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Current Course Descriptions for Pilot General Requirement Courses
Course Descriptions for Past Pilot Curriculum Courses
The general requirement will introduce you to broad interdisciplinary areas of human knowledge. The general requirement is not designed as a core requirement, instead it is meant to open up areas of intellectual inquiry you can pursue through your majors and with your electives.
To fulfill the general requirement, you should take four courses, one from each of the following four categories, by the end of your sophomore year. You should select one course in each of your first four semesters.
Category I: Structure and Value In Human Societies
Categories II and III: Toward Science LiteracyCourses in this category will examine the value systems, political forms, and social and economic institutions that have shaped human societies around the world. The course will examine moral and political ideals of liberal democracy in the modern world. Students will be given a comparative perspective-over time and across cultures-on the ways in which human societies are organized. The courses will employ both original texts and contemporary materials.
Courses in these categories will examine the emergence of the modern sciences, their accomplishments and continuing challenges, their intellectual relations to other disciplines and forms of human understanding, and their social costs as well as benefits. Premed students or science majors are exempt from category III.
Category II: Science, Culture and Society
Courses in this category will examine the modern conceptions of the natural and social sciences and their emergence. Special attention will be given to methodological issues, such as the use of mathematical methods and the relation between empirical observation and the construction of scientific theories. Courses will also consider the relation of modern science to other forms of understanding such as philosophy, religion and the perspectives of different cultures.
Category III: Earth, Space and Life
Attention will be given to interconnections of the sciences, to the driving forces of scientific advancement, both practical and aesthetic, and to the benefits as well as moral and political challenges derived from scientific advancement.
Students majoring in the following natural sciences (Biology, BBB, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Chemistry, Geology, Physics) and pre-medical students are exempt from the general requirement in category III. What this means in practice is that if you take at least two semesters of a lab science, you will be granted this exemption. You are of course still welcome to take one of these courses, which may introduce you to areas of science not comprehended in your major.
Category IV: Imagination, Representation and Reality
Courses in this category will study the representation and transformation of natural and cultural reality by the human imagination in literature, fine art, music and other forms of human expression. The courses will examine a selection of works in various literary, artistic and musical media from antiquity to modernity in their aesthetic and historical contexts. Special attention will be given to connections among the different arts within particular cultures as well as to similarities and differences in the forms of representation and expression developed in different societies, cultures and religions. Clashes among aesthetic, political and religious perspectives on the works of human imagination and expression will inevitably be a theme in these courses.
