C@|^T3$!@N

There were actually quite a few things that i will take away from this class so i might be a little random in what i am talking about, but the thing i will try to focus on is the concept of our Cartesianized culture cuz that is the one thing i will be most likely to remember if asked about this class in ten years.

Does anyone else feel like when the term "cartesian" was used in the classroom it was often said with some contempt? At first it was somewhat enlightening to me to understand what cartesian meant and to consciously recognize how ingrained the concept was in society. But I don't fully understand the negative connotation attached to it in the classroom. I think the fear of cartesianism, if you will, is that it will annihilate all other ways of looking at things and though i understand the concern i don't think it could ever completely take over. For example...

I know that even if i was given a recipe and followed it perfectly i could never cook as well as someone who just new what to do and measured things "by eye"

I would much rather watch a baseball game then look at a sheet of paper that had every possible stat about the game.

If i meet a girl I like i more than likely wouldn't graph her attributes and see what the R squared value is between the function of my ideal girl and the one i just met... then again I think that may be what e-harmony does... ok I may have just talked myself out of any reasonable argument i had lol

I know there are many more example but i suppose the fact that i couldn't think of many more maybe gives some credibility to the fear of the cartesian takeover.
I also think that maybe a lot of things would be similar even if they weren't cartesianized. For example i was told that at one point their was a kind of split in the way writing music was seen. One group of people wanted there to be rules to everything, if an exception was found then another rule was there to account for it, the other group thought that it should be up to the musician to do what he thought sounded "good". Well as it turned out both groups of musicians ended up sounding exactly that same. You could say that the rules were unnecessary and inconvenient or you could argue that they allow a better understanding to a less advanced musician.

I think maybe that last argument hold part of the answer. To the untrained musician, or whatever it may be, a cartesian layout is greatly helpful in gaining an understanding of the topic, but to someone who is very skilled at something (musician, chef, economist, even engineer perhaps?) it shouldn't be seen as an absolute boundary but rather as a generally good thing to base your work on. So yes I think it is beneficial to recognize that we are cartesian and we should understand its influence on us but if those two things are done i think there is nothing to fear from the cartesian takeover itself.

Anyway back to what i will take from this, I guess I always "knew" that things tended to be based on graphs and grids and ratios in our society but that fact that it was given a name in this course definitely got me thinking about it more and i think it will be good for me as an aspiring engineer to better understand the benefits and limitations of a cartesian way of looking at things.
Have a great summer everyone!