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Originally Posted by Ken Leung
If you look at History, not ancient history, but recent ones, around the 19th century, people were still spending a lot of time looking for answers in many field of studies. Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, Monet's Impressionism, Van Gogh's Expressionism, Beethoven's music, Mark Twain, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, the American Civil war (ending slavery in America).
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Darwin had Lamarck, Monet and Van Gogh had Michelangelo and Da Vinci, Beethoven had Mozart, Twain had Dickens, Mill and Marx had Hobbes and Plato. None of these people achieved any less because of a perception of a humanity that had 'all the answers' dictated by their predecessors. I'm sure you wouldn't argue that because of Karl Benz, we shouldn't be trying to design a better car.
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Originally Posted by Ken Leung
So, those are the areas we are now more interested in, at least as a society and a culture, and everything that has been discussed and debated by people over the last few centuries can simply step aside.
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Yes, the aim of FIRST is culture change. Yes, that desired culture places higher priority on science and technology. If I didn't believe we needed that, I wouldn't be in the program. What I worry about is losing sight of the aim of that shift, which is to benefit society. I worry, therefore, about overcompensation. I don't believe that science and technology should be promoted to the exclusion of humanities and arts, because the goals of those fields are perfectly in line with the goal of ours (i.e. the betterment of society).