Option 1: “The technique of reducing the physical world into mathematical abstractions… played a key role in producing a new physics, and stands as a distinctive feature of the Scientific Revolution” (p. 73). Would it also be accurate to say that this is what’s distinctive of science, and in particular, what distinguishes science from the humanities? Explain.
Option 2: In a few sentences, comment on / raise a question about Thursday’s translation panel. This can be based on your !/? posts, or it can be something new. And it could be useful—though not required—to connect the translation panel to Plato or Borges (note for starters that both of these readings are translations).
Option 1: On the surface, science and humanities seem to be very different things. To me, explaining science logically through the language of mathematics is one of the key differences between the two. Humanities puts more of a focus on social issues that can be broad and opinionated while science studies facts and follows a set of rules to explain the world. That being said, I do believe that these two fields of knowledge can be related to each other. For example, reading The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction explains the world of science in the past. We read scientific explanations to understand society back in the 16th century. In this way, we are able to use science and humanities to compliment each other to gain a better understanding of both worlds of knowledge.
Looking back after defining humanities, I think there are distinguishable differences between science and humanities. Science focuses on explaining the world looking at natural facts, while humanities dives in to analyzing man-made history. Stereotypically speaking, there aren’t too many fields of science that focuses on what society does, or how humans interact with each other. Humanities, on the other hand, puts nearly all of its focus on that. I think that’s what I tried to say in my original post but I couldn’t quite describe it. I still believe that these two worlds can be very much related to each other and used to strengthen each other.
Option 2: One point from Thursday’s lecture that I found really interesting was the discussion of the responsibilities of the translator. Is it to preserve the language as close as one can, or is it to rewrite the text to cater to the reader? Both of these things are very different in their goals. In my opinion, I think these two tasks are equally important, especially when read together. One without the other cannot paint a full picture of what the author is trying to convey.
I’ve never thought twice about the roles of a translator so it was an interesting topic to confront. Both arguments can provide valid evidence to back them up. Some might argue that it’s more important to preserve the original text because it’d be unfair to the author for the translator to take their own liberties on the text. The translator’s job should be solely to translate text, not rewrite it. Others will argue that translators should also take the responsibility of translating the text in a way that makes sense to the reader. Language is complicated and most times, if you translate texts word by word, you might miss the meaning of the whole. The literal definition of each word usually doesn’t translate to the whole passage well. That’s why I came to the conclusion that both jobs are equally as important. It’s impossible to choose one over the other since they both unique, important roles.
