Poetry for physicists

In an effort to discover what makes the humanities difficult and unpopular with some science and engineering students, 14 Cornell faculty from the disciplines of chemistry, physics, applied mathematics, geology, materials science, and engineering were invited to become ‘‘surrogate learners’’ in a junior/senior level poetry seminar designed expressly for them. Their encounter with humanistic pedagogy and scholarship was meant to be an extension of ‘‘Peer Perspectives on Science’’ [see S. Tobias and R. R. Hake, ‘‘Professors as physics students: What can they teach us?’’ Am. J. Phys. 56, 786 (1988)]. The results challenge certain assumptions about differences between scholarship and pedagogy in the humanities and science (as regards ‘‘certainty’’ and models). But the experiment uncovered other problems that affect ‘‘marketing’’ the humanities to science and engineering students. Results are some additional insights into what makes science ‘‘hard’’ for humanities students and why physical science and engineering students have difficulty with and tend to avoid courses in literature, as well as into what can make humanities courses valuable for science students.