[bane]

I think both your two points here are interesting:

Re: Heidegger: To counter, there's a fairly accepted concept in the sciences that there is a loose hierarchy of the sciences. e.g. Biology is just a subset of Chemistry is just the study of a part of Physics, which is a study of applied Math, which is a subset of Mathematics, which is just a specialization of a subset of Philosophy.

It reminds me of this http://flowingdata.com/2011/06/08/all-roads-lead-to-philosop...

Re: Engineer's proclivity towards right-wrong answers in their work. I agree, and it may be a function of the kind of thinking style that lends itself well to engineering disciplines. The curricula I looked at for Engineers seemed to express an intense desire on the part of the schools to break their engineers out of this kind of mental slavery and to grok softer subjects as valid. Many people who want to become engineers do so because they've mentally dismissed the validity of subjects with non-binary outcomes. I think their is a need to put engineers through a well rounded curriculum that includes exposure to the arts. I think this is very important.

But it means as a side effect that they receive a non-trivial portion of a standard liberal arts education on top of the study of their own field. (In my opinion schools that don't provide this kind of education to their engineers are doing their students a great disservice.)