‘What Is a Fact?’ a Humanities Class Prepares STEM Students to Be Better Scientists

This two-cultures thinking, moreover, distorts the empirical realities of data collection, the challenging work of forcing unruly phenomena to speak in clean, distinct, ideally quantitative phrases

Facts are valuable things, and so is fact-checking. But if we really want people to understand complex issues, we need to engage their curiosity. If people are curious, they will learn.

No thinking person should be indifferent to our society’s disinvestment in the humanities.53 A society without historical scholarship is like a person without memory: deluded, confused, easily exploited. Philosophy grows out of the recognition that clarity and logic don’t come easily to us and that we’re better off when our thinking is refined and