Liberal education, including all the traditional arts as well as the newer sciences, is essential for the development of top-flight scientists. Without it, we can train only technicians, who cannot understand the basic principles behind the motions they perform. We can hardly expect such skilled automatons to make new discoveries of any importance. A crash program of merely technical training would probably end in a crashup for basic science.

The connection of liberal education with scientific creativity is not mere speculation. It is a matter of historical fact that the great German scientists of the nineteenth century had a solid background in the liberal arts. They all went through, a liberal education which embraced Greek, Latin, logic, philosophy, and history, in addition to mathematics, physics, and other sciences. Actually, this has been the educational preparation of European scientists down to the present time. Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, and other great modern scientists were developed not by technical schooling, but by liberal education…

The aim of liberal education, however, is not to produce scientists. It seeks to develop free human beings who know how to use their minds and are able to think for themselves. Its primary aim is not the development of professional competence, although a liberal education is indispensable for any intellectual profession. It produces citizens who can exercise their political liberty responsibly. It develops cultivated persons who can use their leisure fruitfully. It is an education for all free men, whether they intend to be scientists or not.

Our educational problem is how to produce free men, not hordes of uncultivated, trained technicians. Only the best liberal schooling can accomplish this. It must include all the humanities as well as mathematics and the sciences. It must exclude all merely vocational and technical training.

Mortimer Adler, What is Liberal Education?

“The problem nowadays is that the Liberal Arts education so proudly taught in many fine institutions costs a freaking bomb (hmm maybe like a mini-tomahawk?) And mostly only accessible to the well-heeled and super-eng one. The administrators of the respective unis or colleges give alot of scholarships meh?
And just look at Lisa Simpson, so many years liao and she still haben go to Harvard or her worst nightmare, Brown.

To paraphrase ROyston Tan’s 15, A Liberal Arts Education is only for the Rich lah.” - ted

“Dirac, Feynman and Schwinger were among the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century. They certainly did not undergo the traditional form of liberal arts education.” - hertzvector

“On the contrary, most top US liberal arts colleges are very, erm, liberal with their financial aid for US citizens.

I wouldn’t say you need a liberal arts education to be a talented scientist, but you need it to be a good citizen. If you believe science is subservient to the greater picture of the meaning of life etc., then you’d want your scientists to have some knowledge of the liberal arts.

I don’t think Dirac is the best example of a good citizen in that sense. He seemed somewhat immersed in his science to the exclusion of everything else.” - Wowbagger

“I have considerable doubts about needing liberal arts education to be a good citizen. It is more of a prescription than a description.

You mean to say that one cannot be a good citizen without the benefits of a liberal arts education? In other words, in countries without this particular form of education, there are no good citizens? Or that people who do not even go to college cannot be good citizens?” - hertzvector

“”Good citizen” is too vague a term perhaps.

You could be a law abiding citizen without a liberal arts education. But if you want your citizens to understand their role as a human being in society, a liberal arts education helps a great deal.

It is possible to educate yourself in the basics of the liberal arts without going to college, of course. But you still need that education. It may sound too high-minded, but I would prefer that people who aren’t informed and haven’t thought about the issues that are covered in a liberal arts education not influence national policies. And presumably in a democracy, everyone is given the power to influence national policies, so it would be better to have a population that knows what it’s doing.

If I wasn’t clear enough, I meant you don’t have to have gone through an “official” liberal arts education in college to be a good citizen. College is just one of the possible means through which you would have gained that set of knowledge/skills, which can be self-learnt.” - Wowbagger

“Yes but I still vehemently disgree with the opening statement - Liberal education, including all the traditional arts as well as the newer sciences, is essential for the development of top-flight scientists.

That’s simply not true. There are many examples of top scientists who have not gone through liberal education.” - hertzvector