The Japanese education minister recently urged the country’s higher education institutions to close or downsize their humanities and social sciences departments to offer a “more practical, vocational education that better anticipates the needs of society.” Twenty-six of the 60 national universities obliged him. It’s a small but steadily growing minority opinion among science, technology, engineering and math students: The liberal arts are useless, and their scholars are idiots. History is dull and dead, an instant of disinterest brushing away the wisdom of centuries. Sociology is a fool’s endeavor, derided for containing any extant humanity. Philosophy? Pointless. English? Frivolous. Art and literature? Certainly lively fields, but dead ends, full of empty idealism unimpressing to the ultimate assessment and highest judge — employability.

The first fundamental principle of a superior-STEM-major attitude: Physical sciences are reliable, while social sciences are not. It’s certainly true that predictions of economic or political models are less conclusive than those of physics or chemistry. You can say with certainty that E=mc^2 or that mergesort runs in nlogn, but the complexity of human interaction on a national and global scale presents too many variables for perfect quantification. But presuming that such endeavors are therefore futile is a vast, logical leap. Should we not scrutinize our actions with an analytical eye? Should we blunder senselessly on intuition as individuals, businesses and nations without caring for the consequences simply because they’re not easy to work out? Discounting the value of the social sciences is no more sensible than discounting the value of meteorology; after all, how often do we fail to predict the weather?

Furthermore, it’s increasingly pervasive through the scientific consciousness that “impractical” means “worthless.” Civil engineers can build a bridge — “What can you do with the humanities?” This myopic reductionism leads people to believe that the contributions of English departments amount to no more than empty poetry, that philosophy amounts to mental masturbation. Somehow it’s useless to study the the books we read, the shows and movies we watch, the content we begin consuming before we can even understand it. Somehow it’s useless to understand what we think is beautiful, how patterns and organizations evoke happiness or melancholy or pain or romance. Somehow it’s useless to search for truth, to delineate what we should and shouldn’t value, investigate how we should and shouldn’t act. You do your four years in pursuit of a degree that amounts to a stamp of approval to employers, and if it’s not a degree they like, you’ve wasted your time.

Why are we here? Why commit four years of our physical prime to be judged and graded, and pay through the nose for the privilege? Is it to be competitive in the labor market, to maximize our lifetime earnings and job security and live comfortably ever after? Probably, and that’s a damn fine reason. But when did it become the only reason? What became of the pursuit of knowledge as a value unto itself? When did the university stop being a nexus for scholars and academics and become no more than an advanced trade school? When did the highest value one can aspire to become the size of a paycheck? When did teacher and scholar drop from respected professions to just those who “can’t do”? We still gain something profound from investigation within the humanities, despite its seemingly limited contribution to our GDP. The transformative effect of the liberal arts on our perspective and understanding is an effort toward improving our character as a society, an investment in the future — or, as some would call it, a waste of time.

The most egregious judgment, however — the most disgusting opinion to germinate in the technocratic echo chamber — is that liberal arts majors are stupid. The humanities may well be “easier.” Their inherently more subjective nature means there’s no harsh bright-line rule of right and wrong answers. So what? Many fall into the fallacious trap of equating rigor with character. Taking a more challenging course doesn’t make you a smarter person; having a harder life doesn’t make you a better person. Nonetheless, under the self-obsessed impression that scientists and engineers are in the highest echelon of society, unable to process why one might compromise on starting salary, many STEM majors believe the reason liberal arts majors study what they do is that they can’t handle science. They think that the content of other fields is florid bullshit for unwashed plebeians, that as scientists, they are the masters of every discipline, can simply solve any system and have all the answers. A scientific education is as applicable to sociopolitical questions as a liberal arts education is to scientific ones. Programmers can’t solve international trade with crypto-currencies and economists can’t optimize sorting algorithms with game theoretic analysis. Scientists and engineers are specialized experts within a specific discipline, not intellectual monopolists with the final word on every subject.

But the valuation of the humanities declines nonetheless, with politicians not just abroad but even in the United States calling to defund the liberal arts. Increasing numbers would have us discard our investment in our future, let us neglect a healthy breadth of education in the name of short-term economic competition. If we let the scientific monomania continue to grow unchecked, if we let our epistemology become a slave to economic growth, we look forward to a future where the pursuits of truth, beauty and justice are judged pointless and abandoned, where the values and character of our civilization are allowed to rot and die in silence.

Albert Hsiung writes the Monday column on STEM student culture. Contact him at [email protected].