Method of Ideas

It is the scientist's concern with the handling of information, with scholarly method, that may be most important in the Doty committee's thinking, for there have been suggestions that the committee should recommend a program for all of General Education almost exclusively devoted to the methods of scholarship. Scientists have always been convinced that method was the most important part of their eld, and have often suggested that the proper task of a Natural Sciences program was to teach scientific method. To some scientists, therefore, Reuben A. Brow preoccupation with method in Humanities is extremely appealing. But to most of those involved with the humanities, it is as important that a student should have read some of the great books and ideas of Western civilization as that he should be able to read them with a particular sort of acumen.

The scientist's concern with the present, with experimental evidence, and with codifying laws, is antithetical to a classically oriented program of General Education. When a scientist is concerned with the history of science, that history is extracurricular; the test of an economic theorem, a psychological law, or a chemical equation is its validity, not its history.

A continual complaint in courses in the Humanities is that grading does not allow differences of opinion or interpretation--does not allow for the fact that truth in the humanities is plural. But in the sciences such a criticism is almost comically irrelevant. But it is also the singular character of scientific truth that lies behind what is widely referred to as a "science block."

'Cliffies Don't Pass

The number of students who seemingly cannot pass a course in the sciences is not overwhelming, but it is astonishingly substantial, particularly at Radcliffe. For many years there was a myth that this stemmed from an inability to do mathematics, which was a narrower sort of problem. But as courses in the Natural Sciences have become more rigorous and less historically oriented, it has become clear that there are many undergraduates who cannot pass a science course at all. Natural Sciences 5 is almost entirely non-mathematical, but those who were not good at science found the course exceedingly difficult. The Social Relations Department has seen glimmerings of the same problem in its efforts to teach students something about rigorous experimental design.

A science course can be taught without serious mathematics. Certainly mathematics illuminates much of science, just as physics illuminates chemistry, but the separation can be made. The success of a magazine as Scientific American is extremely revealing in this regard. But looking at the readers of Scientific American, or the students who enjoyed and did well in Natural Sciences 5 leaves a considerable doubt whether these non-mathematical sciences are comprehensible to those who lack mathematical ability. Conversely, it looks very much as if those who come to understand science by studying its history understand it rather well before they start.

Scientific Unity

George Wald described the aim of General Education in science very simply: "To show you that you live in a lawful universe." The unity and integrity of scientific law can be seen in any field that accepts the singularity of scientific truth and the vdity of scientific explanation. There no reason that rigorous courses in experimental social psychology or economics should not meet this standard in the future.

But this does not resolve the problem of General Education. Separately, the Western tradition and the teaching of science are very different approaches to General Education. But together they are the warp and woof of a program directed at contemporary Western civilisation.

The Doty Committee must decide whether Harvard should be loyal to the fabric of General Education and whether the precepts that Conant stated 21 years ago are as significant today. It was easy to ask for loyalty to the great traditions of Western civilisation and to talk of educating for citizenship, in the midst of a World War, Harvard's program was born on the crest of an intellectual wave which rose at Chicago and Columbia--it was not a pioneering and daring venture.

When every national spokesman looks to the colleges as training grounds for specialists, and when the National Merit Scholarship Corporation proclaims that, "Talent is our most important national resource," General Education is a less popular rallying point. Within a community of scholars, it is difficult to say that scholarship is not sufficient training for a citizen of a free country, or to remind the Faculty of Conant's dictum that a liberal education is not necessarily a general education. It is not always easy to remember that "non-departmental" and "General Education" are imperfect synonyms.

Scholarship and Education

What was centrally important in General Education was the assertion that the academic programs of scholarship were not enough. One may argue that a program designed to immerse the student in Western civilization is not the best way to produce a citizes, but the Doty Committee would have a responsibility to produce an argument as closely reasoned as that which supports study of the literary, social and philosophical roots of Western culture.

If a science-and-humanities program is to emerge, it must be tighter and more rigorous than the contemporary offering. Even as it separates the teaching of science and of Western culture, it must focus intensively upon each. Harvard's traditional tolerance for diversity must not again be allowed to reduce the program into placing its aegis over every non-departmental course that has the mark of quality. It would be easier to write such a program clearly by dividing into science and humanities than by trying to preserve the present categories.

It is not really possible to defend any program of General Education in a thousand words, and it has not been my intention to do so. Rather, I am trying to emphasize that while a misunderstanding about science caused difficulty in the original program, it would be a error to over-correct that original error and cleave too closely to the scientist's concern for methods without a careful consideration of a program rather like that recommended by General Education in a for the a program of several Education a makes its meet of its view of the relation between academic education and the rest of the world, and it is important that this definition should clearly recognise that education and scholarship are not quite the came.

In many ways, it is unfortunate that the committee consists exclusively of members of Harvard's academic family, for studies as broad as Doty's must be will prompt many to reflect that education may be too important to be entrusted to scholars. But this thought is relevant because it measures the Doty Committee's obligations, not as a criticism before the fact.

None of the tensions between sciences are absolute, but they tend to force the General Education program to exist in one world or the other. That choice must not be made: the program must exist in both, and if possible it must serve as a bridge. This it must do not because there are two cultures but because the falterings of the science program and the diffusion of the humanities offerings has shown the overwhelming difficulty of the conflict. The solution is not simply to give the problem back to the departments and announce that attempting a solution was unwise