7/11          \_ I don't understand your disdain for english majors, psb.
              Personally, i've never met an english major who didn't know
              who Joyce was. I have, on the other hand, met engineers who
              didn't know who Euler was. Is that any less reprehensible?
              \_ I'd like to comment on your analogy.  As an engineer, the
                 important thing is to be able to *do* stuff, which
                 requires, for most engineers, that you know some math
                 that was discovered by Euler.  While I think it would be
                 nice for technical people to take an interest in the
                 history of the ideas they need, you don't need to know
                 who Euler was to be comfortable with differential equations,
                 but if you know lots of history and can't integrate,
                 you are a totally incompetent engineer.
              \-1. i said a lot of english majors probably would not
              be able to tell you who Stephen Daedulus was without
              context, not James Joyce.  2. the filtering criteria to
              get into english is a lot lower than to get into EECS.
              3. i think a lot more people come to ucb for a degree
              stamp and end up in english rather than just people
              committed to language and lit ... i dont think a lot of
              people come to berkeley with the idea of going to law
              school and just casually decide to major in physics.
              4. the names of people is less important in engineering
              than english.  you can know what cos + i sin \theta is
              without knowing euler, but it is sort of hard to know
              much about moby dick without knowing it was written by
              melville --psb
              \_ you could read it and think about the ideas without
                 knowing anything about Melville, though.  I think a person
                 who has worked at sea will understand alot more about that
                 book than someone who listens to a bunch of whiney
                 cal freshman overanalyze it.  my point being that you dont
                 learn about literature by going to college,which is not really
                 in opposition to what you're saying, i think.
                 \- well i suppose you "could" however you would be missing
                 a lot of essential stuff. to take an example i am more
                 familar with, say the Iliad, there are some interps of
                 homer that are definitely wrong which may seem reasonable if
                 you are unaware various notions of greek society and the
                 nature of improvisational oral composition. so as the person
                 above sugests, a work of literature is much more a product of
                 it's circumstances than a result in math or physics. ohm's
                 law would be ohm's law regardless wheher it came from germany
                 or china. however, a chinese old man and the sea would
                 probably quite different from hemingway's. in spite of all
                 the crap about knots in MD, i dont think knowing how to sail
                 is the key to MD. probably more important to know your bible,
                 shakespeare etc. --psb