It's not so much a habit of being deliberately arcane as, in my opinion at least, badly attempting to keep the sense of the sublime that engineering departments often lose touch with.
I went to a pretty shit physics department, but there were glimpses of beauty. The engineering department was more professional, better run, definitely more fun if you like the thrill of actually making something, but as engineers theory is just a means to an end, so I would've been bored on some fundamental level.
Aside:
As a (I suspect) dyslexia diagnosis in-waiting I am a sucker for really good, crisp typesetting. Old books often struggle with that (e.g. particularly curly non-latin characters are almost unreadable for me), but reasoning is timeless.
Landau & Lifshitz is old, ugly, a bit terrifying, and yet timelessly brilliant. Difficult, but in a physically challenging way rather than the more modern, Grecian-thinking, rigour-by-nomenclature style found in modernity.
It's not so much a habit of being deliberately arcane as, in my opinion at least, badly attempting to keep the sense of the sublime that engineering departments often lose touch with.
I went to a pretty shit physics department, but there were glimpses of beauty. The engineering department was more professional, better run, definitely more fun if you like the thrill of actually making something, but as engineers theory is just a means to an end, so I would've been bored on some fundamental level.
Aside:
As a (I suspect) dyslexia diagnosis in-waiting I am a sucker for really good, crisp typesetting. Old books often struggle with that (e.g. particularly curly non-latin characters are almost unreadable for me), but reasoning is timeless.
Landau & Lifshitz is old, ugly, a bit terrifying, and yet timelessly brilliant. Difficult, but in a physically challenging way rather than the more modern, Grecian-thinking, rigour-by-nomenclature style found in modernity.