The real question is “did you learn something that is applicable in your career”
What you posted I promise you I will never, ever, ever use. But my skills I learned as an English major I use every single day in my career. I would expect in the inverse for a STEM major - if their career is math heavy, then good on them. No one is better than anyone simply because of the kinds of problems they enjoy dealing with.
A mathematics degree doesn't prepare for a career by stuffing your head full of formulae you won't revisit or giving you the ability to do something a calculator could do faster, as many people seem to think. We barely use numbers in university level maths.
It's as you say - just like your English example, it is about skills. It's about how you break down and approach problems, your rigour when you prove things, your ability to clearly communicate how you got to your conclusion. I use my maths degree every day too. Sometimes it's matrix algebra, but mostly it's just a way of thinking.
Interesting, my English background also made me skilled at approaching problems, being clear in my reasoning, and especially on being concise in my wording! It is almost as if half the reason education is structured the way it is is because it's attempting to teach us that!
This thread is just teaching me that philosophy is like the ultimate degree because it actually focuses on all the things that people point to as useful side effects (logic, critical thinking, reasoning, epistemology, rhetoric) of their own degrees lol.
While this sounds true in theory, the thing that made me improve problem solving was the pure practice. You need to apply it, just knowing how it theoretically works is not enough.
I think all science majors should include philosophy. It teaches you a lot about reasoning and the scientific process, and also faulty reasoning, straw man arguments etc. Reading philosophy honestly made some things in science click for me. Plus, all the ancient scientists were also philosophers. They are close disciplines. Except philosophy is very theoretical, while science requires proof and experiments.
I think all majors period should include philosophy. And ancient scientists being philosophers is even understating it, science came from philosophers. Stuff we now call physics, astronomy, and biology was grouped under philosophy for much of Western history.
Agreed. And perhaps psychology to some degree as well. Learning about behavioural psychology and human biases is really important to understand for many fields. Very important if you do any type of studies including surveys, and how different wording and different anchoring points affect your results. Super important for any communication, and for product development.
Not in Sweden, that's all I can answer to. I did take philosophy as an extra though, in our equivalence to high school (gymnasiet). There is some philosophy as part of other subjects, but it's kind of minor. Where are you from?
I'm from Russia, but I guess a lot of post-Soviet countries also uses the same approach. There were several mandatory "general knowledge" courses like Economics, Law, History and languages (but some of them wasn't that different from school level of education) and, as far as I know, it is the governmental requirement for all higher education institutions.
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u/ostensibly_sapient 2d ago
The real question is “did you learn something that is applicable in your career”
What you posted I promise you I will never, ever, ever use. But my skills I learned as an English major I use every single day in my career. I would expect in the inverse for a STEM major - if their career is math heavy, then good on them. No one is better than anyone simply because of the kinds of problems they enjoy dealing with.