"None of that sounds too hard..."
That's the engineer scribbling a first approximation solution on the back of an envelope. But what's it like from the Other Side?
Not so hot actually. You see, if it isn't verifiable, it isn't meaningful - is it? Which entails that the humanities are largely condemned to forever produce twaddle and humbug -- if you prefer, poetry and mythologies -- unless they come up with something useful, for example, techniques of social control.
Or how about a different way of exemplifying the divide - between climatology and climate scientology, say, or between science and post-normal science. In the 19th century it may have been a short hop across the quad from the science lab to the old toffees sat around the fire, but it would be a useless metaphor to describe the situation today as a chasm. A chasm exists in space and time, and implies a program to bridge it (the program may not be technically feasible, or too expensive, or offend the crusties, but that's another matter). Mr Google offers no program, recognising implicitly that the categories of Science and Arts are distinguished beyond space amd time, that is, as a metaphysical distinction that relies on a metaphysical premise.
You may well hark back to "the glory days of the Victorian era", because the Logical Positivists subsequently came along to let this dubious genie out of the bottle. And there's no time machine. The way forward is clear, nonetheless, but who's up for it? Or, to come back across the quad to the science lab, just how hard can it be a verify a black hole, for example, or the Big Bang?
So, in brief, what exactly is that government Minister for?
