Today’s video-lecture is from this year’s National Classical Education Symposium. Our conference theme, “The Historian’s Craft,” provided ample room for both historians and other subject matter experts, who could speak to the ways in which history pertains to other disciplines. From Dr. Owen Anderson’s lecture, we learn that another discipline, philosophy, affects the ways in which we...
NOTE: The following post is from our good colleague, Dr. David Rothman, an accomplished scholar and poet, who continues to produce works of wonder and humor under the inspiration of the Muse. My title comes from the title of an enigmatic late poem by Richard Hugo (1923-’82), a title also used for his posthumously published Collected Poems (1984). The phrase has always...
One of the many fringe benefits of friendship is the sharing of probing thoughts and the artful expression of ideas. Just this morning, a good friend texted me today’s article by David Brooks (New York Times), which provided me with some real hope, based on specific developments in the world of punditry and public discourse. According...
“Math is the beautiful, rich, joyful, playful, surprising, frustrating, humbling and creative art that speaks to something transcendental,” says mathematician and teacher trainer James Tanton of the Mathematical Association of America. That’s quite a list of adjectives—and not the usual suspects to describe math for many. We featured Dr. Tanton in the most recent issue of...
To participate in worldly and societal affairs is an inclination common to all, but to actively engage in intellectual endeavors allows one to ease the demand of constantly creating social and political outcomes. These endeavors nurture a sort of natural reflection of oneself that is ultimately ordered for its own sake. When one commits himself to the intellectual life, he allows...
As a society we are increasingly divided—from each other and from our past. However, because a classical, liberal education is deeply historical, it is well suited to help bridge that widening gulf and to be a source of cultural renewal. It accomplishes this through the formal study of history and by developing a historical habit...
Taking some time off this past week, I slipped into a used bookstore with a half-price sale. Sounds vintage or even classic, right? In any case, such a place with such a sale is a nearly irresistible invitation to imbibe for this bookaholic. Having browsed the shelves of various categories, I came upon a 1961 copy...
While it may be considered uncouth to bring up politics and religion at the family reunion, there are strong reasons to believe that our political regime benefits from the presence of active religious communities. As the First Amendment to our Constitution details, citizens of this nation are granted the freedoms of religious expression, speech and the...
On Thursday, we strive to focus this blog on the lovely intersection of mathematics and music, where the theory of arithmetic finds application in harmonic composition. Today, we’ll draw your attention to some remarks from Jake Tawney, a long-time teacher and teacher trainer, at Great Hearts Academies. In his recent essay for VIRTUE, Mr. Tawney highlights...
A recent article on The Verge describes how a college student recently used an autoregressive language model and deep-learning to produce texts that appear to have been composed by a human. Out of 26,000 viewers of the blog only one was able to identify it as a mechanical algorithm, based on a perceived lack of substance. One Senatorial committee...