I think you have created some good ideas on the future in a world driven by AI and understanding the importance of a liberal arts education. We can’t eliminate liberal arts and think that AI will be the answer to everything. We will always need to balance reason and moral purpose. Engineers and engineering was created to help math work, physics works and analytics will be very important along with ethics. I think the day of psychology and marketing is very limited in the future of advanced technology and AI. Logic will always be important. I think you’ve introduced some good ideas. My hope is that the importance of liberal arts education can continue but evolve to meet the needs of the future what that may be.
I’d keep the Trivium. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are perennial subjects, particularly when interpreted broadly, as discussed in my post Trivium Night. They teach students how to gather information, order it, and then present it as argument.
But number has changed significantly. Namely, that we have much more control over it than in the past. We can act with number in the same way we can argue with reason. We still need to learn “arithmetic” in the same way we need to learn “grammar,” but there’s much more room on the argumentative end that isn’t captured in the original quadrivium.
To that end, I would make two replacements.
Information, which is number in noise, would replace Geometry. This would include skepticism, generalizability, statistics, and probability. These skills are essential to gathering reliable information and operating in a world of disinformation.
Technology, which is number in contraptions, would replace Astronomy. This would include applied physics, engineering, and building or fixing systems. What I’m interested in here is less in the pure mathematics and more in the how-things-fit-together aspect of it all. How does civilization rely on arbitrary protocols to push itself forward?
I think Arithmetic and Music are as fundamental as ever, and it’s not clear to me that something like “psychology” would be a good replacement. Music, in particular, has something essentially human worth salvaging academically. It is so direct, so powerful, a force on the human psyche that being able to explain music through an educational philosophy is a baseline requirement to know that it’s capable of doing work.
I think you have created some good ideas on the future in a world driven by AI and understanding the importance of a liberal arts education. We can’t eliminate liberal arts and think that AI will be the answer to everything. We will always need to balance reason and moral purpose. Engineers and engineering was created to help math work, physics works and analytics will be very important along with ethics. I think the day of psychology and marketing is very limited in the future of advanced technology and AI. Logic will always be important. I think you’ve introduced some good ideas. My hope is that the importance of liberal arts education can continue but evolve to meet the needs of the future what that may be.
I’d keep the Trivium. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are perennial subjects, particularly when interpreted broadly, as discussed in my post Trivium Night. They teach students how to gather information, order it, and then present it as argument.
But number has changed significantly. Namely, that we have much more control over it than in the past. We can act with number in the same way we can argue with reason. We still need to learn “arithmetic” in the same way we need to learn “grammar,” but there’s much more room on the argumentative end that isn’t captured in the original quadrivium.
To that end, I would make two replacements.
Information, which is number in noise, would replace Geometry. This would include skepticism, generalizability, statistics, and probability. These skills are essential to gathering reliable information and operating in a world of disinformation.
Technology, which is number in contraptions, would replace Astronomy. This would include applied physics, engineering, and building or fixing systems. What I’m interested in here is less in the pure mathematics and more in the how-things-fit-together aspect of it all. How does civilization rely on arbitrary protocols to push itself forward?
I think Arithmetic and Music are as fundamental as ever, and it’s not clear to me that something like “psychology” would be a good replacement. Music, in particular, has something essentially human worth salvaging academically. It is so direct, so powerful, a force on the human psyche that being able to explain music through an educational philosophy is a baseline requirement to know that it’s capable of doing work.