University of Evansville - LinC Yearbook (Evansville, IN)

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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

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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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ISTORY and geography are the only ancient courses included in what is now known as social sciences. Such scholars as Herodotus, Eratosthenes, Aristotle, and Starbo are sometimes considered to be the founding fathers of geography. It was Aris- totle whom the medieval scholars studied, al- though by 985 Eric the Red had reached Green- land, and by 1000 Vineland (probably North America) was reached. But the medieval scholar studied geography and history only as it in- filtrated into other areas. Geography courses today tend to be quite specialized, and the geographer now tends to concentrate on small fields of specialization to develop in detail the scientific side of geog- raphy, rather than the important social science field. Geography, as a social science, is useful in promoting the co-ordination of the social sciences, and thus developes understanding of the relationships of man to man. OME courses now prescribed as social sciences are quite new. Psychology, sociology, and their vari- ous specialized fields are currently being de- veloped as extensive courses. Such courses foster tolerance and closer neighborliness. More signifi- cant, however, is the attempt to help the individual with his mental problems. The intri- cacies involved in the human mind are not yet completely revealed; but compared with the knowledge of the medieval student concerning the human brain, modern science has covered a miraculously extensive frontier.