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JOHN HENRY RALEIGH
coincidence that the "hard" approach-facts, statistics, mathematical ex–
actitude--is pervading all the social sciences, even, so help me God,
psychology and social welfare. Nor that the physical and biological
sciences have all converged on the most minute evidence (the micro–
cosm) of their respective areas. All this is exciting too; in Oppenheimer's
words:
. . . I do have the impression that all the way from history to
biology a great arc of science is about to catch fire.
Oppenheimer continues:
I believe that there is a good chance that what have been the
protosciences of man are now rather close to becoming the many,
many different sciences of man. I do not think that in the world
fifty years from now there will be a subject called
psychology,
any
more than there is now a subject called
natural philosophy.
I think
that different ways of studying man will lead to disciplines which
for convenience will have different names, be in different buildings,
and will have different professors.
What I am suggesting by this is that the dynamism, fluidity and
exactitude of modern knowledge, which is the heart of the matter,
be
built into the organization of the university by increasing its flexibility
and by purging it of its heavy overlay of nineteenth-century ponderosity
and monolithicality. And that some of the intellectual excitement that
is occurring on the frontiers of knowledge be introduced more explicitly
into the undergraduate curriculum, if at the sacrifice of some ,of the
traditional coverage of traditional areas of general education. To use
Toynbee's terminology, the whole institution must be "etherealized."
This proposal has the defects of its virtues: it does involve some
losses. In Santayana's words: "The necessity of rejecting and destroying
some things that are beautiful is the deepest curse of existence." Bell
says in partial approval of the educational pattern of the fast-moving
students, who do not really partake of the blessed four-year interlude
which the college used to provide, "Clearly not all acceleration is bad."
I agree with this, but would also add, as I'm sure all would agree,
"Something precious is always being lost."
One thing that has been lost, as Bell admits, is the idea that there
is a common core of knowledge which everyone should know. Today,
however, in some senses, the university has been turned upside down
and exists to show how ignorant everyone is. To quote Oppenheimer
again:
