Week 1 - Two Cultures


        
         Hi there! This is Wenhao Li, a fourth-year undergraduate student at UCLA double majoring in Mathematics and Philosophy. Many people at the first glance would be more or less intrigued when they first hear my majors: math and philosophy seem to be two fields across the entire academic universe! Indeed, the two fields of study require very different type of thinking, like what Snow presented in his essay "Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution". Math makes massive use of deductive reasoning and is the “language” of all natural sciences. Although the study of philosphy also has some focus on the logic behind arguments, much more effort should be put into the definition of concepts and their match to our daily standards and intuition.
              My fascination of mathematics started when I was in primary school; at that time, there was nothing that could hold my concentration so persistently than the math brainteasers, and I spent most of my afternoons after school on them. Philosophy requires much more self-awareness, thus the habit of philosophical contemplation did not develop until I was much older, approximately at eighth grade. Although the two subjects have radically different real-life applications, they form the foundation of my thinking. If you were to ask what “third-culture” would I develop in between the foundation of both mathematics and philosophy, I would like to respond that my role model was once Bertrand Russell, but has now become Peter Thiel.







Sources

 Snow, C. P. "Two cultures and the Scientific Revolution". Reading. 1959. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Print.

 Vesna, V. "Third Culture: Being in Between". Reading. 2001. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001. Print.

"Math is Beautiful" N. p., 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmune_u-TjQ>

 "Bertrand Russell" N. p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell>

 "Peter Thiel" N. p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel>

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 11, 2017 at 1:25 PM

    I am also a senior math major and philosophy is something that has been intriguing me for a while. To me math is about "what is true" while philosophy focuses on "why that is true". I think the idea of "two cultures" applies to you very well since math and philosophy are representatives of science and liberal arts respectively. So throughout your academic experiences in these two disciplines, have you ever encountered any difficulty in reconciling the different ways of thinking? Does the interaction between arts and science give you a better understanding of the world?

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    1. UnknownApril 12, 2017 at 11:04 PM

      Yes, I had encountered multiple difficulties while trying to reconcile math with philosophy, and it often takes me hours to switch my mindset of one subject toward the other while doing my homework. But the result is also very rewarding. The interaction (and sometimes conflict) of those two subjects does give me a brand-new perspective on viewing and understanding the world.

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