Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001aps..nws.b4001e&link_type=abstract
American Physical Society, Northwest Section Meeting, May 25-26, 2001 Seattle, Washington Bulletin of the American Physical Soci
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The natural sciences once had a distinguished place among the liberal arts. Indeed, the arts degree at the medieval university was a science major's degree. The quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, harmonics and astronomy) represented a conscious revival of the school curriculum of late antiquity, which had deep roots in Platonism. In the Middle Ages, all who aspired to enter the higher faculties (theology, medicine, law) had first to take a science degree. This was because scientific education mattered--it offered something essential for understanding both the world of nature and the world of man. When in the twelfth century the lost works of Aristotle were recovered, university professors risked excommunication in order to teach the new philosophy of nature. Aristotle's physics and cosmology passionately mattered, and within a century they had won a place in the core curriculum. A few centuries later, the followers of Descartes risked their careers to get Aristotle back out of the curriculum and Descartes in. Despite the supposed primacy of science in our own day, it has been a long while since comparable battles were waged over a curriculum of physics. In a profound way, the sciences matter less to the broader culture than they once did. In this talk I shall address the question of how this came to be and what purpose physics might have in a program of liberal education.
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