HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to We need to change the name to something other than "liberal arts"

No, leave it that way.

In addition to its ancient roots in medieval academia and scholarship, and all the way back to Aristotle, it gives wingnuts the shivering fits.

The liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) are those subjects or skills that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free person (Latin: liberalis, "worthy of a free person") to know in order to take an active part in civic life, something that (for Ancient Greece) included participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the core liberal arts, while arithmetic, geometry, the theory of music, and astronomy also played a (somewhat lesser) part in education.

-Wikipedia

Where I went to school, there was a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which included the sciences and humanities, as opposed to Engineering and Business Administration which had their own Colleges. Yes, Astronomy was a Liberal Art, presumably because it is really difficult to participate rationally in civic life without some knowledge of man and earth's place in the universe.

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