Key Characteristics

Question

What are the key characteristics of the four lenses of liberal arts?

Answer 1

That is an interesting (and uncommon) question. When asking about the fundamentals of a liberal arts education, the answer given often involves the "trivium" and "quadrivium," which are the fundamental subjects of a humane education (e.g., logic, history, cosmology, art/music, etc.). You have asked about "lenses" though. This is a little different and refers to less specific, general areas. These are presented as:

1. Humanities: Things such as literature and art.
2. Social Sciences: Things such as psychology, economics, political science.
3. Natural Sciences: Topics such as physics, chemistry, biology.
4. History: An analysis of past events and their influence on the present.

This is, in a sense, merely a reorganization and recategorization of the classical areas. Being a philosopher/logician, the thing I find interesting (and a little troubling) about the recategorization into "lenses" is the REMOVAL of philosophy/logic from the collection, which was considered essential to a liberal arts education since, well, people even began to think about what constitutes a liberal arts education.

In other words, critical, rigorous thinking was previously considered fundamental to a humane education, but it is notably absent today. Otherwise the prior and current catalogs are quite similar.