Like all other members of a university, scientists and engineers strive to make a better world in participating in this common activity, they necessarily operate within the borders set by our common human nature. When scientists and engineers are at their best, they suffer the same frustrations, self-doubt, and delights common to artists or novelists or literary critics, or to anyone who creates to extend knowledge and awareness. When talking to colleagues in the Humanities and Social Sciences, one of my most difficult tasks is to persuade them that those who practice science and engineering are not confined to cold logic and bloodless experiments but that instead, science and engineering is a human enterprise, subject to all the paradoxes, inconsistencies and aesthetic judgments that characterize the human condition. Following Karl Pister's generous invitation to present a seminar here, I would like to tell you in a severely revised form some of what I tried to say at the Conference in Berlin. The speakers were primarily from the humanities and social sciences but there also were two physicists, two biologists and one mathematician. The International Conference in Berlin was attended by some big names including the presidents of the Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of Uppsala in Sweden and the Central European University of Budapest, as well as some distinguished academics from a variety of institutions including Harvard and Stanford, and the presidents of three major funding organizations: The Volkswagen Foundation, The German National Science Foundation and the Max Planck Society. This gulf is a problem everywhere, including Berkeley, but it is my impression that it is much worse in Europe than in America. The German universities are worried about the increasing gulf between what is often called ''the two cultures''. The subtitle was ''Silence Between the Disciplines''. The topic of the Conference was ''Sprachlosigkeit'', a German word that roughly translated means inability to speak. About seven weeks ago, I was invited to attend a conference sponsored by the Berlin Academy of Sciences where ''Sciences'' is not confined to natural sciences but includes also humanities and social sciences. My remarks are more ยป probably somewhat simplistic because, as a result of my engineering background, I tend to focus less on generalities and principles, giving more attention to possible solutions of limited practical problems. I mention this background to indicate that my remarks here are necessarily less abstract, less theoretical and less philosophical than those of most previous seminar speakers. I come from the College of Chemistry that includes Berkeley's Department of Chemical Engineering. Only rarely do I see anyone here from Berkeley's College of Chemistry or College of Engineering. I have noticed that most of the attendees, and certainly the speakers, tend to come from the social sciences or humanities. Over the years, I have attended numerous meetings like this one at the Center for the Study of Higher Education.
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