Aspergers and the Humanities

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It's a proverb? I thought it was just a simple simile. Don't worry, it makes perfect sense.

I guess a prefer hard science and art to the humanities as I prefer pure sciences to applied sciences, or something, and art isn't a science at all.

I'm not sure, it's not even common enough to be anywhere on the net, we just use it to puzzle people and win arguments while they are trying to answer
I don't think it's just as simile, more like two half similes.

I have never been good at Humanities and I didn't like them as a general rule either.

I liked books with lots of factual information about technology, geography, astronomy, mechanics, inventors, cars, radios, tape recorders, and so on.

However, I like some sci-fi (Polish writer Stanislaw Lem being my favorite but I also like Asimov), and I learned to enjoy some classic novels at least to a degree. I appreciate arts in general but I don't have great affinity towards them.

At school I sucked at literature and foreign languages but was good at math, physics, chemistry, and to a lesser degree at geography.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the humanities and am far better at them than math and science. I love symbolic language and analyzing poems and stories. I love thinking about them and writing term papers full of insight about them. I have a much better grasp on the fundamentals of literature than I do the fundamentals of Algebra.

A minor nitpick, but "subjective" doesn't necessarily translate into "emotional." I've never understood why people think art, literature, ect. is about "emotion." Something can be "subjective" and still be "unemotional."

And I've never found the humanities to be particularly illogical. Having more than one "correct" answer doesn't necessitate the abandonment of "logic."



There are many ways of reaching decisions and coming to conclusions. As for "logic," I've observed that most people who attempt to use "logic" are really just presenting their own personal biases. What generally happens is a person makes a decision based on emotion and then attempts to rationalize it; I see that a lot on Wrong Planet.

I'm always amazed at some people's seeming inability to recognize their own subjectivity.

Besides, two people with opposing viewpoints can each make perfectly logical arguments in favor of their point of view. You can make a flawlessly logically argument for exterminating the Jews. Logic is just a tool that, in of itself, does not reveal "objective truth."



Same.

Ah, but you forget emotions were at play, which are tangible. Both had an emotional attachment to the game, and reasoning went out the window due to this. One could reason that what was at stake was worth ones life, and many other assumptions that in the end don't point to anything, other than that reason can't be used in all situations. The same for logic.

An intelligent man wouldn't be controlled by his emotions like that lol.

Intelligence does not mean a man has a lack of emotions, or that he is not sometimes overcome by them to the point of acting against his own self-interest. An extremely rational man or an extremely strong willed one might be able to master his emotions, but neither of those qualities necessarily reflect high intelligence, nor does high intelligence necessarily reflect those qualities.

It was a joke based on aspie stereotypes, hence the lol.

I love the humanities. In school, I was crap at science subject, but good in languages, history, religion etc. I'm a literature student at university now and can't live without my books, movies etc. It seems like the humanities nurture something very deep within me

Aren't we neglecting to mention that the arts and the humanities are often, to the extent the instutionalization of scientific method and thinking haven't penetrated them (or maybe that's just another face of them, no different than earlier ones), the major avenues of our creative outlets as a species? Scientists I speak with often insist their activities require a great deal of creativity, and there is some truth to that. But it requires creativity in a narrower sense than the arts allow for, requiring adepts to manipulate numbers and tweak designs, typically in search of a foregone conclusion. In the arts though, your materials and the way they can be manipulated are pretty much limitless, esp. as there is typically no deliberate end in sight (and if there is initially, it has probably evolved along the way). And of course, there's the whole question of whether or not artistic expression is innate to our species, in which case we probably need to engage in it for our own mental and emotional stability.

When you can make a connection and weave a simplistic pattern through the majestic souls of the arts, sciences, and humanities, it's like the flow of calm still water cascading down the steep slope of a turbulent water fall.

TheSunAlsoRises

Arts enrich people's lives. It is entirely logical to engage in and appreciate them. If Pollock isn't your thing, maybe that Van Gogh print or Toy Story would be more enriching, and the more logical choice for the individual. It is generally a good idea to critically explore/analyze outside your primary comfort zone, in order to check whether you can appreciate it (as tastes change and perhaps a judgement of a particular sort of art was based upon a handful of artists you didn't care for).

Humanities and social sciences, likewise. Although there is more tangible benefit to social sciences, as far as applications to how to improve societal and individual well-being, humanities offer an excellent mode of thinking about creative works as well as social interactions we haven't learned thoroughly via science. A musical may help us reflect on the relationships in our lives and our goals, giving the impetus to construct and reason through plans to make goals a reality (or serve as a psychological rest if they are entirely unreasonable). Literary analysis may help us reflect on the relationship between a work of literature and the society and individual who helped to produce it, as well as its connection to modern society.

While post-modern critiques tend not to interest me, and the opinion of a professor of English or Philosophy on a scientific matter should almost never supplant those of scientists on scientific matters (unless that professor offered a solid scientific analysis of the data, which would mean they almost certainly have similar qualifications in the science concerned). But I wouldn't ask a medical doctor to learn particle physics, so maybe we shouldn't ask English professors to learn about physics (or medicine for that matter).

I think this happens because much of arts and humanities is subjective. So in these fields, it is only logical to seek subjective benefits from them (which is why art snobs bother me - who cares whether they like Faulkner or your interpretation of the work, as long as they are reading, enjoying, and preferably challenging themselves). Also, since scientific sort of logic is required to make good judgements about scientific matters (see: mercury/MMR/vaccines cause autism debacle, creationism in science classes, anthropogenic global worming denial, the-LHC-is-going-to-make-a-black-hole-and-suck-the-whole-world-in, etc.), it is imperative in the modern technological society to have basic literacy in logic, even if you make a living painting and use your phone to calculate tips. Some people will have a constitutional difficulty with numbers/logic, but many more are capable of significantly greater logical rigor than the education system primes to be.

Personally, I had precocious ability in math and physics, but also creative writing. I am bad at drawing, among other things, but I have practiced little in my lifetime. I disliked the approach of my sophomore English teacher to literary analysis (partly because some things she said were objectively wrong - like teaching the backronym of fornication under consent of the king, or golf being from gentlemen only ladies forbidden being the true etymology - and didn't inspire confidence in the veracity of much of what she said). It was an easy class to BS my essays, though.

I absolutely adore music, literature and (the analysis of) politics. I excel at them greatly - I play 6 instruments very proficiently, and am at the top of my year group for English Literature and Politics (at a very highly-regarded sixth form).
However, simple math confuses me to the point of tears. I took Biology to A Level and that's been a HUGE struggle, too, although I'm pulling off a B.

And yeah, I do feel /stupid as hell/ for that. I wish I had a 'science' mind over and over, and I agree that SO many people rank sciences as more useful than arts. But something people seem to think is that they're easy, and don't require rigorous study and logic. They do. Very simple example, but seriously, play music from a sheet, and you'll get nowhere if you can't read the stave. Try writing an essay on the phonology of a poem, and you'll get nowhere if you can't name basic rhythmic patterns.

My boyfriend, INCREDIBLY able at science and maths, can't analyse a poem for crap and is progressing incredibly slowly with his piano playing. (Likewise, his maths work looks like gibberish to me!) Yet I still feel so inferior to him, even though I really don't believe sciences are harder than maths nor can a subject be in a 'hierarchy' like that.

At 13yrs, we had to pick our subjects for certificate study (O Grades in Scotland at that time). We had to pick at least one social science, one art/practical (art, music, woodwork ...), one science and two other subjects (including languages and office studies), as well as English and Maths. Computing wasn't an option in those days. I picked 2 sciences, art, French and the social science I picked was modern studies (basically politics and economics). The reason I picked this one, instead of geography, was because it was seen as more cool (believe it or not I wanted to try to be cool). I really should have picked geography, but this had the geek image, which I was trying to distance myself from. I didn't pick history, as that seemed to be the bucket end and the teachers were awful. It never occurred to me to go down the humanities route at all as a career. My best subjects were biology and art and I liked them both, so it was a toss up between them - I made the wrong choice.

But, I have a real fondness for history these days and watch historical documentaries. I'm also very interested in politics and what's right and wrong with the world. Although I have a science degree and I have a special interest in population genetics, epigenetics, population migrations (fits in with history) and health, my main love is art - mainly creating it, but a fair bit of appreciation too.