Robert Maynard Hutchins: Greatness

“Because of experimental science we know a very large number of things about the natural world of which our predecessors were ignorant. In the great books we can observe the birth of science, applaud the development of the experimental technique, and celebrate the triumphs it has won. But we can also note the limitations of the method and mourn the errors that its misapplication has caused. We can distinguish the outlines of those great persistent problems that the method … may never solve and find the clues to their solutions offered by other methods and other disciplines.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Books , World , Error , Birth

“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.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

People , Books , Learning , Time

“All should be well acquainted with and each in his measure actively and continuously engaged in the Great Conversation that man has had about what is and should be.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

“The great books … afford us the best examples of man's efforts to seek the truth, both about the nature of things and about human conduct, by methods other than those of experimental science; and because these examples are presented in the context of equally striking examples of man's efforts to learn by experiment … the great books provide us with the best materials for judging whether the experimental method is or is not the only acceptable method of inquiry into all things.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Truth , Books , Nature , Effort

“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.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Truth , Books , Nature , Reality

“One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his An 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.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Books , Mathematics , Understanding , Science

“The facts are indispensable; they are not sufficient. To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect. Even the experimental scientist cannot avoid being a liberal artist, and the best of them, as the great books show are men of imagination and of theory as well as patient observers of particular facts. … critics have themselves frequently misunderstood the scientific method and have confused it with the aimless accumulation of facts.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Men , Books , Imagination , Problem

“Since many propositions in the Great Conversation have not been arrived at by experiment … or empirical verification, we often hear that the Conversation, though perhaps interesting to the antiquarian as setting forth the bizarre superstitions entertained by "thinkers" before the dawn of experimental science, can have no relevance to us now, when experimental science and its methods have at least revealed these superstitions for what they are.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Science

“In the course of history … new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation. … the West needs to recapture and reemphasize and bring to bear upon its present problems the wisdom that lies in the works of its greatest thinkers and in the discussion that they have carried on.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Wisdom , Men , Books , History

“There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader: he can never fully comprehend it. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep his intelligence on the stretch.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Books , Intelligence , Sense , Teachers

“Until lately the West has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through great books. No man was educated unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of his tradition. There never was much doubt in anybody's mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind called the finest creations, in writing, of the Western tradition.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Books , Education

“The rise of experimental science has not made the Great Conversation irrelevant. … Science itself is part of the Great Conversation.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Science , Parting

“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.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Men , Faith , Mathematics , Birth

“The contemporary practices of scientific research, as well as the scientific efforts that the great books record, show beyond doubt that the method of controlled experiment under artificial conditions is not the only method used by men who regard themselves and are regarded as scientists. … as the work of astronomers, biologists, and social scientists reveals, experiment in the strict sense is not always possible.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Men , Books , Sense , Effort

“Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books come out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements for success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

People , Books , Learning , Teachers

“The more logical and determined … critics will confess that they believe that the great mass of mankind is and of right ought to be condemned to a modern version of natural slavery. Hence there is not use wasting educational effort upon them. They should be given training as will be necessary to enable them to survive.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins

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

Education , Nature , Effort , Training