At the heart of a Columbia education is the Core Curriculum, the intellectual signature of the University. The Core is designed to expose students to accomplishments of the Western world that have shaped our society. Since 1919, an education at Columbia University has meant a formative interaction with many of the most basic conditions: What does it mean to be an individual? How does one live with the certainty of death? What kind of life is most worth living? What responsibilities does membership in a community entail? How do we evaluate and judge the impact of humans on the environment?
The Core Curriculum doesn’t provide the answers to these questions, of course. Rather, it trains students to think about them. The Core has tried valiantly to equip Columbia’s students with the tools to think about life’s loftier questions, but since its inception, it has lacked one fundamental component. Consider the equipment with which we seek answers: well-trained pedagogues, the prose of philosophers and thinkers long dead, our classmates, and most importantly, our own ability to think critically. Conspicuously absent from the toolbox are answers from modern science.
We might ask, for example, “what does it mean to be an individual?” The question assumes that we recognize the self as something different from everything else. Rivers of ink have been put to paper by thinkers debating this question, but a more concrete answer than that of Descartes comes from scientific evidence. Humans develop their original recognition of self and non-self during our time in the mother’s womb when our immune systems mature. This distinction is necessary for the immune system to learn to attack only intruders and not our own organs and cells. Biology can tell us something concrete about individuality, but it is seldom referenced in any of the Core’s works of philosophy and history.
How many graduating seniors could describe the second law of thermodynamics? The law is often roughly paraphrased as an assertion that the randomness (or entropy) of a thermodynamic system can only increase with time, and it implies that what we call “time” is not akin to an absolute and fluid universal chronometer but merely the direction in which randomness always grows. It implies that while man struggles eternally to create order out of his surroundings, he could be doomed to fail.
The point of these examples is that the lessons we learn from quantifiable, reproducible experimentation have far-reaching implications. While at one time, many of the great ancient philosophers were also scientists, the two studies have since been divorced for reasons of practicality. We have forgotten to include science in our larger questioning. The blame lies not just with the architects of the Core Curriculum, but also with the scientific community at large. Scientists tend to think either that the general public doesn’t need to appreciate the implications of cutting edge scientific work, or that those who do make the effort should do it on their own. However, this is misguided. Scientists, far from being exempt from any responsibility to the public, should be obligated to make their findings transparent to the curious.
Far be it from us to issue a mandate to the global scientific community. At our very own Columbia, however, we want every science class to remind us of the grand questions instead of letting us slip into the mentality that science is something only to be crunched out on paper. Science should inform us of our humanity and distance us from thinking of ourselves as organic computers. A number of professors including Sunil Gulati in the department of economics have decided to include a last lecture where they take a step back from the course material and tell students a bit about the greater meaning behind their work. This practice should be universal at Columbia University—the value of a visionary lecture far outweighs a lecture full of crammed material.
Every student and faculty member at this institution is here to be part of the Columbia academic experience. Seniors, before you leave our academy’s halls, take a moment to reflect. Ask yourself how what you have learned has altered your understanding of the great questions. Better yet, grab your favorite scientist (or the closest thing to it)—the professor you took that unbearable science requirement with, or the advisor for your two years of biology research—and ask why that scientist chose to study what he or she studies. If there is no response, make him come up with one. If the answer is a story that links a life’s work to one of the eternal questions, then you will have taken something from Columbia that the Core could not give you.
Adrian Haimovich is a junior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in applied mathematics. Vedant Misra is a Columbia College senior majoring in physics and mathematics. Nova runs alternate Wednesdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com