Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

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“an engineer is a person who is oriented to¬ ward the application of his knowledge for generally social purposes and civilized activi¬ ties as opposed to artistic activities,” he does believe that “in designing something an engineer should consider whether a building is handsome as well as sound, whether an aircraft is beautiful as well as efficient.” In order to accomplish this, the engineer “must have a knowledge of human society which can be achieved by a mixture of course work in the humanities and fundamental human curiosity.” It is in this capacity that a contact with the liberal arts is relevant to the engineer’s education. In fact, Professor Batteau believes that it is important that the engineering student not pass up his oppor¬ tunity to gain a liberal education at Tufts since “it is probably easier to objectively analyze social conditions through the medium of course material than by living in society.” It is apparent that Professor Batteau is a man deeply concerned with the problem of communication. Since it is commonplace to say that most of the world’s problems have their root in a lack of communication we must wish him well in his work. Teachers must of course be able to communicate with their students in order to be effective. They might do well to keep in mind this final bit of advice from Professor Batteau: “The better the signal to noise ratio is, the better the educational process will go. 23

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Dwight W. Batteau Theorem: If everyone has equal rights to his own differing opinion, then no two have a valid opinion about the same thing, or all are worth¬ less. Corollary: There is at most one God. The above statement is typical of the witty wisdom which is to be found in Stupid- theorems, a book authored by Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dwight W. Batteau. Professor Batteau is a man of many activi¬ ties, all of which contribute to his personal dynamism and his ability to communicate effectively with his students. In addition to being a writer and teacher, he serves as the Chairman of the Board of three com¬ panies; Windward House, a publishing con¬ cern, Pathways of Sound, which makes children’s records, and Listening Incorpo¬ rated, a company which deals with research problems in the field of acoustics. He is also currently editing a book for Appleton, Century and Croft with the rather chewy title of Instrumentation in Biology Informa¬ tion Theory in the Medical, Psychological and Biological Fields. In addition to these occupa¬ tions, Dr. Batteau is engaged in two research projects for the Navy. The first of these in¬ volves the effort to establish meaningful vocal communication between men and dolphins. His second project entails research into pattern recognition in underwater acoustics for the purpose of improving sonar as well as marine mining and oil drilling. Professor Batteau finds his work with dol¬ phins especially exciting because it involves delving into all the dynamics of vocal com¬ munication and learning, “how to build a language from scratch.’’ As if all this weren’t enough, Dr. Batteau still manages to main¬ tain a continuing interest in the composition and performance of music for the guitar and piano. He takes particular joy in music of Yugoslav, Greek, and Basque origin and has been on the Board of Overseers of Kinhaven Music School in Vermont. While this variety of occupations may seem to be irrelevant to Professor Batteau’s primary job of being a good teacher, he ex¬ plains, “All the teaching or research I do is essentially oriented around the universe of information. Teaching involves conveying information from teacher to student with the hope that the student can make knowledge out of it.” He points out that it is the stu¬ dent’s responsibility to turn the information imparted to him into knowledge, but that the teacher can help “by such means as exercises and problems to aid the student in understanding piecemeal what he couldn’t grasp all at once.” A student may only be said to have knowledge “when he is able to use what he has learned.” Professor Batteau, who holds S.A., S.M., and Sc.D. degrees from Harvard University, also spoke about the role of a liberal arts college in the essentially professional evolu¬ tion of an engineer. While he recognizes that

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George B. Burch The Tufts Philosophy Club has described Professor of Philosophy George Burch in the following manner: “The personality and knowledge of Dr. Burch has long made the Philosophy Department at Tufts unique. With the un¬ fortunate tendency of modern philosophy to be dominated by logical positivism and linguistic analysis, Dr. Burch’s interests are truly refreshing. He combines a wide knowledge of the cultures of the world with a great inter est in philosophy as a whole.” This statement is typical of many made by Tufts students who have been inspired by Professor Burch’s challenging and exciting approach to his subject matter, an approach which has led to the great popularity of his surveys of Western, Far Eastern, and Near Eastern Thought. A graduate of Harvard University, Professor Burch taught at the College of Idaho before coming to Tufts in 1946. He was chairman of the Philosophy Department for several years before stepping down this year. Dr. Burch plans to make this his last year of teaching, and in com¬ menting on his years at Tufts he said, “I found the character and competence of my colleagues in the faculty and char¬ acter and competence of my students both very gratifying. In general my students have been excellent and some have been outstanding so that teaching here has been a very rewarding experience for me.” In speaking about the quality of Tufts students over the years, he noted, “I have had out¬ standing students recently, and some shortly after I came here,” so that while the face of the university has changed a great deal in the past twenty years, he sees no really signifi¬ cant change in the quality of the student body during this period. Dr. Burch points out that he views the relationship of the teacher to the student to be “something analogous to a paternal relationship. As the parent hands on life to his children, so the teacher hands on a cultural tradition to his students.” Professor Burch also sees unique problems in the teaching of philosophy because “it is not just the teaching of subject matter as in other fields, but the teaching of values which have to be appreciated.” For this reason, he always tries to elicit vigorous student discussion of course material, and emphasizes the importance of close student-teacher con¬ tacts outside of the classroom situation. Dr. Burch is also aware of the possibility of the mature philosophic mind imposing its credos upon the relatively untutored mind of the student. Nevertheless, he sees no way of avoiding “teaching what I believe, even in history of philosophy courses where I only teach those philosophers whom I think are important.” When asked about the role of the philosopher in influencing the direction of contemporary society, Professor Bruch re¬ plied that he saw little hope of any philosopher causing any meaningful change in the values of his own society. “In past times philosophers have had very little influence on their contemporaries, but have had overwhelming influence on the thought and values of future times.” However, he refused to speculate on the future influence of any twentieth century philosopher. “In speculating about what we don’t know, we can only go by analogy with what we do know, but that doesn’t mean the analogy will necessarily be carried out. Therefore, one cannot calculate which of our modern philoso¬ phers will have the greatest future influence.” Professor Burch’s main fields of interest are pre-Socratic and early Medieval philosophy, but he has lately turned to the study of the Indian philosophy of Vedanta. After leaving Tufts, he plans to devote much of his time to the completion of a book entitled The Search for the Absolute Contemporary Vedanta. The entire Tufts community will miss Professor Burch. We shall remember him for the wisdom of his words such as these about the role of the university: “Extending the horizon of thought is the university’s most significant con¬ tribution to the student’s education. It cannot teach him how to think — he must bring that with him; but it can give him things to think about.” We thank Professor Burch for giving so many of us so much to think about. 24