The Daniel Webster Project in Ancient and Modern Studies at Dartmouth College
Sequences in the Liberal Arts: An Optional First-Year Core Curriculum.
Sequences in the Liberal Arts: Preface.
Building on the success of the two-course Humanities Sequence, I propose to extend this success by offering a new set of Humanities Sequences, Social Science Sequences, and Natural Science Sequences. Students who choose the First-Year Sequences in the Liberal Arts will take two courses in each of the major divisions of the College. Sequences in the Liberal Arts will thus comprise six courses in the First Year, leaving students at least three courses in which to meet other general education requirements. A similar program at Yale, Directed Studies, also comprises six courses in the First Year: Yale’s Directed Studies program attracts the very best Yale students. I think there are several reasons why Sequences in the Liberal Arts will be very attractive both to students lucky enough to enroll and to faculty lucky enough to teach them. First, students will satisfy most of their general education requirements in a coherent and systematic way. Second, students will learn the fundaments of several different disciplines, enabling them to choose a major wisely. Third, amidst the profusion of disciplines at Dartmouth, students will discover the deeper unity of knowledge by experiencing the poetry, drama, and romance of classic literature, from imaginative fiction to scientific treatise. Fourth, students will belong to a very special intellectual community with the other students in the Sequences. Just like students in Yale’s Directed Studies Program, students in the Liberal Arts Sequences will form very strong and formative bonds with their classmates as they share all the challenges and joys of a common educational curriculum. Finally, all of these sequences are interdisciplinary, offering Dartmouth faculty a unique opportunity to learn more about the origins and significance of their own disciplines within the larger context of human culture.
Sequences in the Liberal Arts aims for a comprehensive core curriculum, ranging from humanities to natural sciences. Only the curriculum of St. John’s College (Annapolis and Santa Fe) attempts to be as comprehensive as our Sequences; but their curriculum provides no room for electives or for majors and minors. Sequences in the Liberal Arts provides students with a solid and comprehensive general education while leaving students free to choose many electives as well as deepen their knowledge within chosen majors and minors.
The existing Humanities Sequence introduces students to many classic books of imaginative literature. These books are not necessarily better than the books taught in the upper-level literature courses, but they are pedagogically prior, in the sense that they are presupposed and referred to by all major writers. Of course, there are equally valuable alternative ways to design a Humanities Sequence: the classic books of philosophical argument could form a Sequence, as could the classic writings of the world religions. In designing a Sequence, we look for books that provide the fundamental ideas presupposed in all advanced work in the related disciplines
Similarly, there are several superb ways to design a Sequence in the Social Sciences. One Sequence could focus on the classic works of history, from Herodotus to Toynbee; a second Sequence could focus on classic works of political economy Adam Smith to Keynes and Hayek; a third sequence on classic works of political and legal thought from Plato to Nozick.
In the natural sciences, students would also benefit from several possible Sequences. A Physics and Mathematics Sequence could begin with Democritus (atomic theory of matter) and end with Cantor and Heisenberg. One invaluable insight to be gained from this sequence is to see how math and physics have evolved together. A Biology and Chemistry Sequence could begin with Hippocrates and end with C.H. Waddington. A Psychology Sequence could begin with Plato and end with James, Freud, and Skinner.
It is common to introduce students to the humanities by means of classic books but much less common to introduce students to the social and natural sciences by means of such classics. Usually students approach these sciences by way of contemporary and up-to-date textbooks, introducing students to the basic theories, concepts, and facts still deemed relevant to the discipline. What is the point of having students learn defunct and dated scientific ideas? Actually, in a liberal arts context, there are many good reasons for teaching the social and natural sciences by means of classics books. First, as part of their first-year general education, we are less concerned that students master the technical aspects of science and more concerned that they are captivated by the romance, drama, imaginative power, and timeless beauty of these classics of scientific theory and discovery. A few students may be inspired by science textbooks and laboratory projects, but most will not. By contrast, these classics of scientific genius have inspired countless readers over time: there is undeniable romance to the quest for truth as manifested in these books. These classic works are less technical and thus more accessible to our First-Year students. We forget that many classics of science are written in the form of dramatic dialogues and imaginative thought-experiments. These literary-scientific gems are more likely to capture a student’s imagination than the periodic table of the elements. Second, although our incoming students have very different backgrounds in textbook social and natural sciences, when it comes to these classic books, they are all equally innocent. Third, by seeing that many great scientific works have their origin in the seminal works of ancient philosophers, poets, and historians, students will come to appreciate that all knowledge is related. Indeed, the first physicists in history wrote in poetic verse. The classic works of the natural and social sciences are much more closely related in style and rhetoric to the classic works of imaginative literature than they are to contemporary scientific textbooks. The same imaginative genius that led Plato to speculate about the origin of the universe and about the value of human life, also led him to discover the basic concepts of geometry known as the Platonic solids. Aristotle uses his biological concepts to analyze works of literature. In the context of these classic works, science becomes humanized. Students learn about the genesis of scientific theories: what leads scientists to their startlingly new ideas and new discoveries? What motivates these thinkers? Whence their creativity? Science turns out to be as romantic, frightening, dramatic, tragic and beautiful as any other human pursuit.
At a time when we are inundated with new knowledge and new disciplines, it is more important than ever to help students to see the deeper unity of knowledge in the context of the human quest for meaning. A liberal arts education aims at relating our information and knowledge to the purposes of life. We do not aim merely to transmit knowledge: we aim to cultivate a disposition to connect our knowledge to our other pursuits as citizens, as parents, and as professionals. What good is scientific knowledge if we never make use of it in the course of our lives and careers? There is no better way to inspire our students to ponder the place of knowledge in a flourishing human life than to read these classic works of discovery.
Sequences in the Liberal Arts could offer either one- or two-term courses based broadly on the lists below. Depending upon faculty staffing, the particular Sequences offered each year will vary: In one year, for example, students could take world literature, politics and law, and math and physics; in another year students might take world religions, classics of history, and psychology. Every year, then, every student will get a solid, though partial, introduction to each division of the College. In a few cases, these sequence courses will teach material also taught in other introductory courses in the College. For example, the Politics and Law Sequence is quite similar to Government 6 (Political Ideas). But since this Sequences Program will likely be small (Directed Studies at Yale admits only 100 students) and since no particular Sequence course will be taught every year, there is no danger of these Sequences usurping the enrollments now going to other introductory classes. Indeed, one of the attractions of teaching in Sequences will be the opportunity it provides instructors for attracting some of our most passionate and best-prepared students to their own courses.
Sequences in the Liberal Arts: The Lists.
Some authors and some books are at the core of human knowledge while others are at the periphery or frontiers. The works at the core of knowledge are not necessarily better than the works at the periphery, they are just pedagogically prior. Knowledge of the core enables us to appreciate work at the periphery. I argue in the next section of this proposal that the core of human knowledge can largely be determined by objective measures of reference and influence. The core writers are those most often cited or referenced by a tradition of learning. Here I merely offer some illustrative and certainly not exhaustive lists of the most important authors and books.
I have culled these lists of books largely from core curricula at Yale, Columbia, University of Chicago, Stanford, Notre Dame, St. John’s College, Boston College, and Villanova. There is substantial consensus about the most important authors prior to the twentieth century. I have listed these classic books in roughly chronological order because it almost always makes sense to teach them in historical order since the later books reference and presuppose the earlier ones. I have generally avoided authors from the past half-century because no consensus has emerged about them.
The problem is not identifying the most important authors; the problem is that there are too many great authors who have written too many great books to be included in any college curriculum. There is more agreement about the major authors than about the major books: we agree about Tolstoy but not about the relative merits of War and Peace versus Anna Karenina. Because of this embarrassment of riches, we must select reading lists from the many equally valuable classic books. Some classic works in mathematics and physics, for example, require specialized knowledge; I have listed only books accessible to our best First-Year students. Many classic works from non-Western cultures also demand specialized knowledge of their linguistic, historical, and religious context. I attempt to include, therefore, only those non-Western classics most accessible to our students.
For partial listings of the scores or hundreds of Colleges and Universities offering programs for teaching classic books see: http://www.mercer.edu/gbk/gbk/othergbk.html
http://www.nas.org/reports/gt_bks/gb_programs.htm
http://fmwww.bc.edu/pl/Perspectives.html#Perspectives%20I
Illustrative Examples of Possible Reading Lists for Sequences in the Liberal Arts.
Humanities Sequences: Fiction.
Homer: Iliad or Odyssey.
Aeschylus: Oresteia
Sophocles: Oedipus Cycle
Aristophanes: Clouds.
Virgil: Aeneid
Dante: Divine Comedy
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
Petrarch: Sonnets
Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets and Dramas
Thomas More: Utopia.
Miguel de Cervantes: The History of Don Quixote
John Milton: Paradise Lost
Goethe: Faust
Moliere: Tartuffe
Racine: Phaedra
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
Henry Fielding: Tom Jones
Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballades
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
Charles Dickens: David Copperfield
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Melville: Moby Dick
Hugo: Poems; Novels.
Flaubert: Madame Bovary.
Dostoevsky: Brothers Karmazov
Ibsen: Doll’s House
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Twain: Huckleberry Finn
Henry James: Beast in the Jungle
G.B. Shaw: Pygmalion
Conrad: Lord Jim
Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Proust: Swann’s Way
Willa Cather: Death of the Archbishop
T.S. Eliot: Waste Land
Soseki: Kokoro
Endo: Silence
Humanities Sequences: Philosophy.
Plato: Apology; Phaedo; Meno; Symposium.
Aristotle: Categories; Interpretation ;Ethics.
Plotinus: Six Enneads
Cicero: Tusculan Disputations.
Epictetus: Discourses.
Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy
Augustine: Confessions
Anselm: Proslogion..
Aquinas: On Being and Essence; Treatise on Virtue.
Maimonides: Guide for the Perplexed.
Bacon: Novum Organon
Hobbes: Leviathan
Descartes: Meditations.
Spinoza: Ethics.
Leibniz: Monadology; New Essay on Human Understanding
Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Hume: Treatise of Human Nature
Adam Smith: Theory of Moral Sentiments
Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality.
Kant: Groundwork; Critique of Pure Reason.
Hegel: Encyclopedia
J.S. Mill: Utilitarianism; Subjection of Women
Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil; Birth of Tragedy
William James: Essays on Pragmatism.
C.S. Peirce: Essays on Pragmaticism
Dewey: Quest for Certainty.
Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations.
Heidegger: Being and Time.
Humanities Sequences: Religion.
Bhagavad Gita
Upanishads
Hebrew Bible
Analects
Mencius
Te-Tao Ching
Tripitaka
New Testament
Quran
Book of Mormon
Social Science Sequences: History
Herodotus: Inquiries.
Thucydides: Peloponnesian War
Polybius: Histories
Plutarch: Parallel Lives
Livy: From the Founding of the City
Julius Caesar: Gallic Wars
Tacitus: Annals
Flavius Josephus: Jewish War
Augustine: City of God
Fa-Hien: A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms
Shakespeare: History Dramas
Machiavelli: History of Florence
Vico: The New Science
Hume: History of England
Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Boswell: Life of Johnson
Carlyle: The French Revolution
Macaulay: History of England
Francois Guizot: History of Civilization in Europe
Lord Acton: History of Liberty
Fustel de Coulanges: Ancient City
George Grote: History of Greece
Tocqueville: Ancien Regime
Leopold von Ranke: The Roman Republic and its World Empire.
Theodor Mommsen: History of Rome.
Mahan: Influence of Seapower Upon History
Henry Adams: Administrations of Jefferson and Madison
Trevelyan: English Social History
Toynbee: A Study of History
Braudel: Mediterranean
Social Science Sequences: Political Economy
Aristotle: Ethics;Politics.
Aquinas: Justice in Exchange
Locke: Some Considerations on Money and Interest.
Dudley North: Some Discourses on Trade
David Hume: Essays Moral, Political, Literary.
Bernard Mandeville: Fable of the Bees
Ferdinando Galliani: On Money
Francois Quesnay: Tableau Economique
Turgot: Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth.
James Steuart: Principles of Political Oeconomy.
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
J.-B. Say: A Treatise of Political Economy
Thomas Malthus: Principles of Political Economy
David Ricardo: Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.
John Stuart Mill: Principles of Political Economy.
Marx: Capital (vol. 1)
Stanley Jevons: Theory of Political Economy
Frederick List: The National System of Political Economy.
Alfred Marshall: Principles of Economics.
Emile Durkheim: Division of Labor in Society.
Thorsten Veblen: The Theory of Business Enterprise.
Max Weber: Economy and Society.
Keynes: General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
Hayek: Road to Serfdom.
Social Sciences Sequences: Political Science and Law
Plato: Apology; Crito; Republic; Statesman; Laws.
Aristotle: Politics.
Cicero: Republic; Pro Caecina; Laws.
Augustine: City of God; On Just War.
Aquinas: Treatise on Law; On Kingship; Commentary on Politics of Aristotle.
Machiavelli: Prince; Discourses.
Hobbes: Leviathan.
Locke: Second Treatise of Government.
Hume: Treatise of Human Nature.
Rousseau: Social Contract.
Bentham: Principles of Morals and Legislation.
Kant: Metaphysics of Morals; Perpetual Peace.
Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France; Letter on a Regicide Peace.
Savigny: On the Vocation of our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence.
Hamilton, Madison, Jay: Federalist Papers.
Mill: On Liberty; Subjection of Women.
Marx: Alienated Labor; On the Jewish Question; Communist Manifesto.
Hegel: Philosophy of Right.
Tocqueville: Democracy in America.
Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals; Zarathustra.
John Austin: Province of Jurisprudence Determined.
Henry Sumner Maine: Ancient Law.
Weber: Politics as a Vocation; Rule of Law.
Hans Kelsen: Pure Theory of Law.
Lord Devlin: Law, Democracy, and Morality.
Lon Fuller: Morality of Law.
H.L.A. Hart: Concept of Law.
Joseph Raz: Morality of Freedom.
John Finnis: Natural Law and Natural Rights.
Ronald Dworkin: Law’s Empire.
Hayek: Law, Legislation, and Liberty; Constitution of Liberty.
Rawls: Theory of Justice; Political Liberalism.
Nozick: Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
Natural Sciences Sequences: Math and Physics
Empedocles: Purifications; On Nature.
Democritus: Fragments on Atomic Theory of Matter.
Plato: Timeaus; Meno.
Aristotle: Physics; Prior and Posterior Analytics; On the Heavens.
Euclid: Elements of Geometry.
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things.
Apollonius: Conics.
Nicomachus: Arithmetic.
Ptolemy: Almagest.
Boethius: On the Foundation of Arithmetic.
Omar Khayyam: Discussions of the Difficulties in Euclid.
Nicole Oresme: Commentary on Euclid.
Nicolaus Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies.
Galileo: Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems; Two New Sciences.
Descartes: Geometry; Discourse on Method.
Pascal: Generation of Conic Sections.
Kepler: Epitome IV.
Viete: Introduction to the Analytical Art.
Newton: Mathematical Principles of Nature; Optics.
Leibniz: New Hypotheses in Physics; Correspondence with Clark.
Huygens: Treatise on Light; On the Movement Of Bodies by Impact.
Michael Faraday: Diaries.
Dedekind: Essay on the Theory of Numbers.
Lobachevsky: Theory of Parallels.
Fourier: The Analytical Theory of Heat.
Boltzmann: On the Relation of a General Mechanical Theorem to the Second Law
Cantor: Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers.
Ernst Mach: Popular Scientific Lectures; Science of Mechanics.
Einstein: Relativity: the Special and General Theory.
Bohr: On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules.
Richard Feynman: The Character of Physical Law.
Andre Weil: Number Theory: An Approach through History.
Eddington: The Nature of the Physical World.
Natural Sciences Sequences: Chemistry and Biology
Hippocrates: Aphorisms..
Aristotle: Generation and Corruption; Generation of Animals.
Theophrastus: History of Plants.
Epicurus: Principal Doctrines.
Galen: Faculties of Man; Commentary on Hippocrates.
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things.
Avicenna: The Canon of Medicine.
Vesalius: The Making of the Human Body.
Harvey: Motion of the Heart and Blood.
Lavoisier: Elements of Chemistry.
Joseph Priestley: Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston.
Dalton: A New System of Chemical Philosophy.
Lyell: Principles of Geology.
Lamarck: Philosophy of Zoology.
Linneaus: System of Nature.
Goethe: Nature’s Open Secrets.
Darwin: Origin of Species; Descent of Man.
Herbert Spencer: Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative.
Mendel: Experiments in Plant Hybridization.
Weismann: Essays upon Heredity.
R.A. Fisher: The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.
D’Arcy Thompson: On Growth and Form.
Mayer and Mendeleev: Relation between Properties and Atomic Weights.
Waddington: The Strategy of the Genes.
J.B.S. Haldane: The Causes of Evolution.
Medawar: Art of the Soluble.
Schrodinger: What is Life?
George Simpson: This View of Life.
Hofstadter: Social Darwinism in American Thought.
Monod: Of Microbes and Life.
Francois Jacob: The Logic of Life.
Sherrington: Man on his Nature.
<b>Natural Sciences Sequences: Psychology
Plato: Phaedrus; Phaedo.
Aristotle: On the Soul.
Aquinas: On the Passions of the Soul.
Descartes: On the Passions; Meditations.
Malebranche: Dialogues on Metaphysics.
Locke: Essays on Human Understanding.
Berkeley: Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.
Spinoza: On the Improvement of the Understanding.
Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding.
Christian Wolff: Empirical and Rational Psychology.
Kant: Anthropology.
Hegel: Philosophy of Mind (Encylopedia).
Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic.
Ernst Mach: On the Psychology of Enquiry.
Freud: On the Interpretation of Dreams.
Wundt: Language of Gestures; Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology.
William James: Principles of Psychology; Varieties of Religious Experience.
John Dewey: How We Think; Human Nature and Conduct.
Wolfgang Kohler: The Task of Gestalt Psychology.
John Watson: The Ways of Behaviorism.
B.F. Skinner: Verbal Behavior; Walden Two.
Noam Chomsky: Review of “Verbal Behavior”; Language and Mind.
WHY THERE IS A CORE TO A COLLEGE CURRICULUM AND WHY IT MATTERS
1) Liberating the Core from the Culture Wars.
Discussions about whether schools should encourage or even require students to complete a core curriculum during their first two years of college typically founder on the shoals of intractable normative debates about what ought to be in the core. Ever since the 17th century “quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,” scholars have waged inkwell wars over the aesthetic, moral, and intellectual worth of various domains of learning. Some advocate for modern writers over ancient; some champion Hebraism over Hellenism; some favor the humanities over the natural sciences. Today, discussions of core curricula instantly descend into the familiar arguments for and against a canon of great books, multiculturalism, and Western civilization. These battles over the intrinsic worth of various domains of knowledge are inherently interminable and not directly relevant to the question of what belongs to the core of a college curriculum. The word “curriculum” refers to a circular race-course: a scholastic curriculum leads a student around the circle of knowledge. What we must first consider is not what should belong to the core of knowledge but what does belong to it, and this, as we shall see, can be determined mainly on objective grounds. Of course, deciding what belongs to the core of the college curriculum leaves open many other important curricular questions about the structure of major and minor subjects, language and foreign culture requirements, and electives.
I will argue that the core of a college curriculum ought to focus on the relatively settled core of human knowledge rather than on the rapidly-changing controversies at the frontiers of inquiry. The core of human knowledge is that body of concepts, facts, and texts presupposed by all advanced study in the various disciplines. That essential core of knowledge can be identified largely without recourse to normative controversies about the worth of different fields of study, as I will attempt to show. We need to introduce our students to the actual core of human knowing so that one day they might be in a position to assess and to make contributions to the frontiers of knowledge.
Just as there are some goods, such as life, liberty, and property, that any person should want no matter what their conception of a good human life, so there are some intellectual goods that any person should want no matter what their ultimate judgments are about the worth of particular disciplines, canons, traditions, or texts. A core curriculum includes precisely those fundaments of the key modes of human knowing valued by anyone who seeks genuine knowledge both for its own sake and for the sake of a reflective human life. This core is just as central to champions of the moderns as to champions of the ancients, as central to champions of the West or to champions of other cultures, as central to defenders as to critics of our civilization. First, because human knowledge has an objective structure in which some kinds of concepts and texts grant strategic access to many other concepts and texts, the points of strategic access are at the core and what they give access to is at the frontier. Second, because in human learning a basic cognitive map is essential to the acquisition of sophisticated new knowledge, those basic cognitive maps belong to the core of the curriculum. Third, because rationality is achieved only in the mastery of particular disciplines, the fundaments of those disciplines belong to the core. And finally, because a human life as a whole has been enriched by some disciplines more than by others, those disciplines belong to a core. The core of a college curriculum should be defined not as what is most worthy but as what is most necessary for access to disciplined knowledge, rationality, and a reflective life.
A focus on the core of human knowledge protects the intellectual integrity of the core curriculum from passing academic fads and from ideological manipulation. First, the core of human knowledge certainly evolves over time, but slowly. For example, the Newtonian core of modern physics and the core of calculus in modern mathematics are centuries old; the essentials of world history and literature do change, but not quickly. This gradual evolution keeps the core of knowledge relevant while protecting it from passing fashions. Second, no one can deliberately stipulate what belongs to the core of human knowing and what does not. The core essentials of human knowledge just are what they are; they cannot be altered by any deliberate decision. Of course, we can argue about what is at the core and about what parts of the core ought to be included in a core curriculum, but what constitutes the core of human knowledge is discovered, not invented. The core of knowledge evolves slowly in response to the myriad efforts of discovery, criticism, and evaluation at the frontiers of inquiry. The core of knowledge is the precipitate of the sum total of human intellectual endeavor but is not the product of any deliberate human project, agenda, or decision. So a focus on the core of human knowing protects the core curriculum from attempts to use it as a vehicle for ideological indoctrination.
2) The Challenge of Finding a Core Amidst the Profusion of Knowledge.
A little more than a century ago, most liberal arts colleges in the United States required a fixed core curriculum for all students, based on classical languages and on mathematics. But the explosion of new disciplines and the new emphasis upon faculty research challenged the hegemony of the traditional disciplines in the college curriculum. At the close of the nineteenth century, Harvard College abandoned its fixed curriculum in favor of electives and, later, a choice of major and minor subjects of study. During the first half of the twentieth century, most colleges offered both a core required curriculum and a range of electives. But by the end of the century, most schools had gone from offering no electives to offering only electives, from a core curriculum for all students to a core curriculum for none. With the inundation of new kinds of knowledge, the profusion of new disciplines, the rapid growth in specialization, the very idea of a core curriculum seems hopelessly outdated. A core curriculum seems to attack the notion of the equal worth of all branches of knowledge. And the valuable principle of student freedom of choice, which led to the offering of electives, has grown to challenge all core requirements.
Today, with the rising racial, ethnic, and national diversity in our schools, the quest for a core curriculum for all college students appears more quixotic than ever. In addition to the growth of many new disciplines, even older disciplines are being reconfigured into new programs in gender, ethnic, and cultural studies. Many of these particular new programs of study will go the way of the former departments of home economics and of biography, but the growth of new fields, ever greater specialization, and the inundation of knowledge will continue. Faculty are more and more tempted to teach undergraduates material at the exciting frontiers of knowledge rather than to equip their students with the settled bodies of knowledge that are needed before one can contribute to the frontier. The very richness of the new profusion of knowledge makes it very difficult to discern any center. Finding the central core has become like trying to locate the trunk of a bramble.
3) The Structure of Knowledge.
Because all new knowledge is discovered by means of older knowledge, all knowledge is connected. The tree of knowledge is a profusion of branches that can all be traced back to its primary limbs and trunk. Some of the branches of our knowledge are connected by historical causation: Aristotle was the historical cause of many branches of knowledge, just as Virgil was the historical inspiration for much of later epic literature. In general, what comes earlier shapes what comes later. Other branches of knowledge are connected by relations of logical dependence: calculus assumes algebra, chemistry assumes some physics and biology assumes some chemistry. Whether these relations are causal or logical, they are asymmetrical: Aristotle does not presuppose Galileo, and Virgil does not presuppose Milton; algebra does not presuppose calculus, and physics does not presuppose any biology.
So if we think of all knowledge as a network, some nodes of that network will have many more connections than other nodes. Aristotle will have more connections than will Einstein, because Aristotle’s ideas have been taken up in many more branches of knowledge and for longer than Einstein’s have. This is why Aristotle’s name appears in the Encyclopedia Britannica more often than any other name. Virgil has more connections than does Milton because more writers are influenced by him than by Milton. Physics will have more connections than biology because physics is logically prior to biology. So some kinds of knowledge are more historically and logically basic than others because they have more connections to the rest of the web of knowledge. The fact of being more fundamental or basic certainly does not imply more truthful or more beautiful. Virgil is not better than Milton and Aristotle is not better than Einstein, just as physics is not better than chemistry. But if you want access to the web of human knowledge, it makes sense to start with Virgil, Aristotle and physics, because they will give you access to the widest range of human learning.
We measure the importance of these network nodes in various ways. Citation indices count how many times an author is cited as a measure of his or her connections to the web of knowledge. The authors most cited in a field may not be the best scholars but they are the most influential; and if one wishes to engage that field, one must read those scholars. Citation statistics for any point in time are likely to reflect temporary fads, but citations over millennia reflect deep and permanent influence. Similarly, every patent must cite the other patents that it draws upon, so by this citation we can measure the degree to which a given patent is connected to others. A highly-cited patent is not necessarily a better patent than others, but it is more seminal, more influential, more connected. Perhaps the most famous measure of the connectivity of the nodes of knowledge, though, is the Google search engine. Google is efficient because it creates a hierarchy among the vast network of websites according to the number of links that site has to other sites. So, of all the websites that contain the phrase we seek, Google takes us first to the anchor sites with the most connections to the rest of the web.
So even if all knowledge is created equal, not all authors and ideas are equally connected to other kinds of knowledge. Not all ideas and authors are equally basic. The notion of a core curriculum, therefore, rests fundamentally not on aesthetic, moral, or political criteria but on the objective criteria of the sheer density of its connections to the whole of human culture. If the Google search engine were to rank authors, texts, or disciplines according to the degree to which they are dense network nodes or anchor sites, then Aristotle would be above Einstein, algebra above calculus, and physics above biology. The significance of most concepts and texts properly included in a core curriculum can thus be objectively assessed. Sheer age certainly does not guarantee connectivity: think of all the ancient but defunct religions, pseudo-sciences, and legends that have remained on the periphery.
If education is to be an initiation into the primary modes of human knowing, then we must find a way to cut into the dense bramble of the web of knowledge. Given the finitude of human life and the infinite range and density of human knowledge, the only feasible way to navigate this web is to begin with the key network nodes, with the anchor sites. Among the strategically located nodes, there are many possible entry-points: there is no completely objective metric by which to determine which of many key nodes is the best or best for a particular educational setting. Ultimately, additional aesthetic, intellectual, and moral criteria will be necessary to select the precise disciplines, authors, and concepts for study. For example, because Plato’s own writings were unavailable for so long, the neo-Platonist, Plotinus, has had immense influence on the whole history of Western philosophy—perhaps even more direct influence than Plato himself. But, on a host of other criteria, Plato deserves greater prominence in a core curriculum than does Plotinus. Nonetheless, the process of selecting a core curriculum can be largely guided and justified by the objective salience of some kinds of knowledge in the web of human learning.
4) The Logic of Learning.
Plato was the first to formulate the paradox of learning by noting that we cannot learn something unless, in some sense, we already know it. Try finding a word in the dictionary without knowing something about how to spell it. Aristotle opens the Posterior Analytics by observing that we can learn only because of what we already know. Knowledge builds upon knowledge. Today, modern psychology amply supports these ancient insights. Cognitive psychologists talk about schemas and other modes of representation by which human beings make sense of new experience by assimilating it to what we already know. Empirical studies of expert knowledge show that in any situation, the person who will learn the most is the person who already knows the most. A chess expert learns much more from watching a chess game than does a chess novice. The more we know the more we can learn and remember from experience, from reading, or from calculating. Our existing knowledge is what some pedagogues call our intellectual Velcro: it provides hooks upon which to hang what we learn.
In view, then, of what we know about the psychology of learning, it is imperative to provide students with the right kind of intellectual Velcro—that is, with the kind of facts and concepts that have the most hooks to other important facts and concepts. To become initiated into the primary modes of knowing means acquiring that knowledge most strategically connected to the whole web of knowledge. We want our students to master the network nodes of knowledge so that they can connect rapidly to other domains rather than acquire merely peripheral branches of information that do not lead them anywhere. Even very basic history, science, and philosophy will take a student much further than will even advanced knowledge of popular music, astrology, or eBay.
The logic of learning in some ways mirrors the structure of knowledge. Some knowledge is a strict logical prerequisite for other knowledge: addition is a prerequisite for multiplication and algebra is a prerequisite for calculus; spelling is a prerequisite for grammar, and grammar a prerequisite for rhetoric. Another kind of relation is that of background to foreground in the comprehension of meaning. Language is much more than words and rules. Reading with comprehension requires essential background knowledge as much as it requires skill in decoding syntax. Consider reading a local English-language newspaper in Auckland or New Delhi: all my decoding skills would not help me understand what I “read,” since I lack the necessary background knowledge of local culture and politics. Any daily issue of The New York Times makes reference to more than 2,000 facts and concepts which the reader is expected to know. Basic literacy, then, presupposes mastery of the strategic nodes of human knowing.
All works of Western literature, for example, are connected by relations of intertextuality. Every literary work tacitly echoes or explicitly references—and is echoed or referenced by—other literary works. So in a strict sense we could not fully comprehend any work without already knowing all other works to which it is connected. But the web of intertextuality, like all other webs of knowing, has strategic network nodes or anchor sites which give optimal access throughout the web. Chief among these key nodes would be the Bible, Homer and Cervantes. Mastery of the strategic nodes—the most influential authors—is essential for access to literature.
The cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner talks about the paradox of learning in terms of a spiral. We learn by returning to what we already knew but at increasingly higher levels of sophistication. If we first acquire a vague but general outline of history, for example, then we can keep relearning that outline by filling in details as we spiral up. Of course we also revise our earlier understanding in the light of subsequent knowledge. But our spiral cannot get started if we do not begin with a comprehensive and strategic set of initial parameters. Where there are significant gaps in our basic knowledge we will find it very difficult to learn and to retain newer and more specific information.
5) Rationality and the Disciplines.
I have defined education as an initiation into the primary modes of human knowing. These primary modes of knowing are the academic disciplines; they are the limbs of the tree of knowledge. It is easy to denigrate the academic disciplines on the grounds that they are highly artificial, if not arbitrary. Those who work at the frontiers of inquiry are especially likely to notice shortcoming of disciplinary boundaries and the need to combine disciplinary approaches. But the fruits of interdisciplinary understanding presuppose prior disciplinary mastery. True, the world is not divided into disciplines: but knowledge and rationality are. If we were to measure the connectivity of the whole network of knowledge, we would discover distinct patterns of dense connections which would correspond to the disciplines. There are many more connections within chemistry and history than there are between chemistry and history. So disciplines are far from arbitrary: they reflect the objective structure of human knowing. Moreover, to be rational just means to judge, believe and assert in accordance with the norms of a particular discipline. Rationality means thought in conformity with the evolving public standards of a particular mode of human knowing. We are not by nature rational; we are only capable of becoming rational. Cognitive and social psychologists have shown that naïve and unschooled human thought is riddled with biases and fallacies which are partially overcome only by the painstaking mastery of disciplinary standards of thought. Experts in one field are notoriously vulnerable to fallacious thinking in other fields. There is no royal road to rationality: students who take courses in logic or in argumentation do not become sound reasoners across domains of knowledge. Even students who complete courses in basic college physics tend to fall prey to naïve and fallacious assumptions about the nature of motion. Rationality, to the extent what we ever achieve it, is the fruit of the mastery of particular disciplines. So a core curriculum must provide an introduction to the primary modes of knowing so that students can be in a position to judge which discipline to select as a major and to aspire to rational thought in at least one domain of knowledge.
6) Disciplines and Education for Life.
If education is an initiation into the primary modes of human knowing, then what are they? A core curriculum must prepare students for whatever disciplinary focus they choose, but, more important, a core curriculum must prepare students for life. Education must be distinguished from mere training. We normally say that someone has been trained as an historian, chemist, literary critic, or philosopher; we do not normally say that someone has been educated as an historian, chemist, literary critic, or philosopher. We are educated, not for some particular task or occupation, but for life. Educated persons are those whose knowledge illuminates and vivifies all of their moral, aesthetic, and intellectual pursuits. As spouses, parents, and citizens they reflect upon their conduct in light of what they know from literature, history, science, and philosophy. A walk through nature or through a museum is redolent with insights from art history: they might even regard a sunset, like Oscar Wilde, as “second-rate Turner.” Every moment echoes with history and each little thing reveals the universe. Educated persons see things whole.
No branch of genuine knowledge is intrinsically more valuable than any other branch. Knowledge of lasers is just as intrinsically valuable as knowledge of William Blake. But some kinds of knowledge are better suited to enhancing the whole of one’s life than other kinds of knowledge. Although, as we have seen, we can objectively identify what belongs to the core of the various disciplines, the question of which disciplines belong to a core curriculum is more directly normative. All kinds of knowledge are intrinsically valuable and rewarding, but some kinds of knowledge are also instrumentally valuable for shaping our decisions about how to pursue aesthetic, moral, and intellectual goods. The subjects known as the humanities are especially valuable because they take as their subject matter the very question of the value of the range of human goods. The question of whether a life devoted to natural science is a good life is not a scientific question but a humanistic one. Because the humanities alone raise the deepest questions about the value of all human pursuits, they have a special claim at the core of an education. Art, literature, history, religion, and philosophy are the primary modes of critical reflection upon the permanent themes of the human condition and of human nature. But the drama of human life also cannot be understood apart from the natural world which is its stage and setting. Today, rapid and disorienting technological change makes it imperative that all citizens have a basic understanding of the physical, chemical, and especially the biological sciences. Reflecting upon the rise of the new social and policy sciences, H.G. Wells predicted a century ago that statistics would become a basic form of literacy in future schools. Indeed, without a basic knowledge of government, economics, and statistics, a person cannot hope to even understand a newspaper, let alone aspire to be an informed citizen.
The ideal of an education for life will shape not only which disciplines belong to the core of the curriculum, but also the pedagogy appropriate for that core. A curriculum is to pedagogy what anatomy is to physiology. The curriculum lays out the basic organs and structure of knowledge but only good pedagogy can animate those organs into a vital whole. If our core is a preparation not just for advanced study but for life, then the core must be taught in a way that honors the integrity of a whole life. The pursuit of knowledge must be compartmentalized but not the living of life. A life involves not just knowledge, but beauty and goodness as well; life involves not just the intellect but equally the passions. In Whitehead’s classic terms, every core course must first entice us with the romance of adventure into a new domain of knowledge, then discipline us through the hard work of precise mastery of key concepts and texts, and finally delight us with the insights of imaginative generalization, in which we can see analogies between disciplines and glimpse the deeper unity of knowledge. A good core curriculum animated by fine pedagogy will lead us to appreciate the beauty of Newtonian physics, the wonder of biology, the drama of moral goodness and evil in history, the mathematics of music, the logic of art, and the grammar of philosophy.
7) The Core of a College Community.
The Harvard philosopher George Santayana was asked what college students should study. He said: “It doesn’t matter, so long as they all study the same thing.” Our current curricular principles and practice take little notice of the immense rewards of shared intellectual endeavor, of a common intellectual life among our students. Soldiers develop deep bonds from shared boot camp, lawyers and doctors from shared professional training, but our students can spend four years in college without sharing a single common intellectual adventure. No doubt, students all share other features of college life together, but they rarely share a common intellectual experience, a common initiation into the demands and delights of learning the same things. What kinds of bonds might a group of First-Year students form if they all studied, discussed, debated, and griped about the same ideas together? Even an optional common curriculum, such as Sequences in the Liberal Arts, turns the whole campus into one great seminar, in which each of us benefits from the insights of our classmates. We talk a great deal about our college communities, yet fail to provide a curricular basis for a real intellectual community. For a community of teachers and learners, that is a tragedy.
Of course it does matter what our students study in common. True, a common curriculum has distinctive rewards no matter what its content and a core curriculum is valuable even where it is not common, but a common curriculum makes most sense if it is also a core curriculum.