A step towards effective communication between science and engineering and the arts and humanities, or, Quantitative application of pentadic ratios to communicate scientific effectiveness to the humanities.

摘要

Given the assumption that there is room for improvement in the level of understanding, acceptance, and appreciation of engineering and scientific accomplishments by the portion of society that does not deal with science or engineering gives rise to several questions as to cause, effect and plausible ways that this relationship might be improved. This problem did not appear over night but rather developed over the centuries. To allow the gap to widen will only foster dismissal of healthy levels of understanding, acceptance and appreciation. After defining the degree to which this schism exists, this thesis will offer a tool which can be used to help understand the dynamics involved in this communications dilemma. This thesis will approach the problem from a macroscopic view and will make use of Kenneth Burke's pentad to help explain the relationships between the two parties and offer some insight as to how improvements in communications might be made. The author believes that at this level significant trends will be easier to distinguish and major incongruencies can be seen in a straightforward way.;We can appreciate the simplicity and elegance of this approach when we consider the countless number of factors that influence good communications between two parties. As an example, a short list of only some of these factors is shown in the form of a Force Field Analysis in Figure 1. On the left side are shown a sample of the forces that impede communications and good understanding between science/engineering and society and on the right are forces that possibly could promote good communications. The basic idea behind the Force Field Analysis is that the cumulative values of the forces on either side will dominate the other resulting in an overall predominate preference.