Making Room for Science

AS THE Academics Committee of the Undergraduate Council reported last March, the Core Program needs strengthening. And one of the Core's most glaring weaknesses is in the Science Area.

Council members are in the midst of a heated debate over a proposal to create a third subgroup within the Science requirement of the Core. The so-called Science C grouping would include mathematics and Applied Sciences courses. Since the number of electives which an undergraduate can take has already been limited by Core requirements, and since there is already of overwhelming emphasis on the Humanities and Social Sciences in the Core, the Science proposal would force a narrowing of choices in other groups like Literature and the Arts and Historical Studies.

The Core is supposed to introduce students to specific methods of approach to learning, and not to any specific body of knowledge. And it so far has succeeded reasonably well in doing. just that. It includes several important and enlightening approaches to understanding which can be applied to other fields. Foreign Cultures can help one to understand History, and Social Analysis can help one understand Government.

But of the 10 subgroups in the Core, only two are not closely related to Humanities and Social Sciences. The fact of the matter is that the Core is cluttered with Humanities requirements, some of which should not be distinct. The Literature and Arts requirement is a prime example. Literature and Arts A and B could be merged into one subgroup, designed to teach students about different forms of artistic expression without substantially changing the purposes currently defined by the program.

The problems of the Core are not only related to the redundance of its humanities requirements. The Science requirement, too, has drawbacks. Both of the subgroups deal only with physical world and how it works. Science A courses are designed to "introduce students to areas of science dealing primarily with deductive and quantitative aspects and to increase the student's understanding of the physical world." The Science B requirement is meant to "provide a general understanding of science as a way of looking at man and the world by introducing students to complex natural systems with a substantial historical or evolutionary component."

The Core Science requirement includes no courses teaching a technological approach, evidenced by the lack of any courses in the Applied Sciences. Now, no one challenges the merits of understanding the world around us, but nowhere in the Core is there any treatment of sciences derived from human inventions, such as Engineering or Computer Science.

Computer Science is probably the best example. There is no theoretical reason why CS 10 and CS 11 should not be included in the Core, the reasons for which this has not been done are primarily logistical Modular algorithmic thinking is a concept which can be applied easily to solving any scientific or humanistic problem. A huge problem is broken down into smaller problems, which are in turn broken down into tiny problems, which theoretically solve themselves. Instead of examining isolated events or phenomena as part of a general trend or linking them as illustrations of a broader theory as the Humanities and Social Sciences do Computer Science teaches students to do dissect problems into discrete components.

Although it is true that there are other kinds of Science courses which use this sort of inside-out approach, Computer Science also imparts a body of knowledge indispensable to students in any field of concentration. With the computerization of all types of data storage and manipulation, computer literacy is fast becoming a necessary skill.

THE UNDERGRADUATE Council has been debating the issue for quite some time now. According to Jeffrey M. Rosen '86, co-chairman of the Academics Committee and one of two student representatives to the Standing Committee on the Core, a little known fact is that when the Core Program was originally outlined, there was to be a third Science subgroup, to include Math and Computer Science. But, says Rosen, "in all the politicking, the Science people lost out to the Humanitarians."

Rosen and his colleagues conducted an extensive study last year on the strengths and weaknesses of the Science requirement of the Core. They found that of the students polled, over 80 percent of non-Science concentrators and a majority of Science concentrators would like to see Computer Sciences in the Core.

While putting Computer Science into the Core would by no means solve all of the problems of Harvard's Core program, it seems that it is one of the steps which ought to be taken to even out the present imbalance between Humanities and Science. What is needed is a consolidation of the Literature and Arts groupings, and the addition of purely technological Sciences to the Core.

But the Faculty cannot stop there. Not only Computer Science should be included, but also courses from the entire Applied Sciences division should be added into a Science requirement. As Core requirements stand now, unless students concentrate in Science, they can't get a truly "liberal arts" education.