How do you find time to balance reading with the sciences? Is it possible to pursue and be educated in both these days...

Nothing wrong, sure, but you don't get to claim that Formula One is your hobby because you ride karts during weekends.

wow he helped invent calculus.
guess what, I learned calculus in 3 months when i was 18.

the threshold for making a contribution is only getting higher. unless i dedicate my life to it, i can never even pretend to grasp special relativity.

You mean you learned "babby's first calculus" when you were 18. Don't equate learning the basics with pioneering the field.

One thing that always makes me cry is the pathetic shelf of maths/science/engineering books at every book store.

you missed the point at least as hard as ive ever seen anyone miss it.

Literally ignored the second part of his post
>on this, a literature board

average nº of pages per book?

No, you're right that the prerequisite knowledge required to contribute is rising, but you didn't learn calculus when you were 18 in 3 months, you learned some calculus. Big difference.

>guess what, I learned calculus in 3 months when i was 18

You learned calculus 1, which is glorified Algebra, and you only learned to emulate proofs without understanding the reasoning behind them. That's the difficult part of math, and it's what pioneers in the field have to deal with.

I do agree with the point you are (very poorly) trying to articulate, though. In the 19th century, for example, there was a lot less information about everything: geniuses could go to university at 16, be considered educated by their early 20s, and start making fantastic contributions. Now, people have to spend 8-10 years in secondary school to be educated in a very specific field. It's basically impossible to make any meaningful contribution these days unless you're born into a rich family and given all the time in the world to study and devote yourself to a field.

yeah but what im saying is that a few hundred years ago no one knew what the hell a derivative was. i can grasp that information in a brief period of time.

im not professing to be a calculus master

refer to and stick to reading fiction

250-300 I guess.

>Is it possible to pursue and be educated in both these days, with so much information available?

Firstly, the worst thing you can study is history. Even Schopenhauer said that familiarizing yourself with the general 'Zeitgeist' of a given era/period is enough. There is just too much information in the study of history to meaningfully pursue without being to the detriment of other things.

In general however, yes, it can be done. That it ISN'T done nowadays is something truly strange. In the 19th century, intellectuals from Darwin to Nietzsche would study science in their spare time; reading scientific works/books/etc, alongside whatever else was in their daily routine.

That people don't nowadays that most of science has gone in a somewhat similar way to the study of history. The sheer amount of scientific knowledge has increased vastly since the 19th century, such that it is difficult to have a meaningful yet passing knowledge. As with history, you're either 'all in' or left floundering in general ignorance/misconception/etc.

who cares what the "pioneers" had to deal with. I'm not disputing that it's harder to invent than to learn, but that isn't relevant to the topic at hand- which is that it's useless to explore mathematics and the natural sciences as a dilettante in the present day, because you're never going to grasp what the fuck is going on in any real capacity, much less discover something in the field.

reading Microbiology for Dummies isn't going to make you smarter or more interesting, and you surely aren't going to 'get' microbiology after reading it.

...

This is just plain wrong user. After reading "microbiology for dummies" you could read molecular biology of the cell, or a book on genetics, you could read papers on genetic manipulation and become knowledgeable of things like biobricks and CRISPR. Your opportunities to perform research are going to be greatly diminished if you shun the traditional academic route, but that doesn't mean you can't develop a firm appreciation of what is going on in whatever field you are specifically interested in.

you could, but again, it's not worth it, because you'll just be an understudied microbiologist with a lack of knowledge in other fields.

modern day sciences (and maths) force you to go all in. to be fair i feel the same way about analytic philosophy.

Knowledge is worth pursuing as an end in itself. You are acting like the only reason to pursue a science is to be a leading researcher and publish papers. An undergraduate knowledge of Chemistry, Biology, and Physics will seriously change the way you view life and the world. That is worth spending a few years of your life on. The same can be said of Philosophy and Western literature, religion, a foreign language, albeit to lesser degree.

I think that autistic levels of specialization are best left to careers, since the amount of knowledge gained vs. amount of work put in diminishes greatly past an undergrad level. It's better to be well versed on a lot of topics.

I study physics. Philosophy of physics is almost exclusively pop-sci bullshit. It comes from people who either have a very tenuous grasp of how physics works or don't give a shit and just want to cash in on redditor pseuds eating up bullshit.

Science has been captured by academia, and subsequently re-interpreted through those institutions into a form which advantages scientific institutions over the pursuit of science. In reality, there is not really that much more information available to the individual than in previous centuries: while there has been an explosion in data, facts, and theories, most of these can be safely ignored while still developing general principles which are handy for accessing almost any study (metaphysics and cybernetics are the most generally applicable systems of thought). In order for someone to become a student of the sciences, they really only need to develop some metaphysical systems from which all major and important scientific theories have been developed (e.g. the mechanistic metaphysics of Hobbes, Hume, d'Holbach which preceded Newton's deistic physics).

You are certainly correct that the "serious" and "vocational" pursuit of science has displaced the "casual" and "gentlemanly" pursuit of science. I suspect this has not necessarily been to the benefit of science, but on the other hand much science now requires institutional and state resources to be completed. There is no simple solution for this, and many obvious problems.

History is probably one of the best things a person can study. It gets them outside of their own temporal provincialism, and helps them to see that the world they live in is not all that dissimilar from the Romans, the Han, or really any society which every developed a sophisticated civilization. People have been fighting over the same bullshit for millennia. History is most invaluable when forming hypothesis about social dynamics which can be "tested" against historical data. See Peter Turchin for an attempt at deriving scientific conclusions about civilization from the study of history.

>Understudied
Where are you getting this from? It's clear you know very little, if anything, about microbiology, so why are you so firm in your assertion that it can't be studied from home? What secret textbooks are graduate microbiologists being supplied with that a layman can't access?

le sexed equation

Modern scientific thought is just a subset of human thought. The limits have already been worked out, boy-o.

amazon.com/Beyond-Limits-Thought-Graham-Priest/dp/0199244219/

I have a Masters' degree in Genetics, so I usually just read whichever journal articles I see that interest me. The vast majority don't however. Science has gotten to a point where most people are working on things so hyper specific that they're of interest to nobody but those who work in the field.

You're definitely not very familiar with the field because there is a tangible difference between popular science and the philosophy of physics. Serious philosophers of physics tend to have degrees in both physics and philosophy and their books usually include a serious amount of equations. People like Albert, Maudlin, Bell, Wallace (no relation) are serious physicists and philosophers.

Here's a strategy that seems to work better than others:

STUDY THAT WHICH IS HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL AND POPULAR THOUGH INVOLVES TECHNICAL MASTERY. That said, avoid:

chemistry, history, sociology, anthropology

They are useless, they do not furnish theoretical rigour nor thinking nor understanding. Drop them or if you can't, minimise your exposure to them.

But what you do want to learn is this. Here's an attempt at a non-exhaustive list:

Mathematics (some standard undergrad curriculum should do the trick; you don't need to know grad-level stuff because learning real analysis and abstract algebra alone should be enough to hone and improve and solidify and cement your mathematical maturity) - Philosophy of Mathematics (ignore this and you will be utterly and completely confused; thinking about constructive vs. classical mathematics and classical logic vs intuitionistic logic, etc etc should be a good start. also is the orthodox formal semantics of maths legitimate or total fucking bullshit? nominalism vs platonism though there are plenty of other choices, etc etc)

Physics. You need to know the following: Newtonian Mechanics, Particle Physics, Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity.

Why? Newtonian Mechanics is good to consider as a 'toy-theory' and more often than not, in conversations, it is usually used to compare it to the theories that altered and replaced it: Lagrange's and Hamilton's modifications and Einstein's Relativity. Clearly, it is physics of macrocosmic objects and so it is in contrast to QM. Cosmology you need to learn because of the controversies: is The Big Bang the right kind of model or are there better ones? It relates to many philosophical and theological arguments. QM and Particle Physics for microscopic phenomena, where there is also a plethora of philosophy: How to interpret QM, etc

By now you have probably learned how to to structure your thinking, which is good, but now is when the real fun starts: Philosophy of Science. Now you get to read and think about science and what it really stands for (besides the fancy mathematical tools you learned previously).

Cognitive Science - Philosophy of Mind - Philosophy of Language (these three go hand in hand together)

Religion - Cosmology - Philosophy - Theology - Evolutionary Biology (all 5 focuses on whether God exists, the problem of evil, whether there are absolute moral facts and so on. Read J.L. Mackie and other analytic philosophers on this)

In a nutshell, again: learn that which is controversial and learn BOTH, THE MATHEMATICS BEHIND IT and the TOP-NOTCH PHILOSOPHY BEHIND IT (you should always approach Physics and everything else together with its Philosophy because it deepens your understanding and you'll be infinitely more sharp-witted than somebody that only knows the math). Learn it in the order which has math as the first objective otherwise you'll be derping without end and you won't even be capable of registering that.

Take it or leave it.

6/10

I'm in 3rd year engineering. Is it too late for me to double major in Philosophy and Mathematics?

age

You should read both sociology and history.

>no interest in the sciences

Imagine being this much of a pleb

>don't learn about history
pretty bad troll post, you stuck that in too early

depends on the book tho

The problem with idiots is that they are so full of certainty...

>Chemistry and History are useless
>Actually believing this

Thank god I didn't limit myself to an english education. Being this retarded would definitely set me back a bit

>Morons think it really isn't that hard to spend four hours on youtube/wikipedia and get a small pebble of an idea

Just learn one new concept an afternoon and try to keep it mostly constrained to the same concepts. Its not that hard.
Maybe I'm talking out my ass, I've never been to university so clearly I'm not on the cutting edge of any field, but I've got an interest in history, for example, so I always take the time to flip through the books written by (generally) amateur historians, old newspaper clippings, and I know how to differentiate between primary and secondary sources. I was taking classes in an old indian language for a while and I think I was the only white guy to ever even attempt to study it. Most people are so disinterested in most things, if you take any real interest in any field you're probably going to be on the cutting edge.
Or with mathematics, it seems like most mathematics is done by amateurs. I don't see why you need to spend your life in an ivory tower going over medieval tombs to, say, publish a paper of mathematical observations about origami that revolutionizes (or you know, contributes to) the current mathematical understanding of paper folding. From what I could gather from wikipedia and a youtube talk about the subject (which was given to graduate students so I'm guessing should be 'in-the-know') it seems like the whole mathematical field of the study of origami is limited to maybe a few hundred people who are doing it as a hobby in their spare time.
The limits of thought are any area that lacks an inquisitive mind studying and writing about specific subject. Most of those thoughts will get ignored anyways.
Maybe if you want to be in the centre of whatever trendy field of thought and study it will take years to contribute, but assuming you're an educated person, the best way to contribute is probably to just jump in and do it.
Same with those people who spend years studying a foreign language in an academic context instead of just moving to a different country and surrounding yourself with niggers who can't speak english for two years. It seems like its just a case of people overestimating the importance of formalized education.

being a dilettante just leaves you with nothing. you have exposure to these things but likely won't be able to have any significant grasp on them.

We are talking about a really abstract worldview in which societal and historical aspects are irrelevant and besides the point. We need a grand metaphysics, a unification of all the important bits. Neither sociology nor history is relevant here.

No idea, but Mathematics + Philosophy is a pretty deadly combo; wish I could double major in something like that.

:^)

>Chemistry and History are useless
Chemistry is obviously important in industrial applications, medicine, etc but it is not important if you want an abstract, all-encompassing view of how things work. Basic chemistry will suffice.

You are not going to learn science if you don't read any of those dry textbooks.

kek I'm doing MChem and reading Huysman etc