Can a scientist or STEM academic offer commentary on a humanities PhD

Should you take their commentary seriously or with a pinch of salt? I feel what they said just misunderstood what I was trying to do.

Reply 1

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Depends on what the "commentary" is. However the methods and nature of the fields are so different that I can't see it being particularly illuminating for anyone in most cases. Even just the basics such as when a source might be considered "out of date" are vastly different between the two; most articles that are more than 5-10 years old in STEM fields are usually considered "not current" and not something you should really be citing (although may be useful for reference). Meanwhile in many humanities fields there are 200+ year old monographs which are perfectly valid and "current" approaches to particular topics.

This is even before you take account of the "culture war" fostered by the media between STEM fields and humanities fields and the widespread dismissive attitudes of the former towards the latter.

Of course there may be relevant areas of overlap and there's no reason people doing two such PhDs couldn't talk about their work with each other informally in any case. But if someone doing a STEM PhD told a humanities PhD they were doing something wrong I don't think it'd be worth putting much weight on that. The reverse certainly wouldn't be given any credence in most circles; for example, why suppose a physics PhD knows anything about literary criticism if we accept a literary and critical theory PhD wouldn't usually know anything about quantum field theory?

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 2

Diamonds13

Yes, thanks for putting it in context. This is a well considered response that sheds light on the issue well.

Reply 3

Reality Check

Original post

by Diamonds13

This is a well considered response that sheds light on the issue well.

You're essentially describing 99.9% of AL's content, there. :smile:

Reply 4

chaotic1328

As with everything, it depends....

If your research in the humanities is based heavily on quantitative methods, then advice from an academic from the STEM fields on methodology, the use of statistics and their interpretations etc., could be invaluable. Then of course, there is the issue of academic rigour, which should be valid across most, if not all, disciplines. Also, any accomplished academic in whatever field can make useful comments on the general structure of a written piece of work, whether the arguments are internally consistent and on any logical errors.

On the other hand, I don't think academics with STEM background could add much in terms of theory ('theory' in the social sciences/humanities usage rather than in the context of the 'hard' sciences) or subject specific knowledge in subjects outside of their areas of expertise.