University of Evansville - LinC Yearbook (Evansville, IN)

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ATURAL sciences today include a wide variety of subjects which were nonexistent in the medieval school. Even in elementary curricula of natural sciences one finds included health education, safety, and a study of the physical environment. Home chemistry, as related to health and diet, is sampled in the elementary classroom. Natural science is frequently integrated with manual training. Even one of the oldest arts, that of agriculture, has become scientifically oriented. Oxford in 1796 had the first form of agriculture school in England. It is now a part of the famed extensive development of the natural science courses at Oxford. The increasing importance of engineering and agriculture was recognized long ago at Cambridge. There is, at Harvard, an emphasis in the undergraduate program on training in the basic sciences. Yale not only maintains its own museums and labo- ratories in the eastern and southern portions of the United States, but maintains an observatory in South Africa as well. A special school for engineering was established as early as 1856 at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, only twenty-five years after its founding. In 1904 a second college was formed as a part of McGill to accommodate the schools of agriculture and domestic science. VANSVILLE College has a school of engineering which boasts a co-operative plan for its students with firms such as George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the Wright Air Development Center in Ohio. During an era of high tensions and doubts, such firms play a major role in the very center of our lives. When world peace seems so far away with the Chinese and Russians disputing their border and the United States demanding that Russia stop interference in Cuba, it is obvious that scientific advancements may well determine the world ' s outcome. T is noteworthy that Roger Bacon ' s mind ran to war-like things, to armed men, burnings, battles, and devastation. There may have been method in this, for he was trying to convince the Pope, and other monarchs, of the utilitarian value of scientific achievement. It is a well-established fact that World War I was chiefly responsible for the tremendous advance of the airplane within four years. In World War II it was the atomic bomb. Currently scientific advancement is con- cerned with rockets and missiles. In each case, development has been made with an eye on its military usefulness. There is effort being made every day, however, to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes. Other major scientific advancements are concerned with space explo- ration and the search for a cancer cure. The astronauts ' orbits around the earth, the Telstar communications satellite, and the efforts being made to get man closer to possible life on other planets fully illustrate that Roger Bacon ' s idea of the utilitarianism of science is still with us.

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NOWLEDGE being limited to the seven liberal arts during the early Middle Ages, there was no need for universities. There were simply the bare elements of grammar, rhetoric, logic, and a few vague notions of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music. Between 1100 and 1200, the influence of the ancients — Aristotle, Euclid, and Ptolemy — aided the development of the bare elements into what became the bases for university courses. This new knowledge burst the bonds of the cathedral and monastery schools and created the learned profes- sions. Schools formed, and eager youths began gathering to listen to the learned masters. It was the learned masters, then, who founded the schools, for the students traveled miles to be with a famous master. RAM MAR, rhetoric, and logic were grouped into what was known as the trivium. Arithmetic, as- tronomy, geometry, and music were known as the quadrivium. Textbooks, although expensive and often difficult to find at any price, were followed precisely. No arguments were at first voiced against any of the great authors. Original think- ing was not encouraged. The Chancellor ' s examination, comparable to today ' s master thesis, was voluntary. When one felt he was ready to attempt the examination, he made arrangements with the Chancellor, who was the official chief administrator of the university. It is difficult for one to accept today the term education as it was applied to the bare and sometimes mistaken facts which completed medieval schooling. The medieval schools had no libraries, laboratories, or mu- seums. There were no catalogues. There were no boards of trustees. As course of studies, athletics, sociology, journalism, and dramatics were nonexistent. The universities simply grew where the student and masters gathered. The glory of the medieval university, says Rashdall, was the consecreation of Learning, and that glory and vision have not yet perished from Western civilization. The medieval university it has been said, was the school of the modern spirit. It follows, then, that the ancient courses sparked the beginning of modern technology. N the colonial period, the modern spirit was brought from the English universities to the United States. On Harvard ' s west gate is noted the following inscription : After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli- hood, rear ' d convenient places for God ' s worship, and seded (sic.) the Civil Government: One of the next things wee longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust. 9

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CCORDING to a medieval belief, Faith precedes science, fixes its boundaries, and prescribes its conditions. Great thinkers, such as Roger Ba- con, tried to change that attitude. A friar. Bacon was a disciple of Robert Grosseteste, a liberal and comprehensive intellect, a champion of liberty. At Oxford he taught the formation of the uni- verse in scientific, not theological, terms. He studied the movements of the planets, the theories of colors, tides, perspectives, rainbow, heat, and light. Grosseteste caused Bacon to consider mathematics and the study of language the principal door of knowledge. OGER Bacon was the first commercial scientist. He delved into the mysteries of alchemy. His labo- ratory was a thing of suspicion to the other friars — its evil smells and peculiar instruments seemed to smack of the devil. He was interested in the practical value of research and would have ad- mired the United States Governmental contract with nine Eastern institutions for nuclear research at the Brookhaven National Laboratories. With the equipment found in modern labora- tories such as the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, Bacon would doubtless have been an Edison, Bell, or Marconi, rather than an Ein- stein, Hertz, or Euler. Instead, however. Bacon had only such crude preparation as was available in basic theories by Boethius, Bede, Ptol- emy, Euclid, and Adalbert of Bath. 11