2008 Woodie Awards
From the Brighter Side
Julian Edgoose, Amy Ryken
Issue date: 2/23/07 Section: Opinion
At some point during your time at Puget Sound you will choose a major and, perhaps, a minor. Whatever the reasons for your choices - passion, future plans, networking - you will be affiliating with an intellectual "discipline" that makes sense of the world in a certain way. We want to pose a question you might not have considered before: what are the ethical consequences of choosing to see and study the world in the ways practiced in your major? Considering this question helps us to explore the very nature of our education in more challenging and revealing ways.
The disciplines emerged over the centuries as scholars developed shared foundational assumptions about what they would focus on, ignore, and value. Those assumptions and omissions are questioned by scholars who critique and test the limits and conventions of each discipline. This does not imply that we should discard the disciplines - something neither possible nor desirable - as they have immensely added to our understanding of the world. Rather, these foundational questions can help us become alert to the ways that, for all their strengths, the disciplines can also limit our views of the world. So what kind of thinking does your major/minor sanction? Or, to push the question even further, what kind of life does it encourage you to lead?
We found that talking about the disciplines supported very interesting conversations between us. Below are questions we have generated about some of the core disciplines.
• Art: Has the separating out of an aesthetic realm from everyday life allowed us to ignore aesthetics elsewhere in life? To what does this division blind us?
• Biology: What are the consequences of believing that the living world can be clearly divided from the non-living? What does this division allow us to do to the non-living?
• Chemistry: What are the consequences of believing that the world is made up of chemical elements, rather than dirt, rocks, muddy streams and so on? How does that affect our interactions with that dirt, or those rocks and streams?
The disciplines emerged over the centuries as scholars developed shared foundational assumptions about what they would focus on, ignore, and value. Those assumptions and omissions are questioned by scholars who critique and test the limits and conventions of each discipline. This does not imply that we should discard the disciplines - something neither possible nor desirable - as they have immensely added to our understanding of the world. Rather, these foundational questions can help us become alert to the ways that, for all their strengths, the disciplines can also limit our views of the world. So what kind of thinking does your major/minor sanction? Or, to push the question even further, what kind of life does it encourage you to lead?
We found that talking about the disciplines supported very interesting conversations between us. Below are questions we have generated about some of the core disciplines.
• Art: Has the separating out of an aesthetic realm from everyday life allowed us to ignore aesthetics elsewhere in life? To what does this division blind us?
• Biology: What are the consequences of believing that the living world can be clearly divided from the non-living? What does this division allow us to do to the non-living?
• Chemistry: What are the consequences of believing that the world is made up of chemical elements, rather than dirt, rocks, muddy streams and so on? How does that affect our interactions with that dirt, or those rocks and streams?
Be the first to comment on this story