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[Phys-L] Re: Quotations



It is frequently overlooked by self-identified* scholars in the
postmodern "liberal arts" that the classical liberal arts included
all the science then known in the Quadrivium. From <http://
www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html> the seven liberal arts
included:
The Trivium consisted of:

Grammar
Rhetoric
Logic
The Quadrivium consisted of:

Arithmetic -- Number in itself
Geometry -- Number in space
Music, Harmonics, or Tuning Theory -- Number in time
Astronomy or Cosmology -- Number in space and time
It appears these postmodern scholars are merely trivial.

Incidentally, two of my children are professors in nonsciences,
philosophy and anthropology. I have nothing against these disciplines
(some of my best friends etc.) except that I do resent the
polarization to which Bob and others, notably C. P. Snow, refers.
These neo-luddites don't even know history!

Leigh

*This is a word I cadged from a sign in the mall of our university
outside a room described as a shelter for "self-identified women".
Sometimes I wonder if a long life is really a good thing. Clearly I
am not keeping up with the world.

On 7-Nov-05, Bob Sciamanda wrote:

This thread gave vent to memories of an article I wrote in 1971 for
an in
house (Catholic college) publication, contrasting a narrow
education in the
"humanities" with a science based education (anti technology
sentiment was
rampant at this time):

" . . . The polarization is already far advanced. While the
theologians
continue to write about each other, the scientists - heeding St.
Paul's
injunction - explore the mind of God 'through the things he has made'.
While the historians continue to indulge their primitive obsession
with
politics and wars, the student of science studies what is eminently
human
history - the evolution of scientific thought. While
philosophers . . . "
( On and on, provoking from the pews a grand AMEN! )

Bob Sciamanda
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