One of the problems we have with communication and the effective use of language is that no one can hear (or read) what we say the way we heard it when we said it. In Communication 101 you’ll learn that it’s because the message that was encoded in our minds and transmitted through speech or writing is not decoded in quite the same way. This is troublesome enough when dealing with people in your own field. But when trying to communicate with people from different academic disciplines, things become even messier. But this mess can be as much a of a blessing as a complication.
It’s plainly obvious that historians and engineers see the world differently, and we can easily see some of the advantages of the two approaches to things. But we can’t quite see how the differences are more than simply an approach to problem solving, but are—essentially—different worlds. In The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society, Jardine relates an illustration using two types of scientiests:
“…a chemist understands water as H20; a physicist understands it as a fluid with certain flow properties. The chemist’s linguistic conceptualization of water will allow him or her to combine it with other elements to create chemical compounds, but it will not enable him or her to build pumps and plumbing…The different conceptualizations of water actually create different worlds with different possibilities.” (emphasis mine)
“You think you have a monopoly on the truth.”
My son is sick, so my wife stayed home tonight while I went to praise team practice at the church. While I was gone she watched Wife Swap. Tonight’s episode swapped a very conservative Christian family with a very liberal Christian family. In my trade mark fashion I will refer to them as “Connie” and “Libby”…you figure out which is which.
