On monday night I had my official senior dinner at Dr. Arrn's house, fortunately Seraphim was there, so I wasn't totally stuck with people I didn't know. In any case, we spent the better part of two hours discussing the Freshman core requirements. I started the discussion by asserting that Science 101 is too weak, that there should be a stronger science requirement, and that perhaps the ACT score needed to escape the math requirement should be higher. None of that was too controversial, but dealing with the bottom-feeders that already strugle with science 101 would be a larger problem. So, i've been thinking about how to relate science to the Liberal Arts, specifically to the "core" here at Hillsdale. Dr. Arrn seemed to favor an apporach that was based on the history of science, it sounded like freshman english or history with Newton and Gallileo for texts. Seraphim did a nice job of defending lab based science, based on his experences with langauage, but talking to other humanities people, there seems to be a lack of appreciation for science and math as anything other than low level tool, something that if they merely had a powerful enough calculator, they could avoid entirely. So, how should science work in the Liberal Arts? I'm working on it....