Science as a Liberal Art: Louis Petrich & Chester Burke

Continuing the Conversation: a Great Books podcast by St. John’s College

Annapolis tutor Chester Burke has spent many years teaching and shaping the laboratory program of St. John’s College, where mathematics and science are studied as liberal arts. This means that all students read the foundational texts of some of history’s greatest mathematical and scientific minds, in their historical order, while performing original observations, demonstrations, and experiments. These activities allow students to witness great scientific thinkers and experimenters provide the building blocks, old and new, for our theoretical knowledge of nature. In this episode, Burke joins host Louis Petrich for a conversation on the college’s unique approach to scientific and mathematical study.

As such, it includes a standard and beloved practice at St. John’s College—a mathematical chalkboard demonstration—to accompany a dive from classical physics into the startling world of quantum mechanics. Authors touched upon include Galileo, Leibniz, Maxwell, Thompson, Schrödinger, Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, Faraday, and Descartes.