Daily Archives: February 22, 2011

What’s an undergraduate education for?

I like the way Tim Lee, a CATO Institute scholar, thinks about undergraduate education: [T]he primary function of an undergraduate education is to allow the student to join a scholarly community, and in the process to soak up the values and attitudes … Continue reading

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Was Keats Right? Surfer-Physicist Garrett Lisi’s TED Talk

The poet John Keats famously wrote, at the end of his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, the following: Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. I’m not sure this … Continue reading

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Using Aristotle’s Four Causes to Analyze Literature

When Aristotle looked at, say, a tree and asked what caused it, his answer began with matter and form: a tree is a product of the raw matter it is made of (water and wood fibers) channeled through a very particular form … Continue reading

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