Duke University - Chanticleer Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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college of engineering we have had to perish in the effort. Those societies which sUpped into darkness would not, or could not, reconcile the changing demands of his- tory and the unchanging demands of indi idual human life. We ourselves, in our tiny fragment of time since the 18th century, have fought four major wars which were the tragic outer signs of our disorder and our attempt to deal with it. But we meet the same issue constantly in the rise and decay of cities, of industries, even of individual families. In the university world, a need to face both the turning points of history and the pivotal, disrupti e moments of human thought is the most relent- less of the tasks laid on us. And we have a duty, furthermore, to develop the very ideas that will be so trouble- some as we assimilate them. A city or a country often has the problem of growth and change thrust upon it; here in the university, we create the very problem which we have to solve. To be quite specific and quite aca- demic for a moment, my own discipline faced a generation ago the question of what was the most important about the study of literature. Was it the biography of the writer, or was it the inner, somehow independent life of the work he wrote? The truth, of course, turned out to be neither of these ex- tremes, but a new synthesis in literary studies, a demanding new kind of insight about the art of literature and about the societies which literature embodies and brings to conscious, understanding life. If we had not moved to this new level of complexity, however, we would have seen the de- cline of the whole discipline. No thoughtful man would ha e continued to spend time on it. And the same burden of synthesis is laid upon every other discipline of the mind, every individual faculty mem- i)er, and upon every university that pretends to real accomplishment. At our point in time, for instance, we are faced with the need to nourish the arts equally with the sciences - not at the expense of the sciences, but equally with them, and indeed by means of them; we are faced with the need to mo e into areas of study that our col- leagues a generation ago did not even imagine; and as a result, we are faced with a need to sec much of university life oriented to the solution of complex interdisciplinary problems rather than James L. Mkriam, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Engineering toward the mere continuance of tradi- tional disciplines and felds of study. The university that ignores these shifts of concern will be second rate 20 years from now. These are not fads of the moment; they arc a bold attempt to master the fantastic momentum of human knowledge by coming at it in some new ways. As you look at a major university today, you may not think of this mastery as our most critical Charles R. Vail, Ph.D. Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering problem, but it is; either we explore and bring to useful order the wilder- ness of new knowledge, or we shall no longer be an effective force in our society — and all our brick and stone will simply build a memorial to our failure. In this attempt (which our whole society must make) to bring order into its world, the university has a third contribution to offer. It can support the most difficult of all human enterprises — one even more demanding than the constant assimilation of knowledge which I ha c just described. This dif- ficult enterprise is the revisiting of basic reality itself — that rare discovery of the radical order in experience, a discovery which goes so far that it becomes simple again. Simple is a de- ceptive word in this setting, however; four of the best examples of this special quality in our century are Einstein, Yeats, Whitehead and Van Gogh. These men have in common one thing; each of them, in revisiting a IS

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Charles B. Johnson, Ed.D. Assistant Dean of Trinity College position of the secure and the baffling is as old as man. It represents two things for us in the university world — the way formal knowledge grows, and the way the individual mind works. In each case, we reach toward what we do not know from a center of knowledge; but we modify and we change that center by our very act of reaching beyond it. In our own mythic and religious past, Adam and Eve are, I suppose, the greatest ex- amples of this constant, reiterated human event; but it is central to the hope of any great teacher, any great art- ist, any great scientist, any great prophet. The heartland for any of these dis- tinguished human beings is the im- mediately known, fully loved world — the world of our most intimate ex- perience. It has about it a sense of security, a sense of abiding attachment and constantly reaffirmed meaning. In a university the ritual heartland of life is Matriculation Day, Founder ' s Day, Commencement; its intellectual heart is the security of the honestly inquiring mind, which has the right to feel at any time confidence about the great traditions of learning, and the great traditions of civilized human conduct — no matter how these great traditions are called into question by the madness of some particular mo- ment. But this assurance of the known and loved is, as you realize, only half of the university world. In order to main- RoBERT B. Cox, A.M. Dean of Undergraduate Men tain our confidence in our own great traditions, we must revere them on the one hand and test them on the other. This is the law for any truly democratic society; it is more than law for the university. It is the breath of life; unless we put ourselves con- stantly to the test in the quality, the range, and the hungering variety of our work, we do not deserve to exist. We cannot be merely a snug, com- fortable, pleasant place, the place it is good to come i)ack to because it has never changed. We are obviously the place of constant returning, but equally we are the new, the untried, the hoped for and not yet found. Between Eden and Paradise lies the university world; it lives by memory, it lives by hope, and it lives through its faith in a promised land of insight and knowledge, which is never to be fully possessed. What power in the university holds this heartland of knowledge and this frontier of discovery together? The second of its unique talents, I think — a talent for reconciling to one another immediate confusions of knowledge and steadily more complex, and yet more coherent, ideas of order. One major element of Western society is embodied in this battle between growth and stability. In the last 5,000 years we have found ourselves again and again at critical points in our develop- ment; and we are at one of them to- day. Over and over we have had to find more complex ways of living, or C. HiLBURN VVOMBLE, Ph.D. Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Men 17

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fantastically complex tradition of thought and experience, is able to bring out of it a new kind of basic insight about the nature of things. This is the precious simplicity of truly creative thought (and thought is, I suspect, an inadequate word for it); it is the clarity which comes only at the far edge of human accomplishment, but it exists. It is our greatest reminder that all the fragments of thought and experience which are the common ma- terial of our lives can be caught up in some one pattern of coherence, com- JdiiN N. Macdi.h., M.M.E. Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering pleteness and therefore — in the deepest sense of the word — sanity. This kind of sanity is a return to the root of things; most of us are allowed only glimpses of it; but the university must give constant testimony, and must be a constant witness, to its presence in our world . If the process of university life is a constant alternation between frontier and heartland, if the daily task of a university is the assimilation of knowl- edge into new patterns of order, then I suggest that its final, almost mystical obligation is to the recognition, and indeed the veneration, of significance itself. This is the sense in which a uni- versity is most truly a religious in- stitution; within and beyond the welter of experience, it testifies to coherent reality. And it testifies to that reality wherever it can be truly found. For us, the common distinctions be- tween the sciences and the arts, be- tween theology and engineering, be- come meaningless. We do not choose among a good poem, a great bridge, a brilliant equation, a conquered virus; as educated people we owe our respect to them all, and as members of the university community we owe our understanding to them all. From these qualities and loyalties of the university world flow all its prac- tical, public achievements, and all its relevance to our inner lives. The scholar and the student are at the universitv ' s Earl I. Brown II, Ph.D. Chairman of the Department of Civil Engi- neering Edward K. Kravhii.l, M.S.E. Assistant Dean of the College of Engineering heart, not just because our society depends upon educated people, but above all because human beings crv out for knowledge, order and insight. Our kind of education is not, then, just the means to life; it is a way of life. The whole universe is its prov- ince; but it is justified only by what it brings to pass within us. As we come to love equally the bright field of knowl- edge and the dark wood beyond our understanding, as we develop the courage to confess ignorance, and the modesty to articulate true learning, then we begin, not only to under- stand the university but to embody it. And this we must do, we who have the rare privilege of being here. It is the expectation put upon us all, and as I accept my share of responsibility this morning, I ask you to remember your own. For this brief moment of time, we are Duke University. May men say of us in years to come that, every man according to his talent, we made a place of wit, of wisdom, of high civilization and great service. 19