Shopping Around: M.W.F.

The onus of freedom is choice. Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe offers a 379-page slug of freedom, and an agonizing burden of choice. The courses fundamental to a field--Economics 1, English 10, Mathematics 1--are prominent enough. Hence the CRIMSON oneirocritic takes it upon himself to point out the less obvious, but not really recondite, courses which might interest people concentrating in other fields.

All courses mentioned below occur in the first 190 pages of the catalog. Tomorrow's survey of Tu.Th.S. courses will be based on the second 190 pages.

9:00

The nine o'clock class seems to be as heartily detested by teachers as by students. Like breakfast on a camping trip, the offerings at this time are less plentiful than nourishing. Mathematics for poets (Nat. Sci. 114) offers a sampling of what is new and exciting in mathematics, something which concentrators have to wait years for. A full-year course, Bio. 100, systematizes departmental offerings in evolution. Ec. 133, on the economy of Soviet Russia, gives a foundation for deciding whether we are ahead of or behind the Russians when it comes to wheat surpluses.

10:00

At the reasonable hour when concentrators in the Humanities arise and CRIMSON editors stagger to bed, the offerings grow luxuriant. Professor Lord will give special attention to ritual songs, myth, ballad, and folktale in Comp. Lit. 110, "Introduction to Folklore." And while Chem. 20 hurtles onward, Chinese 30, open to freshmen, will cover the more important texts in Chinese thought.

In the social sciences, Anthro. 1 provides basic training while Jose Figueres gives the latest word from the horse's mouth on contemporary Latin America (Soc. Sci. 120). T.C. Schelling will survey the increasingly important theory of games and decisions in Ec. 135, "Games and Strategy."

11:00

The sciences come back strong now with new Bio. 115, Astro. 1 ("Stars"), Chem. 1 ("Black Magic") and Chem. 11 ("Black Magic for Magicians").

Soc. Sci. 111, "History of Far Eastern Civilizations," offers an antidote to those suffering from the parochialism of Cambridge. A temporal escape inheres in Alfred's English 200a, a course for beginners in Anglo-Saxon poetry.

12:00

While Ec. 1, Fine Arts 13 and German 75 drain off most of the morning throng, E.H. Erikson explores and interprets the human life cycle (Soc. Sci. 139), a subject on which he is a world authority. Nearly all of the writings of Chaucer are arrayed as food for thought in lunchtime English 115, and similarly important Greek literature is studied in Greek 112. Applied Math. 206, "Applied Discrete Mathematics," is a course for which "no specific preparation is suggested, but it is important that the student have a good mathematical background"; clearly, without such a background, he might be indiscrete.

P.M.

In spite of their horror of early morning classes, many students slight the afternoon's varied opportunities. If they knew of it, few would want to miss Astro. 233, "Applications of Stellar Spectroscopy," by Professor Payne-Gaposchkin, especially since Astro. 233 is to be omitted in 1964-65 and apparently has no prerequisites.

For rounding off the week, hardly anything would beat Class. Phil. 283a: "Ostia: Topography and Inscriptions. A seminar intended to serve also as an introduction to Latin Epigraphy..."Friday, 4-6. See you there.