Engineers shouldn’t work with humanities. Radical as that sounds, the forced pairing between engineers and humanities creates resentment. Students meander through their essays, confused as to why they, as people who think in numerical systems, need to interpret Shakespeare. Therein lies the fundamental flaw. Society misclassified engineers! I argue engineering is the most humanities-driven subject there is, and siloing it as a discipline to work with humanities instead of a discipline within humanities exacerbates the phenomenon known as information entropy, threatening student education at its very core.
Let’s back up for a second. What is information entropy? I define information entropy as a phenomenon that occurs when details are lost in translation due to the continuous process of abstraction. Think of it like a game of telephone applied to assignments. All assignments start with a set of goals. The course objectives most students gloss over in the syllabus. From there, especially in the design labs, a course coordinator works to develop curriculum. Professors then transmit that material to students via presentations, who interpret it, and later apply the material within their projects. At each step, there is a level of abstraction by the receiving party that distorts the initial meaning to the point where, after a few abstractions, the initial truth disappears to obscurity.
Information entropy is a large problem across engineering. It builds up from small moments like assuming friction as negligible, or that a thermodynamic process is ideal. Momentarily, these assumptions feel inconsequential. Compounded over iterations of experimentation, with various interpretations built from the foundation, what transpires is not a true representation of reality. It is what one would call a simulacrum; a version of reality that lacks the original meaning. The same concept applies to education. Ideas go through so much translation that the initial meaning is lost.
How does this tie back to humanities? Well, consider the following. Humanities compress entire texts into digestible material. Keep in mind, these texts cover many non-logical subjects like personality theory, ethics, and dystopian futures possibly ruled by Big Sister. How do they accomplish this? Discussion. Interpretation. Freedom of expression. Wait a second. Ethics. Freedom of expression. Interpretation. Aren’t these concepts also present in engineering? Where a problem is subject to interpretation? Where solutions are expressed through a unique design? Where individuals must weigh questions about ethics?
Yes. Engineering is a branch of humanities. In fact, I argue it’s a simulacrum of humanities itself, so detached from its origins that we’ve forgotten why it exists: Problem solving. Engineers fundamentally exist to solve problems, but not exclusively the math kind. Engineers push the boundaries of logic. They build the future by not assuming reality is fixed. No. They look at its entire, messy, entropy-filled form. That’s the same idea that drives humanities students. They formulate ideas that challenge pre-existing assumptions.
I’ll leave with this. To all engineers, stop approaching your design classes like a math problem. There is no single solution. There never was and never will be. Stop using ChatGPT to look for the silver bullet. The purpose isn’t to find the solution. Your job is to experiment, fail, and try again. Yes, the system we exist in—grades, pressure, and judgment—constantly works against you, but trust me when I say that engineers who work as humanities students instead of with them are far more valuable than those who know two plus two is four.
