computers for tasks that could include choreographing dance or analyzing historical evidence. Davidson College in North Carolina will organize two summer institutes for liberal arts faculty members. They will be taught by scientifically oriented professors, among them a mathematician who uses his techniques to consider social values, such as conservation, as well as costs in solving problems.

Bringing the techniques of analysis used by scientists and engineers to the liberal arts has its supporters and critics. Engineering Professor John Truxal, who pioneered an interdisciplinary program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, calls the introduction of technology "as fundamental as the introduction of economics into college curriculums 50 years ago." Still, now as then, some faculty members decry creeping vocationalism. Some are already worrying about the breakdown of liberal arts into case studies. They fear that students might become technicians rather than thinkers.

But Mount Holyoke President Elizabeth Kennan, a medievalist, believes that the "genuine integration" of humanities and sciences will strengthen the liberal arts. Says she: "The heart of a liberal arts education is concern with the world we find ourselves in, our ability to comprehend it and make moral judgments about our action."

--ByEllie McGrath.

Reported by Joelle Attinger/Boston and Marion Lewenstein/San Francisco

With reporting by Joelle Attinger/Boston, Marion Lewenstein/San Francisco

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