A plea for an extension and alteration of the curriculum of arts in the University of Glasgow : with a view to meet more perfectly the wants of the general community : submitted to the University Council on Wednesday, November 1, 1865 / by W.T. Gairdner.

  • Gairdner, Sir William Tennant, (1824-1907)
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A plea for an extension and alteration of the curriculum of arts in the University of Glasgow : with a view to meet more perfectly the wants of the general community : submitted to the University Council on Wednesday, November 1, 1865 / by W.T. Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    demanding different modes of training. Even in Oxford, which was long considered the most monastic and unprogressive of the great Universities, there has been a most extraordinary impulse given of late to the physical sciences and to natural history; and in connection therewith there has arisen the New Museum of the Natural Sciences, a most striking and splendid testimony to the vigour of the new life thus infused into the veins of an ancient and venerable seat of learning. We have, therefore, abundant and successful precedents for an attempt to give increased variety and comprehensiveness to the curriculum of Arts.* In all these Universities, too, the learned professions have held firmly by the Arts curriculum, or rather have been built upon the foundation of a degree in Arts as an essential preliminary training, and thus have been enabled, in turn, to secure a reflection of their own varied discipline in the curriculum of the Faculty of Arts. In Scotland, and in Glasgow, the course of events has been different. The curri- culum of Arts has remained for ages, as it were, spell-bound; with the exception of Natural Philosophy, it has all along closed the door to physical science. As a consequence of this, the physical sciences have hived off, so to speak, and sought a home within the Faculty of Medicine; and, as a secondary consequence, the learned professions have also hived off, and in the case of Medicine, at least, have well-nigh bid adieu to the Faculty of Arts altogether. A middle wall of partition has been raised up between them, and instead of reflecting light upon, and giving energy and power to each other, the various departments of human inquiry have lost that bond of union which an education in Arts was intended to afford, and, no doubt, at one time did afford.f Indeed, the whole course and * I did not allude to the degrees in science of the University of Loudon, because these degrees, although an evidence, so far, of the same effort to give effect in University education to the results of modern investigation, have, undoubtedly, a tendency also to sever the modern natural sciences from the Faculty of Arts; and this it is one of my objects, by the present motion, to avoid if possible. t In Knox’s “ Buke of Discipline,” (Laing’s edition of Works, vol. 2, p. 215,) it is ordered—“That nane be admittit to the elasse of the Medicine hot he that shall have his testimonial! cf his tyme weall