Last week’s post about teaching mathematics classically provoked some excellent comments. Here is one of mine, responding to the question of why the liberal arts include astronomy and not physics, biology, chemistery, etc.:
Great, helpful, and important comments! Classical educators–here are some splendid ideas. Run with them.
Webmonk and Peter, chemistry, physics, biology, etc., WERE taught in classical schools and universities (such as Oxford and Cambridge). They are not liberal arts–which deal with processes and skills–but they come under the liberal sciences (the word literally meaning “knowledge), specifically, Natural Science. (The others are Moral Science [knowledge of Man, including history, law, the humanities, etc.], and Theological Science [the knowledge of God, theology being the “Queen of the Sciences,” in the sense of comprehending the source of all of the others.)
Astronomy as an “art” teaches empirical observation to which is applied mathematical analysis. As such, it teaches the conceptual “art” necessary in those other sciences.
I guess I should next post something asking how to teach the natural sciences classically!
So now I will do so. Realize, everyone, that classical education includes both the [liberal] arts and the [liberal sciences. The ART of Astronomy applies mathematics to observations. The SCIENCE of Astronomy has to do with all that stuff Webmonk is talking about (the nature of stars, blackholes, etc.).
Progressive education has always claimed to be scientific–privileging science against all other kinds of knowledge–so the irony now is that the current educational approaches are doing such a terrible job of teaching science, as nearly everyone admits. This academic crisis also sounds like a job for classical education! (Certainly many of the greatest scientists, from the original pioneers through 19th century Oxford grads and even including a number of modern theoretical physicists [such as Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg] had the foundation of a classical education.)
So how should classical educators teach the natural sciences?
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