Ludwig,

This is not a pipe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MagrittePipe.jpg

I have to agree with Mr Opinion on the subject of the humanities at university. If what Hasbeen says is correct - that our university humanities departments teach that everyone's truth is equal - it is my experience that what they mean is "equally flawed".

I have spent quite a bit of time studying humanities at university, and the basic principle I have been taught is that there is one single truth that is distorted by a number of different perceptions of that truth. Individuals' biases, as well as their access (or lack of access) to information, cause them to misreport the truth. Thus we cannot place absolute faith in one person's account of an event, a trend, a people or a movement. Certainly, we can place considerable trust in scientifically-supported evidence - carbon dating and so forth - but that evidence is contextualised by documentary evidence which quite often skews it. Thus, as Mr Opinion tells us, history and archaeology (I'm not so sure about sociology - it gets under my skin with its PC overtones) is about the search for that single truth that lies buried under layers of distortions.

Perhaps Hasbeen is right, though, when talking about disciplines like ethics and philosophy. My experience in those fields is far shallower, but it seems to me that they revolve around irritating processes of nitpicking, ultimately aiming to prove that we know nothing and there is no truth whatsoever. I don't have a lot of time for them.

Otokonoko,

I agree with you.

There is an objective truth/reality which gets distorted by people's bias'.

There is also the objective truth/reality that 'dare not speak its name' due to the machinations of the pc 'thought police.'

Academia is not the place for this type of indulgence. Academia should be the place where rigour of research and fearless and objective analysis takes place.

The poet J.W. Goethe on “truth” (from his “Faust”; since I do not think the English translation I found on the internet does it justice, I have included the original for German speakers):

Die wenigen, die was davon erkannt,
Die töricht g'nug ihr volles Herz nicht wahrten,
Dem Pöbel ihr Gefühl, ihr Schauen offenbarten,
Hat man von je gekreuzigt und verbrannt.

(The few who any thing thereof have learned,
Who out of their heart's fulness needs must gabble,
And show their thoughts and feelings to the rabble,
Have evermore been crucified and burned.)

Dear Poirot,

In homage and answer to Rene who wrote “The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe?” I offer the following;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MagrittePip.jpg

;)

Dear individual,

Are you being sarcastic?

If not, and you really believe engineers are philosophers instead of tradesmen, could you please enlighten us on what subjects engineers are trained in that makes them seekers of knowledge?