The distinction between the humanities and the exact sciences is a stumbling block in many debates. Some argue that physicists are better. Some argue that poets are better. Some like engineers, some like philosophers. Some like chemists, some like psychologists. As you can see, the variation here is mostly by personal preference.

BUT! There is an important difference between the humanities and the exact sciences that underlies success in professional life. Not by 100%, but by a good 20% or even 30%. And to increase the success of the child (and the adult) in the future by 20-30% – it is worth a little practice.

The distinction between the humanities and the exact fields is very simple and is at the heart of learning:

In the humanities field, people do NOT learn to redo the work to get the result they want.
In the exact field, people DO learn to re-do the work in order to get the result they want.

How do we figure this out? Very simply, by observation. So, for example, children go to art school. They draw, paint, sculpt. And, interestingly enough, they always do NOT learn to redo the work if it is unsuccessful.

The teacher corrects the drawing, the student corrects the drawing, different methods are used to fix what is there to make it look acceptable. But the drawing is not redone so that it matches what was intended.

Consider this trend in the other humanities.

Literature, history, ecology, psychology… There’s not even a place in these sciences where you can redo something.

Didn’t the experiment on monkeys work out? Let’s pretend it did and write an article.

Need a tribe of ancient people to first invent fire and then a stone axe? Yes please, that’s easy.

Got a muddy lake? We’ll think of hundreds of ways to fix it. But none on how to keep the mud out.

Considering the examples, a general pattern can be deduced:

ACCURACY IS NOT NEEDED IN THE HUMANITIES.
That’s why it’s not trained. That’s why there’s no need to redo the work time after time. And in the exact sciences, accuracy is important – and they train it.

So there are two steps:

Imagine and calculate what something should look like.
Bring it to life.
And in step two, the exact sciences work and work and work to get what’s in step one. That is precision .

So, if an engineer has an error in a calculation, he won’t put a bow on the drawing. He will redo the calculations so many times that the bridge will hold the loads.

If a physicist doesn’t get the results of his experiments right, he will redo the experiment as many times as necessary to get it right. But he will not attribute a few flowers and hope that the error will not be noticed.

The builder, if he did not get a wall, will redo and redo, until the foreman will not be satisfied. There are, of course, slackers, but they are everywhere.

A chef will strive for the right taste in food, an electrician for the right voltage, an inventor for the right invention, an accountant for all the numbers to add up, and so on.

As you can see, the exact sciences are not just the “higher,” unapplicable ones. It’s any activity where people aim for accuracy . And that requires repetition, of which there is less and less as skill increases.

It is interesting that from this point of view the composer is a humanitarian worker, he embodies what is in his mind as best he can, as precisely as he wants. The musician-performer (singer, etc.), on the other hand, is a worker of the exact spheres; he carries out all the composer’s instructions precisely and achieves maximum repeatability of the result.