Japan Dumbs Down Its Universities

[DetlefK]

2. Scientific success needs inspiration, not worker-drones.

It needs people who can juggle several ideas at once and combine them into a new idea.

I can tell from personal experience that art, history, literature are important for the development of creativity because they force the brain to adapt to a chaotic mindset, a mindset of flexibility, a mindset of "impossible but imaginable".




I think, this reaction is isolationistic. Japan wants to focus, to specialize. But scientific specialization leads to a narrowing of your field of view. You become a world-class specialist in something, but you lose the ability to think outside of the box. And you can't have technological success without thinking outside of the box.