There’s a great scene in the Big Bang Theory (S04E03) in which Sheldon (theoretical physics) and Amy (neuroscience) are arguing about the primacy of their respective fields. Sheldon’s case was that because physics governs the way the universe works, it subsumes all other fields. Amy’s case was that because the theories of physics were conceived by human minds, neuroscience subsumes all of physics.
Charles Chu wrote an interesting piece describing military historian and strategist BH Liddell-Hart’s comments on the importance of history. The central thesis: history is of foundational importance in education, since opportunities to learn from direct (personal) experience are extremely limited, while opportunities to learn from indirect experience (history) are hugely more broad in both topic and time. Indeed, there are direct mistakes that instantly terminate one’s ability to learn. This is a historian’s version of the concept of ergodicity and the importance of not conflating ensemble probabilities with time (path-dependent) probabilities. In a nutshell, there are important differences in evaluating risk between saying that on average 1 in 100 gamblers will go bust, and one gambler taking a 1% risk of going bust 100 times. (for more, see NN Taleb here).
Charles included this little gem from XKCD:
which of course reminded me of Sheldon and Amy.
And of my five years on the USNI Proceedings Board of Editors.
Some topics are perennials in Proceedings. This is (mostly) a good thing for a healthy debate, and certainly for keeping readers engaged. One perennial topic is a call to remove or modify the requirement (passed into law by Congress) that 65% of all Service Academy graduates must be STEM majors. While I was on the board, its membership was roughly 60% humanities majors. So the conversation was always… vigorous. Like Sheldon and Amy’s argument.
On the side of the humanities is the argument that in order to effectively understand the geopolitical environment in which the military operates, one must understand history, governance and culture. Military commanders must be trained to make the best military decisions available within the context of the geopolitical situation and national policy. Tactics and technology are secondary to larger issues of strategy, ethics, and history. On the side of STEM is the fact that warships, aircraft, and submarines are enormously complex technological achievements that must be employed, maintained, and repaired in the difficult environment of the world’s oceans. A military commander can best contribute to national objectives not by trying to define them himself, but by maximizing his ability to faithfully execute national policy. Writing about strategy, ethics, and history is a luxury that exists as a result of technical warfighting supremacy.
The question of how many STEM graduates should enter the officer corps of the US military itself is an example of the conflation of populations with paths. In war, tactical decisions made by individual commanders can have strategic effects. The idea that getting the right mix of undergraduate degrees in the population will result in an (near-) optimal set of skills in an individual commander dangerously conflates populations with individuals. The argument can be extended to any military role (cf: Strategic Corporal).
The question is also laden with unfounded assumptions. Notably, that one’s undergraduate degree wholly or even predominantly determines one’s ability to understand either engineering or geopolitics when one is a military commander 17-30+ years after graduation is absurd. The weaker assertion that without an appropriate undergraduate degree one is limited in the ability to develop expertise in other fields, is also absurd.
In the STEM/humanities debate, we haven’t asked the right question.
What’s the alternative? STEM vs Humanities is a false dichotomy. We need both in every officer eligible for command. Instead of focusing on distributing education across a group, how might we should create individualized paths that maximize the indirect learning of every officer in both STEM and the traditional humanities? An even better question is how might we inspire each officer to pursue a journey of life-long learning that optimizes both STEM and humanities expertise? Another: how can we best improve the skill of learning itself? The answers are likely to be highly individual. I was much better equipped to grapple with math, physics, engineering, and thermodynamics in undergrad, and probably wasn’t ready for Aristotle or Liddell-Hart until years later. But each person’s learning affinities are different, and can be developed with sustained effort. Learning science and technology have advanced to a point where we must stop asking if we can do this, and start doing it.
Sheldon and Amy set aside the false dichotomy, got married, and worked together to revolutionized physics. A good example.
Reject false dichotomies and ask great questions.