Relationship Dynamics – College of Arts and Sciences

Are you not in a relationship? Alright, you’ll find some clues in this post! Read through the post! This post is dedicated to understanding the men-women relationship dynamics. After all, human behaviours are influenced by both arts and sciences, so let’s dig the college of arts and sciences!

How to find a relationship?

Is there a universal well-defined method to find a relationship- say about finding a girlfriend or a boyfriend? Unfortunately the answer is NO! Is there a formula to find a relationship? I’d again say no. There is no formula to get a girlfriend or a boyfriend. Formulas exist in science. Finding a relationship is an art, not science.

Why relationship dynamics is an art, not science?

Well, before we understand the answer to this question on relationship dynamics, let’s first understand how are science and technology related to engineering? What does science basically mean?

So, how are science and technology related to engineering?

I have often seen these terms being used interchangeably. They are indeed very closely related, however, they represent different terms. I will distinguish between science, engineering, technology, and art. First, let me distinguish between science and technology (and engineering).

What is science?

Here goes the explanation in a layman’s language-

1. Science basically gives principles, such as the Newton’s gravitational law (F=mg).
2. Science has no exception– For example, if you look the chemical formula of the water, its H₂O. This formula is valid everywhere – you may go to India, South Africa, Australia, America– water would be H₂O and there is no exception to this fact. I mean the chemical formula for water remains the same (H₂O) – wherever you go.
3. Science can be proved or disproved– For example, if you want to test if a given liquid is water or not, break down the liquid into its elements in a laboratory, and test them. Water contains two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. You will figure out whether the liquid is H₂O or not. The point is a liquid is either H₂O or it’s not.
4. Science is objective– Science is not subjective. For example, there are clear and well defined ways of doing things in science. If you want to make water, add two elements of hydrogen, and one element of oxygen- and you get the water. This process of making water is well defined.
5. Science is based on the principles of mean to an end relationship.
6. Science promotes rational ideas – science is all about rationality.

Well, what does engineering mean?

Now coming into engineering – it’s the application of science to solve real life problems. For example, constructing a dam based on scientific principle is an engineering task. As another example, developing a satellite navigation system based on newton’s gravitational rules is basically an engineering adventure. As you can sense, without science, there would be no engineering.

what does technology mean?

So what’s the technology? Well, it’s the use of tools to accomplice a certain task (or an engineering task). Computers are the tools, so are the mobile phones. You might have realized that the mobile phones become outdated in a very short span of time. There are new models of mobile phones keep coming on the market every now and them. Why? Because technology has changed. Remember- science doesn’t change, technology does.

Did Newton’s formulas change in last few decades? No, it didn’t. The interpretation of science does change, not the science per se. So we never hear someone saying that the science has changed. However, we often hear that the technology has changed.

what is art?

How about the art? What is an art? Let’s go through a couple of examples-

Example 1

Suppose you are walking on a road, and you find a $10 note under the sun. In a normal situation, it would be fair to assume that you will be happy with the extra cash in your hand. Let’s say that you are walking the very next day on another road, and you find a $100 note. You will be happy again. But, given that now you have 10 times more cash in hand, will you be 10 times happier than the previous day? The answer is NO– you are not 10 times happier than the previous day. Why so?

The main issue is – there is no way to quantify happiness. There is no way to measure happiness. That means, you can’t say something like “I’m 10kg happy”, or “I’m 10 meter happy”. Since there is no unit of happiness, we just can’t measure it. Happiness can only be felt. Moreover, happiness is not objective, happiness is rather subjective. So there can be multiple ways to be happy. What makes you happy today may drive you nuts the very next day. What makes one person happy may cause another person being unhappy. But why so?

Because again, happiness is subjective. Happiness is not science, happiness is an art. In art, there are multiple ways of doing the same things (e.g. to be happy). So there can be multiple ways of becoming happy. It should be more clear why some people are happy with having a particular achievement (e.g. being married), while someone else is unhappy despite having the same achievement (e.g. filing for divorce).

Example 2

As another example, suppose you visit a painting gallery. There you see a particular painting (say Painting X) and you feel it’s very good about it. You see another painting (say painting Y) and you don’t like it. Can you describe how much painting X is better than painting Y? Is there a way to quantify goodness of a painting? Unfortunately the answer is again NO. You can like a painting, you can like a painting more, and you can like it more and more, and so on. But you will never be able to say how much more exactly you liked one painting compared to another painting. This is so because painting is an art, not science.

College of Arts and Sciences

If you look into the organisational structure of a particular university, it’s usually divided as

1. College of Science
2. College of Humanity
3. The above two may be combined into a College of Arts and Sciences
4. College of Engineering

These sub-organisations can be further sub-divided. For example a College of Engineering can be subdivided into different branches of engineering, such as Department of Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, etc. A College of Science in turn can be divided in the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Similarly, a College of Humanity may be further divided into different branches (politics, history, etc.).

Subjectivity in life

Each of the sub-branches of College of Science is aimed at studying different areas of science (in rational ways). The whole College of Humanity is to study the subjective aspects of life (i.e. arts) where there is no clear way of doing things. In other words, the subjective aspects of life are studied at the College of Humanity. I will list some of the subjective aspects of life here-

1. Religion
2. History
3. Geography
4. Finance
5. Business
6. Politics, and so on.

When I say subjective aspect, I mean that different persons can have different opinions for a given topic (e.g. religion), and all of them can be simultaneously right.

Did you hear the terms like “political science” or “financial engineering”? Basically, in political science, we try to make objective decisions. We try to understand if there can be one way (as in science) of doing things in politics. Similarly, in financial engineering, the finance market being very subjective, we try to integrate principles of science or engineering to make objective decisions. In humanity, there has been lots of debate if politics can be science. Here are a few related articles – how scientific is political science? Can politics be studied scientifically?

Relationship building

Coming back to the point where we started, can we have a formula to have a relationship? No way! The relationship is an art. Obviously, first of all you need to work out your relationships fundamentals.

To master an art (relationship dynamics) you need to practice more and more by doing field experiments, only theory classes at a College of Arts and Sciences won’t suffice!

That’s all about relationship dynamics in this post.

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 Last updated: Saturday, September 16, 2017