Preceding modern natural science was an empire of natural philosophy. Lacking necessary tools to explore the realm beyond the eye, philosophers used the minds eye to analyze, assess and explain our strange situation here on earth.
Natural Philosophy: reasoning to describe and explain nature
Natural Science: qualitative data and description to explain nature
The meaning of all of this is that when I, a lowly undergraduate, was selecting classes, my thought was that anything existing in the philosophical domain would be of no use to my interests. How could pondering lofty theoreticals assist my love of qualitative truth?
This question defined that class for me, and although it was taught with the focus of human nature, I often found myself drifting in and out actual nature and real life applications of philosophical implementation. For example, in class we discussed actions. So, if you can acknowledge something happening as an action, then you must also acknowledge something not happening as an action. It is impressive to then think of the possibilities of things the that are not happening. Which in contrast makes the world we live in today a generally boring place when superimposed on the infinite possibilities that are afforded by our minds. With deeper thought you may consider why things are not happening versus those that are and be comforted by the (also generally boring) truth that the world, for the most part, works in rational ways.
My favorite example:
http://www.naturalisme.dk/blog/wp-content/uploads/angraecum-sesquipedale.jpg
Charles Darwin, a naturalist and geologist, in 1862 deducted that if we live in a just, rational world then the only reason that a series of orchids in Madagascar would have such impressively deep nectaries is because there exists somewhere an animal of which can receive it's nectar. He theorized (on the observation of the orchid alone) that there in fact must be a moth (a known pollinator of the orchid) that has evolved an extraordinarily long tongue in order to reach the nectar. It was not until 1992 (~150 years later) that that very moth was observed thus confirming Darwin's deductions.
http://blog.hmns.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Giant-sphinx-moth-original.jpg
It is this story that is very powerful to me. On numbers alone science is not complete. Modern day academia needs visionaries and chance takers with progressive thinking to delve the unknown. Without reasoning and inquiry we will never discover what we don't know.
I do not say this often but, the liberal arts core has been a great service to my academic career and has shed some light on my academic prejudice. By "forcing" me to take humanities I have been given a perspective not usually visited in the "hard" or physical sciences.
Information pertaining to the Moth Story can be found HERE
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