One of the purported aims of classical, great-books-style educations is to teach students about civilization.
Simple test of this aim:
1. Do students read The Origin of Species?
2. Do students learn about Claude Shannon?
None I've seen pass #2.
Shockingly, most fail even #1.
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I *love* the classics, and advocate for them. This is not a criticism of what students *do* learn in these curricula.
But if your history elides *the* roots and paradigm cases of modern science and technology then you aren't teaching civilization. You're doing something else.
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Classics + progress studies would be insanely powerful. Anyone working towards this sort of template (besides us)?
One interesting thing about a 50 year cutoff for "not history" or "too modern" is that it's roughly relativized to the age of a professor, not the age of a student
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Replying to @mbateman
Unofficial at St. John’s for new inclusions to the program looked to be ~100 years for broad acceptance and ~75 years for “stretching credulity” suggestions. Anything in the last 50 years is, without question, far too modern. I can only speak to what I know from my time there.
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The examples you picked are great but very often the first person to discover an idea is not the person that offers the best exposition from a pedagogical point of view.
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Darwin is, though. And, yeah, I said "learn about" Shannon precisely because secondary sources are better here
Aristotle's "On Zoning"
Heraclitus: "No man ever builds the same nuclear reactor twice" (and that is why they are so expensive)
Granting agencies: "You see, some scientists have gold in them....others silver...."
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Much better to require actual science classes. Science isn't about worshipping ancient texts - part of the beauty of science is how many ways can lead to the same knowledge.
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Making this point land is one of the main goals of studying the history of science
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