Most Boring/Hated Subject That You're Forced to Take?

Hercuflea

Hmm...well they did call it "complex variables" on the catalog, but the prof referred to the class as "complex analysis" in the syllabus and in person. And it required Vector/multi calc, but most of us were graduating/near graduating math seniors, and the class went over topics such as harmonic functions, differentiating/integrating complex functions, contour integrals, cauchy-riemann equations, cauchy integral formula, and residue theory. I think she planned on doing conformal mappings but never had time to teach it. It was the hardest class of my life actually.

Len M

I could have just said that, and so could you have in your first response to me, instead you said..

which doesn't make it all clear that many modes of thought (including philosophical ones) lead to a testable model and that it is only beyond that point (in terms of empirical verification) that models stand on their own as being scientific "truths" (in terms of their domain of applicability).

I simply responded to that vague statement and Sayajin's comments in a manner you consider to be "rambling", but I rather just call it a very basic clarification of notions that I find useful in the field of scientific inquiry, namely empirical reality, independent reality, realism and idealism. Those four terms are all you need in order to appreciate the role of philosophy within physics as a whole.

Sayajin

Len M I asked you a simple question. Have philosophy done anything usefull ever (40000 BC - 2013 AD)?
And I will repeat myself. We won't count people like Newton here who gave the name philosophy to science book because the word physics was not popular at that time.
All theories that philosophers have made and proposed turned out to be complately wrong.
If it's not real why should I care? Why kids should learn this in school? Why when Evolution which is scientificly proven and the basic principles are teached in high school at the same time kids learn philosophy which says that Evolution is fake?
Please don't use so so many words to explain something that can be done with 1 sentence.

Philosophy should be banned from the school system it only confuses kids by saying nonsense. If you want to study this you could go to university.

jim mcnamara

Fifty some years ago, I took Sociology 101. It did one thing for me: convince me that it was possible to create a foo-foo discipline, and call it Science. Things may have improved since then. But I never pursued it to find out more about it. Trimming my fingernails took on a far higher priority than anything Sociology-related.

This is probably unfair: but whatever institution granted advanced degrees to the prof I had should rethink their curricula. So a more reasonable approach is to say that I had a horrible prof. Which I think happens all too often.

Len M

Well that's fine if you want to adopt scientific models for what they are - scientific truths with their domain of applicability and verified empirically. However if you wish to inquire as to the status of those models outside of the phenomena of empirical reality then you have to invoke philosophical inquiry. Philosophy contributes nothing useful to verified models and never will - philosophy is more about the context of those models in the absence of verification and/or their context within independent reality. I don't see it as nonsense to inquire about the status of verified models within independent reality or outside of any possible verification, but I might see it as nonsense to deny that right to anybody, including kids.

By the way, I have never implied the model of evolution is incorrect (and never would), only empirical verification can determine that. You brought that up, I was only trying to establish what the author of your book was intending to put across from a philosophical point of view and my only suggestion was that he was referring to an unverifiable aspect of the evolution model. Since you don't appear to be able to give a link for the book, I really can't say any more on the matter.

Apologies for not getting all this said in one sentence.

Darth Frodo

Statistics! Just horrible! Boring as hell!

Sayajin

So when it's not useful in our reality why should they put it as mandatory school subject. As I said studying philosophy in school is equivalent of studying that the earth was created before 6000years after all this is independent reality. School is about getting knowlege that will help you in this reality. If you want to study this things you have internet you have universities. This should not be mandatory by any way. It stops people who want to learn real science.

bp_psy

Logic is a very important and useful part of philosophy. It should be one of the main things taught in school.

Len M

Well all I'm saying is that I consider the bottom line of science to be empirical verification, that is what gives us scientific truth within the domain of applicability of the model and that is what gives science its power - I can't see what's so wrong in teaching that to school children in the context of the models scientific applicability to empirical reality and its philosophical applicability to independent reality. Empirical reality is our here and now and consists only of phenomena, independent reality is that which may exist behind the phenomena.

Let's just agree that "real" science involves a mandatory end result of empirically verified models. If inquiry (of whatever form) can't get to the point of a testable hypothesis then that mode of inquiry is "something" other than science in terms of science being in the business of establishing an empirically verified model. You may want to call that "something" science and if it's just you involved then fine. But others can legitimately call it what ever they like, it does not carry the kind of objective truth that is contained within the empirically verified model or the potential of scientific truth contained within a testable hypothesis. It's still a valid form of inquiry and often important, but it needs to be properly distinguished from the real fruits of the scientific method, namely the verified predictive model or the testable hypothesis.

Sayajin

The problem is that it is mandatory to learn uselsess subject like Philosophy. The other problem is that there are infinite number of "indipendent realities" that you can construct but we live in only one.
Further more philosophy is like doing mathematics without knowing mathematics.
Mathematicians just like philosophers define new structures objects and work with them without caring if they are real or they can be found anywhere in reality. Despite that fact even if their objects are not real the mathematics that they make is consistent and don't contradict itself. Philosophers try to define their own ways the things could possibly work but the thing is that not only they don't exist but they are also logicaly flawled. The problem is that the human language is not as consistent as mathematics. It have many flaws and you can construct paradoxic sentences that can contradict themselves and go dead end. Philosophers use the language as their main tool to think about certain things without understanding or having any knowlege about them.

Nevertheless they try to talk about every subjects including science and often try to disprove certain theory or say that what they do is somehow important for it. You just can't make something that is useless to be useful.
I am not saying that people who want to learn this stuff should stop but it should't be mandatory. This is killing real scientific way of thinking.
I am not sure how educating system in other contries work but at least of what I have seen from philosophy in my country's highschool it was pure BS.

PhysicsGente

Classical Mechanics.

WannabeNewton

=O whaaat

Lyrassia

Anything related to English and the humanities.

PAllen

It's all so personal. My father loved Organic Chemistry and based his career on it (and post career - continued to consult well into retirement), in many variations.

AnTiFreeze3

Fair enough, I was originally nit-picking one part of your first post, anyway.

In an unrelated manner, I would like to say that I enjoy your writing style.

Len M

Thank you

BobG

History of Eastern Civilizations. It wins because, while I remember what the text book looked like, I don't actually remember anything else about the course. It must have been really boring for me to forget everything about the course. It was one of those "every university has to have its own special mandatory courses just to penalize students (i.e. - transfer students) that dare spend any of their money at a rival college" courses.

A public speaking course I took in college was really bad, as well. That was mainly because of the instructor. He was really, really old and actually missed about half the classes. We'd show up and hang around for awhile just to make sure he wasn't late (which he often was) and then just leave when it became apparent he wasn't going to show at all. Learned absolutely nothing from the course. It was the typical "learn to speak by not repeating the things that have humiliated you in the past" type of public speaking course. The only bright side was that he wasn't going to give anyone less than a 'B' for a course where the instructor had such a lousy attendance record.

Later on in the military, I took a different public speaking course with an instructor that actually helped students learn to speak in public. That was one of the most valuable courses I ever took in my life. I went from hating to have to speak in public to being incredibly good at it.

So, a lot of any course is the instructor that teaches it.