Scott Huh DESMA 9 Week 1

My name is Scott, and I am a Civil Engineering major. Most of you have probably heard the phrase, “trust me I’m an engineer.” When people hear that I am a civil engineering major, they assume that I can “fix” things solely because I am an engineer. My parents always ask me to fix their television set or the microwave, but I do not know how. Whether or not I know how to fix these things, I need to see directions and diagrams in order to understand the problem. This exemplifies that without one culture, the other cannot exist and vice versa.

                                      ☝ The divide between north and south campus: stairs

In “Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between” Vesna states that the two cultures refers to a divide between humanities and sciences. I never realized how large the divide was on campus and in my daily life until I thought about it. The humanities and sciences are divided into the north and south campuses, but they are also divided in other aspects besides the classrooms. Personally, I find myself associating with people who are engineering majors because I can relate to these people more than someone who majors in art/humanities. I agree with Snow’s statement, “the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups.”

Even though I choose to gravitate more towards people with a similar major, I now know that after four years at UCLA, the gap between the arts and sciences is smaller than when I first started. These first two readings have given me a completely new perspective on arts and humanities. This class has already given me the capacity to look at these two cultures in a way that I have not before: they both rely on each other, and will continue to rely on each other in the future. 

Sources:

Popova, Maria, and Fernando Kaskais. "Schopenhauer on the Essential Difference Between How Art and Science Reveal the World." WebInvestigator.KK.org. N.p., 05 Aug. 2016. Web.

Snow, C. P. "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." Cambridge University Press (1961): 4. Web.

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 122. JSTOR. Web.

"Trust Me, I'm an ENGINEER by davidhedgehog." TeePublic. N.p., 20 Mar. 2016. Web. 

"UCEC–UC Los Angeles." University of California Educational Evaluation Center. N.p., n.d. Web.