Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Liberal Arts

Starting point is 00:00:00 For thousands of years, educators have wrestled with the question, what knowledge does a person truly need? The answer once included seven formal subjects that established the foundation of education from ancient Greece through the medieval university. The subjects have changed dramatically over time, but the underlying idea has survived. Learn more about the origins, evolution,

Starting point is 00:00:22 and continued relevance of the liberal arts on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia high-interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Visit scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank. You're richer than you think. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off.

Starting point is 00:01:43 Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. You've probably heard the phrase liberal arts with respect to liberal arts colleges, but what exactly are the liberal arts? Why are they called that? And what makes a liberal art college different from any other college? The liberal arts are a broad tradition of education intended to develop a person's general intellectual abilities rather than to train them for a single occupation. Historically, they were the subjects thought necessary for a free person to participate intelligently in civic life. Over time, the term expanded from a very specific ancient and medieval

Starting point is 00:02:35 curriculum into the much broader collection that we associate with liberal arts education today. The word liberal in this context has nothing to do with modern political liberalism. In fact, the word liberal is one of the most confusing words in modern English because it can mean so many different things depending on context, some of which are diametrically opposed to each other. Liberal in the context of the liberal arts comes from the Latin word liberalis, meaning appropriate for a free person, which itself comes from the word Liber, meaning free. Liberal education was contrasted with vocational or mechanical training, which prepared someone for a particular trade. The goal was not simply to make a living,

Starting point is 00:03:20 but to cultivate judgment, eloquence, reasoning, and an understanding of the world. The basic idea originated in ancient Greece, although the formal list of liberal arts developed later. Greek thinkers increasingly asked what sort of education was appropriate for a citizen of the Pallas or the city state. In Athens, in particular, political participation required people to speak persuasively, understand arguments, judge evidence, and participate in public affairs. The sophists were itinerant teachers in ancient Greece who taught rhetoric, argumentation, and other skills useful for success in politics and public life. Plato strongly criticized some sophists, but he shared the broader assumption that education should develop

Starting point is 00:04:06 the intellect. Plato's educational program, especially in the book the Republic, emphasize subjects such as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. These were valuable, not merely for their practical uses, but because they trained the mind to think abstractly. Aristotle similarly distinguished between education appropriate for free citizens and training primarily aimed at earning a livelihood. He believed education should help cultivate virtue and prepare people to participate in political and intellectual life. The Greeks did not yet have the exact medieval list of the liberal arts, but many of its

Starting point is 00:04:43 ingredients were already present. The Romans inherited Greek educational ideas and provided the terminology from which the expression liberal arts derives. Roman writer spoke of the Artes Liberalis, the arts or disciplines appropriate. for a free person. One of the most important figures was Cicero, who emphasized the education of the ideal statesman in order. For Cicero, eloquence alone was insufficient.

Starting point is 00:05:10 A good speaker needed broad knowledge of history, philosophy, law, politics, and human nature. The Roman ideal of the educated person, therefore, combined knowledge with the ability to communicate and reason. And Cicero has come up enough times now that he is definitely worthy of his own episode, probably sooner rather than later. During late antiquity, scholars gradually organize this broad educational tradition into a standard curriculum. By the Middle Ages, the middle arts had become organized into seven disciplines divided into two groups. The first three constituted the trivium.

Starting point is 00:05:48 This included grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Grammar was the foundation of the trivium. Medieval grammar meant much more than learning rules about sentence construction. Because Latin was the language of the Catholic Church, scholarship law, and higher education, students first had to learn to read and write Latin fluently. Instruction involved memorizing vocabulary, grammatical forms, declensions, conjugations, and rules of syntax. Grammar also included interpreting literature, so students might study works by Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, or Christian writers, while learning how language conveyed meaning. And having studied Latin myself over the last few years, I can say, I've learned more about grammar and sentence structure trying to learn Latin than I ever did studying English in school. Rhetoric taught students

Starting point is 00:06:36 how to communicate persuasively and effectively. Its roots lay in the Greek and Roman tradition of public speaking. Students learned how to organize an argument, choose appropriate language, appeal to an audience, and employ figures of speech. In practice, a medieval student might be asked to compose a formal letter, construct a sermon, deliver a speech, or rewrite a passage in a more persuasive style. One important medieval branch of rhetoric was the Ars Dictaminus, the art of composing formal letters, which was extremely useful in church and government administration. Finally, logic taught students how to determine whether an argument was valid. Medieval logic drew heavily on Aristotle, whose logical works became central to university education.

Starting point is 00:07:20 Teaching was often highly interactive. A master might pose a proposition after which students would argue both for and against it before attempting to resolve the issue. This developed into formal medieval practice of the disputation, in which competing arguments were presented systematically and answered. The trivium formed the first stage of a medieval university education. Before a student could seriously study other subjects, they first needed command of the language in which the knowledge was to be transmitted. But once you mastered the trivium, then you can move on to the quadrivium. The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Arithmetic was the study of numbers and numerical relationships.

Starting point is 00:08:06 medieval arithmetic was not primarily practical calculation in the modern sense. Students studied the properties of numbers, ratios, proportions, odd and even numbers, prime numbers, and numerical patterns. Geometry dealt with magnitude, measurement, and spatial relationships. It drew heavily on Euclid, although access to the full book The Elements became much more widespread in Western Europe after Latin translations from Arabic and Greek appeared in the 12th century. Students learned basic geometric definitions, propositions, proofs, ratios, and relationships involving things like lines, angles, triangle, circles, and other shapes.

Starting point is 00:08:45 Instruction often involved a master presenting a problem. and then demonstrating the proof step-by-step. Geometry had practical applications in surveying, architecture, and astronomy, but within the liberal arts it was primarily valued as training in abstract reasoning. Music might seem the strangest member of the quadrivium to modern people because medieval music education was heavily mathematical. Students studied the numerical ratios that produced musical intervals. A student of the quadrivium might therefore spend more time studying proportions and harmony than actually learning to play an instrument.

Starting point is 00:09:20 Music was also connected with the broader belief that mathematical harmony existed throughout nature and even the cosmos. Astronomy studied the motions of the heavens using mathematics. Medieval students learned about the sun, moon, planet, stars, eclipses, the calendar, and the structure of the cosmos. The prevailing astronomical framework was largely derived from Aristotle and Ptolemy with a geocentric worldview. Astronomy in medieval education also overlapped with astrology, which was widely regarded as a legitimate application of celestial knowledge.

Starting point is 00:09:53 Universities could teach astronomical calculations that were then used for astrological predictions. The trivium and the quadrivium combined to make up the seven liberal arts. The collection of these seven subjects and their divisions developed over time, particularly in the 5th and 6th centuries. Romans such as Martian escapela, Bothius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of Seville, all contributed to the development of the seven liberal arts. When European universities began emerging in the 11th through 13th centuries, students usually began in the Faculty of Arts. They studied the liberal arts before moving into advanced professional studies,

Starting point is 00:10:35 such as theology, law, or medicine. The modern academic degree system actually preserves traces of this. The Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees can be traced back to the medieval arts faculty who taught the trivium and quadrivium. During the Renaissance, liberal education changed considerably. Renaissance humanists placed greater emphasis on what they called the Studia Humanitatus, or Studies of Humanity. These typically included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.

Starting point is 00:11:06 This is one of the reasons the modern term humanities developed. The Renaissance ideal was that of a broadly educated individual familiar with many fields, sometimes represented by the concept of a Renaissance man. Leonardo da Vinci, Leon Batista Alberti, Michelangelo, Galileo, Galilei, Copernicus, and Francis Bacon are all commonly cited as Renaissance men because they made significant contributions across multiple fields of art, science, philosophy, or scholarship. The scientific revolution and the Enlightenment dramatically expanded the range of disciplines considered appropriate for general education.

Starting point is 00:11:47 During the 19th century, universities underwent another transformation as academic disciplines became more specialized. Subjects that once fell under a broad category such as natural philosophy now became separate fields, including physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. Social sciences such as economics, sociology, and anthropology. anthropology also emerged as distinct disciplines. As a result, the expression liberal arts stopped referring primarily to the original seven subjects and came to mean a broad education across many different areas of knowledge. Today, particularly in the United States, liberal arts

Starting point is 00:12:27 generally encompasses three broad areas. The first is the humanities, which includes fields such as history, philosophy, literature, languages, religious studies, classics, and art history. The second is the social sciences, which commonly includes economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other related subjects. And finally, the natural sciences and mathematics may also be included in a liberal arts curricula, particularly when they're studied as part of a broad undergraduate education rather than just specialized professional training. One big question is that, is there really a difference today between colleges that claim

Starting point is 00:13:05 to be liberal arts schools and those that are not? not. And the truth is, not really. The de facto definition of a liberal arts college today, at least in the United States, is it's just a four-year undergraduate institution that has very limited or no graduate programs. The actual curriculum of a liberal arts college really isn't that different from a larger university. Most undergraduate degree programs require a set number of distribution credits across different departments, plus some sort of specialization through a major. Within a university, the liberal arts has just become a shorthand for taking a bunch of classes in a bunch of different departments. The concept of the liberal arts is not without fault. The liberal arts

Starting point is 00:13:50 have been criticized almost from the beginning for being insufficiently practical. Greek philosophers argued about whether education should cultivate virtue and wisdom or teach immediately useful skills. The same argument continues today when people question the value of studying philosophy, history, classics, or literature compared with engineering, computer science, or business. And the criticism has some legitimacy. Specialized professions require specialized training, and education can become detached from practical realities. Over the last century, several people have assembled their own modern versions of the trivium and quadrivium. And the truth is, given the world we live in today, there is simply way more to learn than there was 800 years ago. Back then it was possible, at least

Starting point is 00:14:37 in theory, for one person to read almost everything that existed. Today, that is absolutely impossible. Specialization has reached a point where even the most acclaimed academics seldom know much beyond their particular area of expertise. The liberal arts have never really been about mastering a fixed list of subjects. Their purpose has been to give people the intellectual tools needed to understand the world and participate in it. The subjects have changed as knowledge has expanded, but the goal remains much the same, to teach people how to reason, communicate, and learn. In that sense, the liberal arts are not a relic of an older educational system. They are an attempt to answer a question that every generation has to confront.

Starting point is 00:15:22 What does an educated person need to know? The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who's. supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it

Starting point is 00:15:56 read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Liberal Arts

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