Although the rightful place of science in the liberal arts curriculum is generally accepted in educational circles, quite often it is done out of respect for tradition rather than by an examination of the fundamental nature of science. I should like to offer some of my views regarding the nature of science and to show that science is truly a liberal art in the best sense of the phrase. The examples that I shall use to support my arguments will be taken primarily from my own discipline, physics. Since physics is one of the most basic and well-developed of the sciences, whatever I say should be applicable to all other sciences.

 

Let me preface my subject by stating that I believe that a truly liberal education should include some knowledge of the content and essence of science and not be just knowledge about science and its effect on society. By this I mean that students should know Newton's Laws of Motion and not only know about Newton's Laws of Motion. An educated person should know that the gravitational force of attraction between two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them.

 

The Wilson Community is currently debating curricular requirements. There are such questions as: Should we remain a liberal arts college? What constitutes a liberal arts education, and what part does science play in this? Phi Beta Kappa is engaged in a reexamination of the meaning of the liberal arts. Science education is a very costly business, gobbling up large sums of money for physical plant and equipment. Relatively few students major in science. How do we justify the large financial burden? Why not drop all science courses and requirements, and thereby satisfy the larger number of students who desire not to have to take science? But, as educators, we would be remiss in our obligation to our students by depriving them of some of the most significant intellectual accomplishments of man.

 

It is my belief that no curriculum is worthy of the label “liberal arts” unless it requires of the student some minimal understanding of science and its concepts, and an appreciation of our scientific heritage. Let me elaborate on my reasons.

 

Following the scientific method, we should first define our terms. What is a liberal art and what is science? Despite the difficulty of doing so, I will first attempt to define a liberal art. If I can then show that science satisfies the criteria for a liberal art, I will have made my point. Webster's Dictionary gives this definition: “translation of Latin artes liberales, the higher arts, which, among the Romans, only freemen (liberi) were permitted to pursue. In the Middle Ages, the seven branches of learning: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In modern times, the liberal arts include the languages, sciences, philosophy, history, etc., which compose the curriculum of academic or collegiate education, as distinguished from technical or professional education.”

 

Note that, implicit in the old definition, is the assumption that non-freemen (or slaves) were forbidden to study the liberal arts, presumably because it would set them to thinking in an undesirable fashion. The old definition is not quite applicable today. We live in a free society, not a slave society, and we are all eligible to pursue the liberal arts.

 

As a result of the broadening of our knowledge and a deepening of our insights, the interpretation of the liberal arts has undergone a gradual evolution, so that there is now considerable disagreement among educators as to its meaning. We should not, however, allow ourselves to succumb to the fads and exigencies of the times and lose sight of the essence of the liberal arts. I believe that a liberal art should satisfy the following criteria:

 

1. It should deal with a coherent body of knowledge whose validity has more or less withstood the test of time, and has now become a part of our intellectual and cultural heritage.

2. It should have a pervasive and significant influence on other areas of our thinking. Sometimes we may be even unaware of this permeating influence.

3. It should show meaningful relationships between observed data, arrived at through disciplined reasoning, analysis and synthesis. These relationships should then serve as springboards for obtaining further relationships and generating new ideas. It was Alfred North Whitehead who protested “against dead knowledge, that is to say, against inert ideas.”

4. It should be deeply rooted in our humanity (as implied in the word art), and should depend for its advancement on the insights, creativity, and judgments of individuals. Closely associated with this endeavor is the strong appeal to our sense of order and to our esthetic instincts.

 

A definition embodying these criteria does not rule out the possibility that the subject may also be useful and capable of application to solve concrete problems.

 

To satisfy the first criterion, we should ask whether or not science deals with a coherent body of knowledge of proven validity. It is generally agreed that science, as we know it, had its beginning during the time of Galileo and Kepler, and is a quest to discover the facts, the relationships, and the laws of physical phenomena through observations and experiments, free from preconceived notions. In Einstein's words, “the object of all sciences is to coordinate our experiences and to bring them into a logical system.“ I particularly like James Conant's definition: “Science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.“ Ever since the time of Galileo, science has built up a coherent picture of our universe, from the smallest atom to the most gigantic galaxy, from the simple single celled amoeba to the complex human body. There is no denying the fact that science has a remarkable degree of internal consistency, and the validity of the scientific method and its findings have never been seriously challenged.

 

In support of the second criterion regarding the influence science has on all facets of our thinking, Isaac Newton provides a good example. With his brilliant insight into the laws of motion and of gravitational attraction between bodies, he brought order out of apparent chaos in the solar system. In one fell swoop he was able to explain the heliocentric system of Copernicus and Kepler, and put to rest once and for all any lingering notions that man was at the center of the universe. Ever since then, man's concept of himself has never been the same. No longer was he the end-all and the be-all of creation, and he had learned to accept his insignificant place in the scheme of things.

 

I can cite some examples closer to our own times. One is taken from the realm of mathematics and has to do with a remarkable theorem due to Gödel. This theorem states that mathematics can never prove that mathematics is free from internal self-contradictions. This compels us to conclude that there are some things which we cannot do with our minds. The most shattering blow to our ego is the realization that the human mind can never have certainty by either logical, metaphysical or mystical methods. This kind of uncertainty is underlined by a principle of physics attributed to Heisenberg, called The Uncertainty Principle which states that it is impossible to exactly measure the position and momentum of a particle at any given instant of time. There are far-reaching implications involved here regarding free-will and determinism.

 

Einstein's Theory of Relativity has completely changed our notions of space and time, leading to the conclusion that a moving meter stick appears to be shorter and that a moving clock runs slower. However, the most important consequence of the conceptual revolution brought about by relativity and quantum theory lies not in the fact that simultaneous position and momentum have no meaning or that moving clocks run slow, but in the insight that we had not been using our minds correctly and that it is important to find out how to do so.

 

We now turn to the third criterion to be satisfied, namely, that science is not an encyclopedic collection of data, but an attempt to obtain general relationships which tie together as many seemingly disparate data as possible, and which stimulate new ideas, and possibly permit us to make predictions. I have already mentioned two examples of this, Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Newton's Law of Gravitation is equally valid for the smallest particles of nature like the electron, up to the largest heavenly bodies like the galaxies and the stars. Einstein's theory of relativity from its two basic postulates that the speed of light is a constant in a vacuum no matter how it is measured, and that the physical laws are invariant in inertial frames of reference, leads to the conclusion that mass can be converted into energy and vice versa, that anti-matter exists, and that no particle can travel faster than the speed of light. These were suggested by the theory and have all been later experimentally verified.

 

I could mention other far-reaching laws like Faraday's Law of Electromagnetic Induction, DeBroglie's Theory of Matter Waves, and the Theory of Evolution from Biology.

 

Finally, we come to the last criterion, which is that science is a very human enterprise and satisfies some of our most basic human needs. There is a wide-spread belief among non- scientists that the scientist is a cool, impartial, detached individual. This is not true. The scientist is as human as anyone else; he gets carried away by his work like any other creative worker. This may seem a bit surprising since we tend to believe that scientific work is objective and free from personal intervention. However, that is not the way science develops. A scientist working in his laboratory does not stop to think about every step he makes. What he does is almost instinctive and he proceeds creatively from step to step until he makes a discovery. This is analogous to the case of a tight-rope walker who does not make a systematic analysis into the physical laws by which he performs and survives; otherwise, he would probably fall off if he worried too much about them. In this respect, the scientist is no different from a painter or a composer, who instinctively follows certain rules but who does not consciously think of them in the act of creation.

 

Most thoughtful people realize that the differences between the sciences and the humanities are superficial; what is common to the sciences and the humanities is far more fundamental and important than the differences. James Conant had addressed himself to this question. He said: “The significance of the fabric of scientific theories that have been produced in the last 350 years is the same as the significance of the art of the great periods in history, or the significance of the work of the musical composers. For most scientists, I think the justification of their work is to be found in the pure joy of its creativeness; the spirit which moves them is closely akin to the imaginative vision which inspires an artist.”

 

The fact is, contrary to popular belief, science is not exact, and there is a great deal of room left for the scientist to exercise his individuality and his creativity. The theoretical constructs of science are not immutable, but are capable of being discarded or modified when better theories come along. A good example of this is Newton's Laws of Motion which have to be modified when dealing with objects which travel close to the speed of light.

 

The scientist is strongly motivated by his sense of esthetics. Einstein said that if he were given the choice of two theories which explain equally well a set of phenomena, he would choose the simpler one as being probably the correct one. The French philosopher of science, Poincare in his book, Science and Method, makes this same point when he said “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course, I do not speak of that beauty which strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and of appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp.” He goes on to say, "Intellectual beauty is sufficient unto itself, and it is for its sake, more perhaps than for the future good of humanity, that the scientist devotes himself to long and difficult labors.”

 

I have tried to impart some of the spirit of science, and to show that science is a liberal art, and should be a part of every intelligent person's educational equipment—not because science is more important than other fields, but because it is an integral part of the whole fabric of knowledge.

 

If we possess a knowledge of science, we can be better citizens, capable of making responsible decisions regarding technological matters that affect our daily lives. For instance, to what extent should we support basic research as opposed to applied research? Should we oppose the construction of nuclear reactors for supplying energy? Is the space program worthwhile? There are numerous questions to be answered, and we should not leave it up only to the politicians to answer them for us. As free men and women we are permitted to have a voice in political decisions. But can we claim to be truly liberated unless we know what we are talking about? It was Disraeli who said, “The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.”

 

The examples which I have cited are well within the capabilities of any undergraduate who takes the trouble to try to understand them. Nowadays, any grade school student takes the law of gravity for granted. But it took many generations for people to become accustomed to the concept of a force of gravity acting at a distance without any medium to transmit the force. We would hope that it won't be too long before the ideas and consequences of relativity and quantum mechanics, having been assimilated as a part of our cultural heritage, may be equally taken for granted by students entering college.

 

Dr. Yap obtained the Ph.D. degree in physics from The Johns Hopkins University and the B.A. in physics from Brandeis University. In addition to physics, he has taught courses in computer science, environmental science, and astronomy. His main research interests are in nuclear and x-ray spectroscopy, and he has published several papers in these areas.