Education and the Enlightenment

Part 2: The Liberal Arts and the Legacy of Francis Bacon

How to combat this way of thinking? How can we hold the empirical sciences in high esteem—as indeed they should be—without capitulating to the Baconian prejudice of viewing them as the highest of goods, and as ends in themselves? The first and most crucial way by which we must cut this off at the root is to remember the following: man is ordered to God as his final end. When the various fields of inquiry are cut off from the final end, they end up cutting themselves off from one another as well. The increasing specialization and fragmentation of the sciences bears this out. Students must not only be given the what of their studies, but also the why of their studies. Why should we study mathematics? Why should we study various systems of government? What is the point of following the scientific method in experimentation? The answers that modernity would give us are that in our pursuit of technical knowledge and prowess, we gain better means of control, whether that be control over matter, or control over people.