Posted on 10/30/2002 8:03:45 PM PST by cornelis
It is not so obvious that physical scientists need a liberal arts education, rooted in the study of language. They themselves assert that they have no time for it. They have insisted on the abolition of language requirements in almost every university graduate program in America. This development is directly related to the massive amount of fraud which now typifies scientific publication in this country. This scientific community has lost track of the historical and ethical roots of our civilization, the only civilization which has fostered the scientific ethic and considerable scientific research and discovery. Increasingly young men enter the sciences who do not understand that science is not a given, but an achievement, a tradition of research and discovery which si the hard-won accomplishment of one culture, fostered carefully and slowly for millenia until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Scientists have lost touch with their own culture. They live without a narrative structure which frames and makes moral sense of their lives. They seem to belong to no culture and feel the claims of no cultural norms, claims that would be introduced and reinforced by a rigorous study of their own cultural traditions over the past twenty-five hundred years. For such people the borderline between fudging, misreporting of results, and outright fraud becomes as unclear as their own cultural heritage. All too often it is those who report or investigate such fraud who find themselves de-funded by the "profession." The attainment of truth is possible only within a tradition, as Alasdair MacIntyre has suggested. A rootless, traditionless, monoglot scientific elite has lost the basis of discovery, in science or any other area. Since they cannot discover truth and will not live without grants, they must lie.Recently conservatives have talked much of valuing creativity and an openness to the real world. If such an attitude is to be more than talk, we must face the fact that creativity is not found in every tradition. Ours is one of the few creative ones and we must work to re-establish our children's direct contact with that tradition, which is their own, after all. Despite all the changes recent decades have seen, culture is still transmitted primarily through language. The essential works necessary for understanding and transmitting our culture were written in Greek and Latin. Translations are marvelous tools, but no translation can be safely used or taught except by one who knows the original tongue. An educational curriculum founded on Greek and Latin gave us Jefferson and Adams, Burke and Samuel Johnson, not to mention Copernicus and Newton, Luther and Calvin, Michaelangelo and Bach. Educators have developed curricula and texts which can teach these languages on any level from pre-school through college. Most subjects that are important for formative education can be be taught through and with these languages. The materials are out there, lying in the warehouses of the Cambridge and Oxford University Presses. We have in our hands the making of a reactionary revolution of excellence. The questions we must ask ourselves are the following: Do we have the will to give our children their own culture back again? Do we have the courage to restore meaning and creativity to our nation?
Good show resurrecting this from seven years ago!
The more things change ... one is led to wonder if those folks who were undergrad students when this thread began have changed their opinions any since then?
Sad things have so degenerated. I earned a BA in Anthropology in the late 60s. Along the way, I had 20 credits in biology and chemistry. The sociology and anthro were pure — no PC bull$hit like today’s kids get. Alas, my school (UMass) went from a great state university to the toilet of PC insanity it is today.
My own opinion is that all college graduates should be taught the basics of Western history and literature and good language skills. There is a basic canon of information that at one time everyone needed to learn to be considered educated. And, from my own experience, it makes life much more interesting and pleasureable.
That said, I think much of the pushback on this thread stems from the fact that lefty universities and professors have hijacked the humanities in many institutions and no longer teach the subject, but have made the departments bastions of political correctness if not outright socialist indoctrination.
I went to a Prep School that offered a Classical course and nothing else. When I first tried to become an Engineeer they Noticed a certain Lack of Mathematics in my background.
So I enlisted in the Army in 1965, great growing up experience, two years of remedial Math, and I are one, since retired after doing little Engineering and a lot of Army NCOing as a Manager. A love of the Classics is a good thing but but being able to eat well is better.
An engineer who can read, write, and speak effectively is worth more than two brilliant engineers who can only design circuits or write code.
I’d say that your Prep School did a bad job of Prepping you ... I’m all in favour of a well-rounded education, but that would include the maths as well as the classics.
Happened to a bunch of us, it wasn’t about well rounded, Language, the Arts, Logic, math was there but not stressed.
:’)
“I know a guy who didn’t get his engineering degree for nearly two decades because he couldn’t pass some silly writing course.”
Couldn’t pass a silly writing course...for...two...
decades?
What’s wrong with this picture?
In two DECADES I think I could figure out how to pass a silly writing course, but that’s just me.
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