The Liberal Pursuit of Nature: Science, Humanities, and Liberal Education

April 1, 2017
Providence College

Ruane Center for the Humanities
1 Cunningham Square
Providence 02918
United States

This will be an accessible event, including organized related activities

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Speakers:

Peter Pesic
St. John's College

Organisers:

Maia Bailey
Providence College
Ryan Shea
The Catholic University of America

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What is the role that science ought to play in an undergraduate liberal education?  Should science education focus on all students equally, or on science majors seeking vocational training, or on non-science students seeking a general, and liberal, education?  What is the role that science ought to play in a full, free, and happy life?  Is science the special province of trained scientists or is it a necessary component of every human life, just as music, painting, history, and philosophy are thought to be?  Can science be taught and pursued as a liberal inquiry?  As a “liberal art”?

Liberal education is usually identified with the “humanities” and thus excludes the natural and social sciences, which leads to tensions between the so-called “two cultures.”  Yet, a liberal pursuit is simply one that is free in the dual sense that it is done for its own sake and it works to continually liberate the mind and life of its practitioner.  Mathematics, the natural sciences, and the social sciences all are able to be liberal in this twofold sense and thus should be working together with the humanities to provide an overall liberal education, both in college and beyond.

This conference seeks to provide a forum for discussing the nature and possibility of science as a liberal pursuit and the role of science in undergraduate education, especially at small liberal arts colleges.  We wish to focus on three main areas.  First, we want to discuss the nature of liberal education in general and how the sciences and the humanities should be pursued in order to accomplish the goals of liberal education.  Second, we want to discuss the practicalities of pedagogy for such a liberal pursuit of nature.  Third, we wish to engage in particular examples of science being done in a liberal and liberalizing way.  The following list of topics intends to be suggestive and by no means exhaustive.

—Science and undergraduate liberal education—

—Liberal arts, vocational training, and the sciences—

—Bridging the “Two Cultures”: Cooperation between the sciences and the humanities—

—Popular science, citizen science, and liberal education—

—The history and philosophy of science as an aid for teaching non-science majors—

—Natural history as a way into science—

—Cooperation on Campus: Co-teaching the core curriculum—

—“Great Books”: The utility of reading and teaching scientific “classics”—

—Problem Based Science Curricula—

—Questioning and Curiosity in Teaching Science—

—Naive  and Elemental Experimentation: Socratic Teaching  in the Lab—

—Science, a sense of place, and environmentalism—

—History, narrative, and evolutionary biology—

—Understanding nature through poetry, myth, and science—

—Writing, nature, and nature writing—

—Art, drawing, and depicting knowledge—

—Symbolic thought in physics, mythology, art, and psychology—

Submission Deadline is November 20th, 2016.  Notification of Acceptance by December 18, 2016.  Conference is April 1, 2017. 

Please Submit Abstracts as PDF or DOC prepared for blind review (max. 500 words) to [email protected].  Each selected paper will have forty minutes total for their presentation and Q/A session.  Include your name, submission title, institutional affiliation, and preferred contact information in the body of your submission email.

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2 people are attending:

University of Wisconsin, Madison

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#science, mathematics, liberal education, nature, humanities, citizen science, popular science, natural history, great books, socratic teaching