Liberal Arts Education Kentaro Toyama Microsoft Research India

A little history…

The idea of the “liberal arts” has roots that go back at least to ancient Greece. Pythagoras was fundamentally a technical person. He was interested in mathematics. But, he saw number in everything, and separated the study of numbers into arithmetic (number), geometry (number in space), music (number in time), astronomy (number in space and time). Pythagoras (~569-~475 BC)

“Artes quibus liberales doctrinae atque ingenuae continentur; Orator and statesman, Cicero (c. 106-43 BC) in the ancient Rome: Liberal arts as geometry, literature, poetry, natural science, ethics, politics. “Artes quibus liberales doctrinae atque ingenuae continentur; geometria, litterarum cognito et poetarum, atque illa quae de naturis rerum, quae de hominum moribus, quae de rebus publicis dicuntur.” -- Cicero (c. 106-43 BC)

Arts grammar rhetoric dialectic (logic) Disciplines arithmetic geometry music astronomy Roman writer, statesman, and monk. Cassiodorus b. about 490; d. about 583 Cassiodorus (~490-~583)

Trivium grammar rhetoric dialectic Quadrivium arithmetic geometry music astronomy In medieval European universities, this became the trivium and the quadrivium, the paths to wisdom. The incarnation in the middle here is Philosophy which was seen as the root and end of all of the other disciplines.

The seven liberal arts expanded to include a broader notion during the Renaissance in Europe. The “Renaissance man” is someone who excels at a variety of disciplines and can think intelligently about.many. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

Tradition carried through to Oxford University Tradition carried through to Oxford University. 7-year Master of Arts program. Oxford let go of the 7-year Master of Arts program in the 19th century.

Liberal arts transplanted to modern America, through old universities like Harvard, William&Mary, Yale… Seeing a trend towards vocational education, Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard at the turn of the 20th century made a bachelor’s degree a prerequisite for professional schools (e.g., medicine and law). Some credit this with having saved liberal arts education in America.

Before I go on… this concept of a well-rounded non-vocational education is not unique to Western civilization. India had its gurukuls. The goddess Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge and the arts. She’s often considered the goddess of education and music. Having four arms, there is a suggestion that knowledge and education are multidisciplinary.

Japan modified the Confucian notions of a well-rounded scholar-bureaucrat, and created the notion of the warrior-scholar, who was as deft with the pen as with the sword. The ideals of a samurai warrior led him to pursue perfection in the martial arts, scholarship, the fine arts, politics, and so on. Miyamoto Musashi (~1584-1645)

“the conquest of self and the regulation of one's life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment” -- St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)

Why liberal arts?

I work for what might be the world’s most technically oriented corporation. And, even there, I can tell you that there is a limit to how much impact you can have, if all you know is technical. AT&T study

Liberal Arts Education

Photo: Hector U. Velazquez

Thank you!