Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

sjc.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 155 posts

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#131

Post by dwighttk »

Animats wrote: post #54

It's an interesting approach. They do like the classic sources. I've at least skimmed more than half of those titles, long after college. It's amusing that they have students read Pikkety's "Capital" before Marx's "Capital". You don't want to learn geometry from Euclid. You read Euclid after you already know geometry, to see how he built it up. Similarly, you don't want to learn calculus from Newton. Or physics from…

I graduated before Piketty wrote Capital, but that sounded weird so I looked. All the "Elective Work(s)" at the bottom of Junior and Senior years are part of the Junior/Senior elective preceptorials which not every student reads and that list changes every year. The Program definitely doesn't have you read Piketty before Marx.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#132

Post by jrdunson »

Mortimer J. Adler mentions in his books... that at Saint John’s, the students were learning how to read well, and analyze arguments well. At one point in his career, he did a speaking tour, presenting at several college campuses – he was really impressed how the students from St. John's were able to analyze his arguments well, ask in-depth questions related to his material, even challenge him on some points. He has two really good books… * How to Read a Book and How To Speak How To Listen.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#133

Post by troupe »

WillAdams wrote: post #80

A co-worker's son visited St. John's, since it was one he was considering, and it was sufficiently interesting that he mentioned it when we were discussing education in general. I looked up the reading list, and have been reading the texts, trying to patch up my rather spotty education --- it also makes me wonder how many of these texts would have been a part of Edmund Dante's (from _The Count of Monte Cristo_) educa…

You might also like this version of Elements: https://www.c82.net/euclid/

As far as finding books, places that sell used books often have these types of books for very inexpensive.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#134

Post by thwayunion »

mistercheph wrote: post #121
thwayunion wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, yeah, Evropean, we get it. You know that even SJC grads eye-roll at that stuff, right? One of them even does in this comment section. Anyways. Even then -- typical Great Books curricula still sample from a tiny subset of literature that fits the mold of "greco-roman civilization". It was chosen by a very particular set of people at a very particular point in time. Some choices work more or less well enough. Oth…

The section on Russel is brief, and is read as complement to Lobochevsky and background for the Goedel readings.

Interesting; good to know. I don't see either Lobochevsky or Goedel in the lists.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#135

Post by adamsmith143 »

voisin wrote: post #83
stbullard wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE 3: as an SJC alum, I found my reading speed slowed drastically both during and after four years spent reading and discussing these books. I found myself thinking while reading more often, making more connections within and between works. That said, reading alone misses the meat of “The Program” (always capitalized!) - it’s the searching, pointed, urgent discussion of a work with others who share a common language…

> That said, reading alone misses the meat of “The Program” (always capitalized!) - it’s the searching, pointed, urgent discussion of a work with others who share a common language (from all having read and discussed the earlier works in the Program) that provoked deep thought and reflection, held me to account for intellectual rigor, and built up my faculty for critical thinking. Is there anywhere online that achiev…

>Is there anywhere online that achieves anything close to this for this curriculum for people who can’t attend full time in person? An HN for SJC curriculum?

St. John's recently expanded their part-time Graduate program to be online.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#136

Post by adamsmith143 »

thwayunion wrote: post #107
voldacar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computing is not yet old enough for us to know which books on computing are great books. Also the point of reading Euclid is not really to learn geometry but rather to investigate and examine the oldest, most primordial expression of the idea that math should be formalized using a few axioms.

It is a living field, of course, but I do think there are certain texts that we know we would include from Turing, Von Neumann, Goedel, Church, Shannon, Backus, Hoare, Dijkstra, and I guess something about Perceptrons is now mandatory but IDK what text I'd choose. Beyond those texts things become hazier, but that's already at least a semester of undergraduate reading. > Also the point of reading Euclid is not really…

I don't think the point of any great books program is to finish and say "You have now read everything of relevance, no need to read anymore." The curricula are broad and general so that if you have particular interests in a field you are now equipped to read all of the texts you mentioned on your own. If there was a specific "Great Mathematics Books" curriculum perhaps all the ones you mentioned would indeed be required.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#137

Post by rahimnathwani »

WillAdams wrote: post #80

A co-worker's son visited St. John's, since it was one he was considering, and it was sufficiently interesting that he mentioned it when we were discussing education in general. I looked up the reading list, and have been reading the texts, trying to patch up my rather spotty education --- it also makes me wonder how many of these texts would have been a part of Edmund Dante's (from _The Count of Monte Cristo_) educa…

If they're on Project Gutenberg, you could create audio versions with Tortoise TTS?

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#138

Post by adamsmith143 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #41
thebooktocome wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been trendy in the last fifty or so years to strip historical and cultural content from math classes in favor of rote computation (as the former is easiest to test in a “standardized” setting), but I’d argue that dehumanizing mathematics makes it far harder to understand, or indeed even care about. Word problems are the last edifice of natural philosophy in the high school mathematics curriculum and there’s co…

This coupled with a weird fixation on achieving a sufficiently "high" level of mathematics, typically without a strong justification for any non-grad-school-bound students. Reeks of gate-keeping. I've known multiple people who've failed to finish a degree solely because of math classes covering material that they'd almost certainly never have seen again their entire lives, even if they achieved a middling-successful…

I know I'd prefer a population that understands how to read graphs, what rate of change means, can actually solve a word problem, etc. People are voting on complex topics like tax rates and I think you'd be amazed at how many people can not, and I mean not with a calculator or at all, calculate what 60% of 75 is.

So maybe it's not a bad thing that people graduate from College are required to take a few algebra and stats classes when they're ostensibly running the show at large corporations and in various levels of Government.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#139

Post by adamsmith143 »

WillAdams wrote: post #80

A co-worker's son visited St. John's, since it was one he was considering, and it was sufficiently interesting that he mentioned it when we were discussing education in general. I looked up the reading list, and have been reading the texts, trying to patch up my rather spotty education --- it also makes me wonder how many of these texts would have been a part of Edmund Dante's (from _The Count of Monte Cristo_) educa…

I'd think your local library likely has most if not all the texts available.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#140

Post by 34611 »

thwayunion wrote: post #106
34611 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Great Books" is mired in fairly a ridiculous fetishism of the Greek classics, the Enlightenment era, the American founding, and the Anglo view of the western world. The webpage clearly states that the list is of foundational books of greco-roman civilization. And SJC is an american university. What do you expect? Also, fetishism? Greek classics are the foundation of european civilization. That's like going to a ch…

Yeah, yeah, Evropean, we get it. You know that even SJC grads eye-roll at that stuff, right? One of them even does in this comment section. Anyways. Even then -- typical Great Books curricula still sample from a tiny subset of literature that fits the mold of "greco-roman civilization". It was chosen by a very particular set of people at a very particular point in time. Some choices work more or less well enough. Oth…

[dead]
Post reply on HN