FRANCIS 1. CURTIS Monsanto Chemical Co., St. Louis, Missouri
MODERN liberal education is a failure. It has ceased to be liberal and tends to be fossil. This statement sounds strange to scientific ears, which have long become accustomed to the eternal criticism of scientific education for its so-called lack of "liberal" studies. L i e many others, I have been a member of various nniversity advisory committees both in chemistry and chemical engineering. Invariably, these committees suggest that scientific education should include morp of the humanities. Just as often, the committee is faced withcomplete agreement from t,he members of the university faculty and then is politely asked where they would insert,these studies in an already overcrowded four-year program. Nevertheless, I can look back over some 25 years and see definite progress being made in this regard in practically all of our institutions of higher learning. At least we must admit that the scientific faculties are responsive to criticism and are willing to do as much as can be done to remove its cause. However, they must distinguish between those studies which are necessary and those which are, in a sense, luxuries. Since there is no absolute answer to this question, there are available for the future many hours of pleasant debate. Newsitem: Princeton, New Jersey, June 17, 1953. Spectators at Princeton University's 296th Commencement Exercises yes-
terday were amazed at the erudition displayed by the Graduating Class. In a salutatory address spoken entirely in Latin, the Seniors laughed and clapped every so often as though catching all the nuances of the classicallanguage were second nature to them. The truth is that they d l had copies of the speech with directions carefully inserted to tell them when to laugh and when to applaud.
So bath the mighty fallen. I'm not sure whether one should say "Sic semper tyrannis," or "Reductio ad absurdurn." I t is obvious that no man can know everything and, in spite of opinion to the contrary, about a few--such as Leonardo da Vinci-no man ever could. We conclude that education must in every age choose and select, for the man of culture, those things most important for that age. Liberal education has failed to meet this challenge by ignoring the most potent force of this modern age of ours, namely, science. In this, it has been partially abetted by scientificeducation which, because it was thrust out, has come to consider itself as interested only in teaching science to scientists, leaving the ordinary man of culture nowhere to go. In other words, it is my contention that, deserved as the criticism may have been of scientific education that it left out everything else, liberal education has been
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From the Presidential Address a t the meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry, Nottingham, England, July 22, 1953.
equally culpable in leaving out of its purview anything but the barest smattering of science. CULTURE Before we go too far, let us look for a moment at what we mean by this term "culture." The second edition of the "Oxford Dictionary" gives three definitions, as is often the habit of dictionaries. It defines "culture" as "the act of developing by education, discipline and training," as "enlightenment and refinement of tastes acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training," and as "a particular stage in civilization and the particular features of such a stage." In these definitions there is nothing that denominates the study of Latin, English literature, or chemistry, as culture, except insofar as they are particular features of a particular stage in civilization. The Princeton anecdote would lead us to believe that valuable as it may be in itself, the study of Latin can hardly be classified as a particular feature of this particular stage of civilization in which we live. On the other hand, I imagine there are very few who will not readily admit that science is such a particular feature. This does not at all mean that there is no value in the study of Latin or Greek or any other of the amenities. Most of us who were brought up on them are quite convinced of the value of the discipline we went through. All we can say is that they are not now dominant features in our stage of civilization. We must infer, therefore, that education of the liberal-arts, or any other type that does not contain science as culture, cannot be considered as properly designed to produce the cultured man of this era. Just as the fascinating mounds in the Near East which the archeologists uncover have been built up layer by layer by past inhabitants, so the mound of human knowledge increases layer by layer from century to century. Out of this mound each age must sort out and re-emphasize that which is most characteristic of it; so the criteria of culture differ in different ages. When we look at the Greeks and the Romans, we see the ideal of mens sana in corpore sano. They were concerned very much with the body and with the mind and very little with the soul. In their culture they included literature but little of language except their own, with the addition of Greek for the Romans; much philosophy but little religion. They did include such sciences as they knew, since science had hardly yet become separated from philosophy. I t was a culture of mental and physical agility. The medieval era, on the contrary, was obsessed with
JANUARY, 1954
the problems of the soul. The cultured man was one of religion. Education in the things of the soul was paramount over those of the mind and body and metaphysics overshadowed physics. The great monastery schools and the universities were created primarily to save men's souls, not to teach the making of a living. Even as late as 1636 Harvard College in New England was founded for the training of ministers, lest the faith of the Puritans be lost. With the Renaissance came the rise of the vernacular languages and literatures, putting Latin, which had been the lingua franca of Western Europe, into the position of a dead language. The rebirth of knowledge of pagan arts and the advent of scepticism caused a shift in emphasis to literature and the arts. This our humanists regard with nostalgic eyes, as if any one thing created by man was more human than anything else of the same origin. It must not be understood that these ages did not influence each other. The gain which the race had made in medieval times in the idea of the importance of the individual soul was not completely lost but it was transformed and became the important underlying principle of the American and French Revolutions. Todaywe cannot saythat philosophy or religionoreven art and literature occupy the dominant positions of the age. This era is one characterized by two main streams, science and the conflict of opposing political ideologies. If we agree that the cultured man is one who has sufficient knowledge to fit his environment, we have to say that even though he may have a tremendous quantity of knowledge, if he has no comprehension of science and of political ideologies, he cannot be said to be truly cultured as of our time. GENERALISTS AND SPECIALISTS
We would be just as far wrong the other way, if we conveyed the impression that all men should be specialized scientists or specialized political ideologists. All men were not monks in the Middle Ages, else we would not be here, but in that period, all men of any culture a t a11 knew their religion, even when they came far from living up to it. The problem of the generalists and the specialists is
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always with us. We can always expect to have men of wide interests and those of narrow. As a matter of fact, both may he cultured men, depending on the selection of their interests. The test is their consciousness and their knowledge of the chief activities of their time. Both the Latin professor, who is usually axiomatically considered a man of culture, and the engineer, who is usually not so considered, may be so intensely specialized that they fail to meet this test. By the same token, the generalist may know a great deal about many things and, therefore, he considered a man of wide culture but he may not include among those many things the ones important for this era. Let me hasten to say that I do not mean that the specialist has no importance or that everyone should be forced into some kind of a standard pattern. I believe just the opposite, and that each of us has a right to choose his own way of life, but to be just a scientist or just a Latin professor is not enough to make one a man of culture. The advocacy of science as culture as well as a specialty is not meant in any way to disparage the value of the various humanities. What we are saying is that science is not a thing apart but is as much one of the humanities as any other subject of human endeavor and, for the time being, it is one of the very dominant ones. Certainly we must agree that a man of culture must know something of the past, if only to understand the present and that other dominant feature of our time, the conflict of political ideologies. It is well to know literature and the arts. A man can know something about painting and books without being a painter or a writer, and so he can know something about science and not be a scientist. It all comes down t o values, to judgment of what it takes to best pursue happiness, by which I mean the greatest possible development of activity for the good. For some, this ideal calls for specialization and these must and should follow it. For most, it calls for the greatest knowledge and understanding of the problems and activities of their time. The culture of today is vastly conditioned and influenced by science, and the modern man ignorant of science can no longer be considered a man of culture.
