One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern…

One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: “When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”…the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion….The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue…

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Other Robert Hutchins Quotes

So Bertrand Russell once said to me that the pupil in school should study whatever he liked. I asked whether this was not a crime against the pupil….Should he be allowed to grow up without knowing Shakespeare?…Lord Russell replied that he would require a boy to read one play of Shakespeare; if he did not like it, he should not be compelled to read any more. - View Quote Details on So Bertrand Russell once said to me that the pupil…
In education… whenever a proposal is made that looks toward increased intellectual effort on the part of students, professors will always say that the students cannot so the work. My observation leads me to think that what this usually means is that the professors cannot or will not do the work… When, in spite of the opposition of the professors, the change is introduced, the students, in my experience, have always responded nobly. - View Quote Details on In education… whenever a proposal is made that looks toward…
Recall the dictum of Rousseau: “It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or law. Before his parents chose a calling for him, nature called him to be a man…. When he leaves me, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man.” - View Quote Details on Recall the dictum of Rousseau: “It matters little to me…
The Great Conversation began before the beginnings of experimental science. But the birth of the Conversation and the birth of science were simultaneous. The earliest of the pre-Socratics were investigating and seeking to understand natural phenomena; among them were men who used mathematical notions for this purpose. Even experimentation is not new; it has been going on for hundreds of years. But faith in experimentation as an exclusive method is a modern manifestation….it is now regarded in some quarters… as the sole method of obtaining knowledge of any kind. - View Quote Details on The Great Conversation began before the beginnings of experimental science…
The Great Books show… that even those thinkers of the past who are now often looked upon as the most reactionary, the medieval theologians, insisted, as Aristotle had before them, that the truth of any statement is its conformity to reality or fact, and that sense experience is required to discover the particular matters of fact that test the truth of general statements about the nature of things. - View Quote Details on The Great Books show… that even those thinkers of the…
Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the issue has finally been resolved now, in favor of the view that, outside logic or mathematics, the method of modern science is the only method to employ in seeking knowledge. The dogmatist who made this assertion would have to be more than ashamed. He would have to blind himself to the fact that his own assertion was not established by the experimental method, nor made as an indisputable conclusion of mathematical reasoning or of purely logical analysis. - View Quote Details on Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the…
If any common program is impossible, if there is no such thing as an education that everybody ought to have, then we must admit that any community is impossible. All men are different; but they are also the same. As we must all become specialists, so we must all become men….The West needs an education that draws out our common humanity rather than our individuality. Individual differences can be taken into account in the methods that are employed and in the opportunities for specialization that may come later. - View Quote Details on If any common program is impossible, if there is no…
It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed by intelligent people, such as that democracy is the best form of government or that world peace depends upon world government, cannot be tested by the method of experimental science. - View Quote Details on It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed…
If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible… it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books. - View Quote Details on If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible… it may…
As Whitehead has said “If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it is cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place.” - View Quote Details on As Whitehead has said “If it were easy, the book…