[karaterobot]

> Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking someone to explain a very specific thing (one particular physical law), and in the other you're asking if they have been exposed to any example from a large set of things (any of Shakespeare's plays). If he'd asked "how many of you have heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics", or if he'd asked "how many of you can describe the plot of Coriolanus" the questions would be closer to equivalent.

Nitpicky, but relevant in the sense that it's not a fair example as originally stated.

[pessimizer]

I don't buy that. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is not only basic, but can be stated in a sentence. Being able to generally recall the plot of Romeo & Juliet (or any Shakespeare play) is objectively harder than being able to spit out that sentence. I'll make the bold claim that Second Law of Thermodynamics would be recalled by far more scientists than the plot of Coriolanus would be by MFAs.

The worst thing we do is fail to teach statistics to liberal arts majors. Then, as citizens, they make obvious mistakes about the relative costs and effects of things they advocate for or are against, and can be easily manipulated in any direction with attacks on their availability heuristics.

[asdfman123]

I would bet you money if you asked a random sampling of college grads, 10x the number of people could roughly summarize Romeo and Juliet than the second law of thermodynamics.

[MichaelZuo]

Which is a bit of shame since the two cultures are of roughly equal importance to the future prospects of college grads.

[jameshart]

The Two Cultures isn’t just about lamenting that science knowledge is underrepresented though. The tragedy is that for a typical college grad they can do one or the other but not both.

[groby_b]

>>> is objectively harder

I don't think it's objectively harder - at the very least, [citation needed]. It might be subjectively harder for you. But one is a random factoid, the other one is a story. Humans are, in general, exceedingly good at stories. Facts, we tend to focus on the areas we know. You and I might be good at physics facts, or software facts. Somebody else might be good at agriculture facts, or knitting facts, or what-have-you.

But stories are universal. They connect. It's how most of humanity learns and shares knowledge. (See e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8)

There's a pretty good likelihood that stories are ultimately easier to remember for a larger number of people than facts.

>>> Then, as citizens, they make obvious mistakes about the relative costs and effects of things they advocate for

I'll note that you're possibly wrong about relative costs of learning, too. What matters isn't only what you learn (though teaching stats would sure be a good thing), but also a willingness to approach issues with a bit of humility, and not claiming something as absolute fact until it provably is.

[silvestrov]

"a random factoid" would be "the NY subway has 493 stations".

The laws of Thermodynamics are fundamentals like "what is democracy"

[groby_b]

I'm talking about the shape of the information, not its relative importance.

Humans deal better with one shape than the other. That's the reason so many memorization techniques rely on stringing things together in stories.

[cwmoore]

"First be a human" is objectively hard. Stories "appear designed to coordinate social behaviour and promote cooperation" from your link, as a functional component of groups of people. Scientific laws, and other random factoids abstracted from character plotlines typically do not "arise spontaneously in children".

The frequent retellings of familiar stories with new characters and plot twists suggests to me that there might not be as much learning involved in stories as pattern recognition. I have no citations to back that up but would be delighted to read a story that critiques the accepted story story.

[watwut]

Why would frequent reteling sugest there is not much learning?

[cwmoore]

Because so many of the stories are already familiar.

[fastaguy88]

Perhaps a version of the second law can be described in one sentence ("heat flows from hot to cold", perhaps), but when I go to the Wikipedia page, it's quite a bit more complicated than that (e.g. existence/importance of entropy). Romeo and Juliet is quite a bit simpler -- forbidden love, mistaken suicide.

[adammarples]

Yeah, the one sentence would be "entropy in a closed system can only increase"

[noduerme]

> make obvious mistakes about the relative costs and effects of things

Didn't that ship already sail when they became liberal arts majors?

[macrolocal]

These days English majors do tend to know about entropy, thanks to Stoppard.

[ajross]

It's also picking on a particularly difficult area. The "second law of thermodynamics" is actually extremely subtle. In its original formulation it's basically a big mess talking about energy flows. In its simple/elegant/modern form, it relies on an understanding of this crazy thing called "entropy" which is measured like energy but isn't, and which gets pushed with an "intuitive" interpretation that is anything but ("disorder" ... is a measurable thing with numbers associated with it?!).

Frankly if you take a bunch of actual physics students out of the crowd immediately after having taken their final exam in statistical mechanics and ask them that same question, my guess is you'd only see about 50% of them give a confident and correct answer.

So... yeah. If you instead ask a bunch of random people "can anyone explain the idea of conservation of energy?" (the first law, of course), you're going to do much better.

[DiggyJohnson]

Is the plot of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet not as subtle or layered as to provoke the exact same analysis?

You could describe it in a sentence or two, or you could write a book explaining why the typical summary misses out on the subtle details that really make it so interesting.

[watwut]

Yeah but the question was whether you read any of those plays, not whether you can provide detailed analysis or explain it.

[d0mine]

It is not that hard to understand that a broken glass won't mend itself spontaneously

[ajross]

No, but understanding that fact is at most a naive and useless understanding the second law of thermodynamics. It's the numbers in there that make it a scientific "law". And a numeric understanding of entropy is totally bananas.

[lcuff]

For some definition of useless, I suppose. Without trying to be contrary, most of what I (we) know is 'useless' in terms of whether my knowing it has a "useful" impact on my life. Knowing that there's an equation governing gravitational attraction doesn't really impact my life experientially. It's true that if you're trying to design any system that involves a Carnot cycle, it becomes useful, but given no such job description, it's not 'useful' information. Much of science _is_ useful in our STEM-oriented world, to those using it.

I think some of the reality is that regardless of most other factors in our lives, love and relationships are a Big Deal, so stories in that realm have in some small way more usefulness. Thus, I know the plot of Romeo and Juliet better than I can give a summary of the Second Law.

[Chinjut]

If you asked people "Will a broken glass mend itself spontaneously?", they will all get it correct. That's not the sort of question people fail to be able to answer. The sort of thing question people fail to be able to answer is "What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?".

[hexane360]

Yes, but a broken glass has much less entropy than an intact glass at a slightly higher temperature.

[asdfman123]

Lots of people just don’t have the brainpower to be comfortable with abstract physical or mathematical concepts. Nearly everyone can understand a love story.

[harimau777]

Isn't part of the point of Romeo and Juliet that it's not a love story? Romeo and Juliet thought they were in love but they really were hormonal teens who knew each other for only two days. My understanding is that's the purpose of Romeo's initial infatuation with Rosaline; it shows that he's really just someone in love with the idea of being in love.

[asdfman123]

Potato potato

[Chinjut]

"The second law of thermodynamics" is also a rather undescriptive name. Which one is called the first law, which one is called the second law, which one is called the third law, etc? I can't keep it straight myself.

[jameshart]

I think Snow is assuming that given that audience (academics educated in the traditional humanities) that if someone affirms they have ‘read’ something they can be assumed to also know what that thing was about.

[chrisatthestudy]

"Heat cannot of itself pass from one body to a hotter body." Thank you, Flanders and Swann! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnbiVw_1FNs

[alanbernstein]

But the second law of thermodynamics is such a fundamental physical law.

Here is a more apt equivalent question: "do you read a book front to back or back to front?"

(Mostly joking)

[bawolff]

I feel like knowing the rough plot of hamlet is about equivalent of knowing roughly what the idea of newton's law of gravity is.

[watwut]

I would also point out that Shakespeare plays are ... well plays. Nit something meant to be read, byt something meant to be seen. And most people read it only if their school assigned it as mandatory reading, because reading plays is not much of a pleasure.

[M3L0NM4N]

I don't think that's nitpicky, I think that's a very clear flaw.