Liberal Arts – can you tell me where to start?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi All,

So I’m in my thirties now and I’ve worked my way up in the banking industry pretty much since I left high school. The trouble is, my formal education ended there. Consequently, I feel there are many, many areas that I would like to explore to further my knowledge and understanding of the world.

Where do I begin? Is there a kind of “map of knowledge” that I could examine that would point me in the right direction?

Wikipedia claims that the Liberal Arts includes the study of “…theology, literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science.” (I noticed that art was not mentioned for some reason.)

What essential books do you suggest I read that would give me a general treatment of these broad subjects?

Thank you in advance for your replies.

-NB

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IMHO, the best way to start is from the beginning. If you haven’t already, read the bible. Read socrates, plato, and aristotle. Read dante’s inferno. Read the lliad and the Odyssey. So much art and literature and philosophy are grounded in the classics that you’d be doing yourself a disservice to begin with the more modern.

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Very good - thanks NightRabbit… however, I think you’re assuming I know more than I do! Where can I find out specifically, then, which works are considered “the beginning?”

Thanks,

-NB

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For reading, I know a place you could start.

If not this book, then maybe something like it? I have been meaning to look into something similar myself – a basic primer on important works-- a good introduction, I think, to the sort of classic foundation you’re looking for.

Let me know what else you find. This will be an interesting thread. I think we could all stand to be a little more informed in general. Very cool that you’re looking to expand your horizons. Best of luck!

5

Yeah, there are a lot of books like that. My personal favorite is The well-educated mind: a guide to the classical education you never had; it’s very good for beginners IMO. You’ll find lots of books or lists willing to tell you what to read if you look around!

For history, you might try a general history of the ancient world, then pick a subject that looks good and read a little more about it.

But it really is a good idea to start at the beginning!

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This one is pretty good

http://www.amazon.com/Incomplete-Education-Things-Learned-Probably/dp/0345468902/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202265144&sr=8-1

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For World History (literally from the creation to the 18th century) it’s hard to beat Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe (I, II, III, and “Modern World” which is really IV) as a starting point. Concise, funny, interesting, and extremely well researched.

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Thank you, olivesmarch4th, that’s a big nugget… even if there were no more replies to this thread, this would be an excellent starting point.

From the editorial review on Amazon.com:

“A masterpiece of information for individuals who want to expand their horizons or simply impress friends. Walsh and his advisory panel selected literary works, which have had the greatest impact on writing, government, international politics, religion, and the arts and sciences. International in scope, the books chosen for this list have survived centuries and are considered essential for a liberal education.”

In case anyone is interested, these are the books mentioned in the book:

Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations
Aeschylus: The Oreseia
Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers
Albert Einstein: Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Aristotle: Metaphysics
Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations
Cicero: On the Good Life
Confucius: The Analects
Dante: The Divine Comedy
Euclid of Alexandria: The Elements
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
Galileo Galilei: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
George Gamow: The Creation of the Universe
Heroditus: The Histories
Homer: The Iliad & The Odyssey
John Locke: Two Treatises of Government
Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto
Leonardo da Vinci: The Notebooks
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
Mahatma Gandhi: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Marco Polo: The Adventures of Marco Polo
Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media
Martin Luther: The 95 Theses
Michel de Montaigne: Essays
Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote
Muhammad: The Koran
Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji
Nelson Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom
Petrarch: Canzoniere
Plato: The Republic
Rene Descartes: Discourse on the Method
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
Saul Bellow: Henderson the Rain King
Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
Sir Issac Newton: Principia
Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte d’Arthur
Sir Thomas More: Utopia
St. Augustine: Confessions
St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land
Thomas Jefferson: Writings
Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain
Turold: The Song of Roland
William Shakespeare: Hamlet
William Wordsworth: The Prelude
Yukio Mishima: Confessions of a Mask

Also:

The Arabian Nights
The Bible: Old and New Testaments
Mahabharata
If there are any other books you strongly feel should be on this list; which ones, and why?

Thanks,

-NB

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Wow, thanks for the additional replies, and so quickly… will check!

-NB

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Since you note the absence of art, I thinkon that front any art history survey text will serve you well (I like Jansen and Gardner)-- gives you a good overview of artistic movements alongside the major cultural and historical trends. A nice way to hit ‘cultural history lite’ (“ah, the 17th-century Dutch were Calvinist, and revolting against the Spanish and developing a new capitalism. . this all makes sense in light of the paintings’ subject matter!. . .”

A splendid set of books is Daniel Boorstin’s Discovers, Creators, etc. Totally delightful. Also a book called Millennium by one Felipe Fernandez-Armesto-- great snapshot of various cultures at the year 1000. A synchronic cultural history.

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If reading a hundred different books isn’t your thing try taking a few first year university courses - or just sitting through them. If you sat through a first year Roman/Greek History, Intro to Religion/Pysch/Philosophy, maybe an Anthropology, a Sociology, a random History course (pick one that interests you, or a few medieval courses) you’d definitely be covered. Actually, if you do all those courses, you’d probably qualify, or be close, to a general B.A. If you are really serious about increasing your own world of knowledge I would suggest doing nothing more than sitting in one 3 hour evening university lecture a term, three a year. It’ll take you a decade to get a degree, but you’ll be a better person for having done it.

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Here’s what they read at one of the greatest liberal arts colleges in the U.S. (and, not coincidentally, my alma mater), St. John’s College. So just work your way through the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior reading lists, and you’re all set.

Actually, the St. John’s program includes virtually all of the works listed Walsh’s book, except the eastern ones and the 20th century ones after Einstein (they’re too damn modern). So his list is a pretty good short version.

There are two important points I’d like to stress as someone with a degree in the Classical Liberal Arts. First is that it is important to read whatever you read in chronological order. That’s because, at least for the works of Western culture, most authors on the list were familiar with many or most of the works that preceded them. The phrase “what’s past is prologue” is very true of the Great Books.

Second is that you will gain immensely more from discussing these books with others than you will from just reading them on your own. This is, of course, the very essence of the St. John’s program, where we discuss everything, including math and science.

The ideal plan would be to take off for the next four years and take St. John’s’ full undergraduate program. You don’t say where you are, but SJC has two campuses, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM, so one is sure to be convenient to you.

If this isn’t feasible (I’m beginning to doubt the depth of your commitment to the Liberal Arts), start reading and, as Spezza suggests, look around for university, college, or even community college courses in the classics. If you do, try to maintain the chronological order, if at all possible.

A final small point. Although reading the Bible (both testaments) is absolutely essential to an understanding of Western philosophy, thought, and culture, I wouldn’t recommend joining a church Bible study group. The goals and focus of such a group are not compatible with reading it to understand its role in Western civilization.

Good luck.

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Two members of my family graduated from St. John’s College. I learn stuff from just walking past them…well, almost.

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When I was a kid, I spent hours and hours reading random articles from encyclopedias - World Book, Britannica, Science and Technology. I’d just pick a volume and thumb through it. These days I find stuff online.

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[QUOTE=Zoe]
Two members of my family graduated from St. John’s College. I learn stuff from just walking past them…well, almost.
[/QUOTE]
Feel free to walk past me anytime you want, Zoe.

(Women usually do. I’m used to it.)

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Damn, someone beat me to the St. John’s pitch! (I’m a current student there). A few recommendations:

  1. For another list that will probably overlap with what’s been given, see if you’re library has a copy of Encyclopedia Brittanica’s Great Books set. It’s a 60-volume set of, well, great books. I would highly recommend against using that to read, at least anything that wasn’t originally written in English, because their translations generally kind of suck. However, it’s a good cross-section of things.
  2. More math. Euclid is a must, and I would recommend Newton as well (though Newton is hard to work through). I’d also recommend some Descartes for a start on Algebra, Leibniz and Newton for calculus, and Ptolemy for astronomy. If you want to study Newton, you’ll also definitely want a passing familiarity with Apollonius’s Conics.
  3. Grammar and logic are fun and good for the soul. Study at least Latin or Greek, if not both. Read Aristotle’s logical works. Study other languages, and really take them apart to see how they work. Don’t look at grammar as something to put up with until you memorize conjugations: look at it as the backbone of communication.
  4. After you read the bible, read Anselm. Fascinating stuff.
  5. Don’t forget about science! Again: Aristotle’s a good starting point. I’d also recommend: Archimedes, Lavoisier, Avogadro, Gay-Lussac, Pascal, Huygens, most of the electrical guys, and Einstein. If you really want to understand it, you absolutely must do it chronologically, starting at the beginning, and keep going until you’re satisfied.
  6. Read more Shakespeare. Try to read all of Shakespeare. Don’t write off the sonnets or comedies as less worthy than the tragedies and histories.
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[QUOTE=NinjaChick]
2. More math. Euclid is a must, and I would recommend Newton as well (though Newton is hard to work through). I’d also recommend some Descartes for a start on Algebra, Leibniz and Newton for calculus, and Ptolemy for astronomy. If you want to study Newton, you’ll also definitely want a passing familiarity with Apollonius’s Conics.
[/QUOTE]

All of these books are great for if you’re interested in mathematical history, but of limited value if you actually want to learn math. The modern presentation is just so different that you’ll pretty much have to unlearn everything you’ve read from before the mid-19th century.

If you actually want to learn math, you’ll need a solid background in basic mathematics (high school level stuff through calculus and linear algebra). Stewart’s calculus book is supposed to be pretty good, so you can start there if you need a refresher. For linear algebra, you want Axler’s “Linear Algebra Done Right”. It also doesn’t hurt to have a background in basic combinatorics, and something like Rosen’s “Discrete Mathematics” is a pretty solid introduction. It wouldn’t hurt to have a little more exposure to symbolic logic; check out Barwise & Etchmenedy for a reasonable introduction.

The meat and potatoes of modern mathematics are analysis, algebra and topology. High-level undergraduate/introductory graduate courses will generally use Rudin’s “Principals of Mathematical Analysis” for the first and Munkres’s “Toplogy” for the third. Algebra classes are split a bit more; I used Herstein’s “Topics in Algebra”, but Dummit & Foote’s “Abstract Algebra” is also popular. At the very least, you need to go through the equivalent of those classes to be considered mathematically knowledgeable, although you haven’t even really scratched the surface of modern topics.

There are some other books and subjects that are worth looking at along the way. Knuth’s “Concrete Mathematics” is a great continuation of the basic combinatorics outlined in Rosen. If you want more, van Lint & Rosen’s “A Course in Combinatorics” is a popular graduate-level introduction to combinatorics. Paul Halmos wrote a couple books, “Naive Set Theory” and “Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces” that are generally considered classics.

Theoretical computer science isn’t generally taught to undergraduates in math, but it really should be, as it contains some of the more important ideas of the 20th century. Sipser’s “Introduction to the Theory of Computation” is one of the best textbooks I’ve ever seen, and is very popular, so it’s definitely worth checking out.

It also doesn’t hurt to have some exposure to probability & statistics. Wackerly et al. is probably the best undergraduate level text.

Finally, I’ll throw in a recommendation for Kellison’s “The Theory of Interest” (but wait for the 3rd edition, due out sometime next year). It’s a rigorous introduction to a topic that should be much more widely taught, and is well worth your time to study.

Most math programs will also include a course in differential equations, but I’m not convinced that it’s worth studying at the the undergraduate level, so I left it off. It’s easy to find books if you’re interested.

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Another St. John’s alum here. Check out this page:

It’s not designed as a do-it-yourself, but there’s no reason it can’t be.

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Oh, and “art” isn’t one of the liberal arts because “liberal” (as in “freeing”, “liberation”, that kind of thing) is a descriptor drawing a distinction from other kinds of arts, as, frinstance, the fine arts.

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Here’s a bit from cosmopolis.com:

ABOUT THE LIBERAL ARTS

Based on the types of studies that were pursued in the Classical world, the Seven Liberal Arts became codified in late antiquity by such writers as Varro and Martianus Capella. In medieval times, the Seven Liberal Arts offered a canonical way of depicting the realms of higher learning.

The Liberal Arts were divided into the Trivium (“the three roads”) and the Quadrivium (“the four roads”).

The Trivium consisted of:

* Grammar
* Rhetoric
* Logic

The Quadrivium consisted of:

* Arithmetic -- Number in itself
* Geometry -- Number in space
* Music, Harmonics, or Tuning Theory -- Number in time
* Astronomy or Cosmology -- Number in space and time

The medival Quadrivium thus followed the division of mathematics made by the Pythagoreans. Recently, mathematics has been defined as “the study of patterns in space and time,” which very much resembles the ancient Pythagorean understanding of mathematics.

There were other important studies in medieval times. For example, philosophy was often envisioned as a metastudy that united all branches of knowledge. For this reason, Philosophia is depicted in the illustration below as nourishing the Seven Liberal Arts.