Hubris of the Humanities
Nicholas Kristof has a great op-ed piece on intelligent design and the absolutely inadequate education in the sciences here in the US. It’s a great piece – go get your New York Times Select memebership and read it…
Who at the NYT thought this Select business was a good idea? The fact that “The Hubris of the Humanities” is now one of the most searched articles on Technorati tell you that people are looking for this stuff – and people are willing to disregard copyright and put the full text up online. The New York Times Op-Ed page used to be widely read – but now? How much influence have these columnists lost since Select became a sad reality?
Well, I will give you a little tease:
The New York Times
The best argument against “intelligent design” has always been humanity itself. At a time when only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and only 13 percent know what a molecule is, we’re an argument at best for “mediocre design.”
But put aside the evolution debate for a moment. It’s only a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.
One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.
The problem isn’t just inadequate science (and math) teaching in the schools, however. A larger problem is the arrogance of the liberal arts, the cultural snootiness of, of … well, of people like me – and probably you.
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