{"id":638,"date":"2019-11-09T09:52:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-09T15:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/?p=638"},"modified":"2023-04-29T19:40:57","modified_gmt":"2023-04-30T00:40:57","slug":"the-flow-of-thought-part-4-the-seven-liberal-arts-as-mental-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2019\/11\/09\/the-flow-of-thought-part-4-the-seven-liberal-arts-as-mental-games\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flow of Thought, Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s a lot of talk these days about the war between STEM and the liberal arts (which we are meant to understand as the humanities generally). Often this gets posed as a trade-off between a utilitarian education\u2014training our future engineers, scientists and programmers\u2014vs. a soft education in human skills and cultural awareness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the hype for STEM, defending the value of the humanities (as Martin Luther did<\/a>, for one) is an important move in the broader education dialogue. And it\u2019s one that\u2019s not very hard to make, when there are articles like this one<\/a> on how Google was planning to hire more humanities trained employees rather than more programmers. It turns out that technological change and the job market aren\u2019t making the humanities irrelevant after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for a while I\u2019ve felt that the trade-off between STEM and the humanities<\/a> is an unfortunate false dichotomy. (Logic lesson: false dichotomy \u2013 when two things are posed as mutually exclusive options when both can be embraced at the same time.) The seven liberal arts of the classical tradition encompassed BOTH the language arts of the trivium (grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, or perhaps humanities in a general sense) AND the mathematical arts of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"illustration<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In a way, astronomy was the paradigmatic STEM discipline,\nsince it wove together the science of the natural world with mathematical\ncalculations to \u201csave the appearances\u201d and had applications to the travel technologies\nof the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Problems with the Trade-Off Between STEM and the Humanities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Part of the problem with the whole dichotomy is that we\u2019re\nleft arguing about whether to privilege STEM over the humanities or the\nhumanities over STEM, when embracing both would be mutually beneficial. After all,\nscientists still need to write and publish those rhetorical masterpieces we\ncall academic papers to advance the discipline. And what culturally savvy hipster\ncould not benefit from some of the scientific precision of mathematics and design\nthinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the other problem, which is more to the point for this blog article, is that a utilitarian focus doesn\u2019t serve either the humanities or STEM careers very well. And that\u2019s because too much focus on money-making skills for the job market doesn\u2019t end up creating the best professionals in either domain. That comes from deep work<\/a>, passionately and regularly pursued. The best programmers get good at it because they love programming!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STEM and the humanities, or the seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium, were discovered and developed in the first place, because getting into the flow of thought<\/a> is a source of happiness and joy<\/a> for human beings. Thinking along the lines of the liberal arts is more like a mental game than a utilitarian bid for power, money or success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get support for this notion from an unlikely source, the modern positive psychologist Mihayli Csikszentmihalyi. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience<\/a> <\/em>(Harper Perennial 2008),<\/em> he writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt is important to stress here a fact that is all too often lost sight of: philosophy and science were invented and flourished because thinking is pleasurable. If thinkers did not enjoy the sense of order that the use of syllogisms and numbers creates in consciousness, it is very unlikely that now we would have the disciplines of mathematics and physics.\u201d (126)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The background for our psychologist\u2019s claim is his idea that our consciousness as human beings is naturally disordered and chaotic, and so one of the primary ways to build human happiness is to engage in activities that order consciousness. While he explores many other ways of achieving flow<\/a>, that optimal state where our skills meet our challenges and our focus is absorbed<\/a> by a meaningful activity, one of his chapters is on the flow of thought, or how thinking itself can be an avenue into flow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mathematicians and physicists didn\u2019t make their greatest discoveries and push the bounds of human knowledge because of utilitarian motives, but because they got lost in the joy of thought<\/a>. As he goes on to explain, this claim flies in the face of many historians\u2019 standard explanations of key discoveries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe evolution of arithmetic and geometry, for instance, is explained almost exclusively in terms of the need for accurate astronomical knowledge and for the irrigational technology that was indispensable in maintaining the great \u2018hydraulic civilizations\u2019 located along the course of large rivers like the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Chang Jiang (Yangtze), and the Nile. For these historians, every creative step is interpreted as the product of extrinsic forces, whether they be wars, demographic pressures, territorial ambitions, market conditions, technological necessity, or the struggle for class supremacy.\u201d (126)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Brown<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yes, these developments in arithmetic and geometry coincided\nwith applications to \u201cirrigational technology,\u201d but that doesn\u2019t mean that the\nindividuals who invented them did so for such utilitarian reasons. Often it\nhappens that the knowledge necessary for some practical application is discovered\nfirst with no thought of its usefulness or application. Then only later, and often\nby someone else, that knowledge is applied to a practical problem felt by the\ncivilization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, Csikszentmihalyi tells of the discovery of nuclear\nfission and how the arms race of World War II is often urged as the inciting\nhistorical factor. However, the advancements in knowledge necessary to its development\ncame before and were discovered in a more pleasurable and altogether collegial manner:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cBut the science that formed the basis of nuclear fission owed very little to the war; it was made possible through knowledge laid down in more peaceful circumstances\u2014for example, in the friendly exchange of ideas European physicist had over the years in the beer garden turned over to Niels Bohr and his scientific colleagues by a brewery in Copenhagen.\u201d (126) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The joy of thought, of discovery and of solving abstract\nproblems lies at the base of the advance of knowledge, in every age, time and\nplace. As our psychologist summarizes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cGreat thinkers have always been motivated by the enjoyment of thinking rather than by the material rewards that could be gained by it.\u201d (126)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is supported by several quotations from the Greek\nphilosopher Democritus, a highly original thinker: \u201cIt is godlike ever to think\non something beautiful and on something new\u201d; \u201cHappiness does not reside in\nstrength or money; it lies in rightness and manysidedness\u201d; \u201cI would rather\ndiscover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia\u201d (127).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium are\nthose tools of knowledge that are so pleasurable in the handling. Let\u2019s take\nsome time to break down a few of them and see how they work, just for the joy\nof it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Download free resource<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gaming the Liberal Art of Grammar<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the classical tradition grammar referred to a much broader\ncategory of skills that the modern subject does today. It included all the complex\nskills involved in reading and interpretation, as well as the mechanics of writing.\nThe term was derived from the Greek word for \u2018letter\u2019 (gramma<\/em>), and thus\nreferred to the holistic study of letters. The famous Roman orator and teacher\nQuintilian explained in the 1st<\/sup> century that the best Latin translation\nof the term was the Latin word litteratura <\/em>from which we get \u2018literature\u2019\n(see Institutes of Oratory<\/em> II.1). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Girle<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not an accident that in our psychologist\u2019s many studies, one of the most cited \u2018flow activities\u2019<\/a> that people self-report is the act of reading (Csikszentmihalyi 117). Deep reading<\/a>, getting lost in a book, is for many a pleasurable activity\u2014the title of Alan Jacob\u2019s book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction<\/a><\/em> (which I highly recommend) says it all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the foundation of this great grammatical activity\nof piecing letters together into words is the activity of naming itself. Brining\norder to consciousness relies on some sort of ordering principle and words provide\nthat. They name persons, places, things or ideas, therefore creating order in\nthe mind for an experience or phenomenon, where only chaos existed before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe simplest ordering system is to give names to things; the words we invent form discrete events into universal categories.\u201d (124-5)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In both the Judeo-Christian worldview and the Greek roots of\nthe classical tradition, this primacy of the word is endorsed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIn Genesis 1, God names day, night, sky, earth, sea, and all the living things immediately after He creates them, thereby completing the process of creation. The Gospel of John begins with: \u2018Before the World was created, the Word already existed\u2026\u2019; and Heraclitus starts his now almost completely lost volume: \u2018This Word (Logos<\/em>) is from everlasting, yet men understand it as little after the first hearing of it as before\u2026.\u2019\u201d (125)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Readers of the Bible will know that in Genesis 2 God assigns\nthe task of naming the animals to Adam in the sequence leading up to the\ncreation of Eve. Adam, whose name means \u2018humanity\u2019 in Hebrew, is given the\nhonor and joy of naming the animals that God brings before him\u2014a task that is\nfitting for him, given how human beings were made in the image of God according\nto the chapter before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its broadest sense then, grammar and the other trivium arts of dialectic and rhetoric involve the practitioner of them in the process of bringing order out of chaos. It is a godlike activity, to borrow the phrase from Heraclitus, to name and distinguish and describe reality. Why should we wonder that such a process would be pleasurable? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aside:<\/em> Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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