American higher education was transformed between the end of the Civil
War and the beginning of World War I. During this period, U.S. colleges
underwent fundamental changes--changes that helped to create the modern
university we know today. Most significantly, the study of the sciences
and the humanities effectively dissolved the Protestant framework of
learning by introducing a new secularized curriculum. This
secularization has long been recognized as a decisive turning point in
the history of American education. Until now, however, there has been
remarkably little attention paid to the details of how this
transformation came about. Here, at last, Jon Roberts and James Turner
identify the forces and explain the events that reformed the college
curriculum during this era.
The first section of the book examines how the study of science became
detached from theological considerations. Previously, one of the primary
pursuits of "natural scientists" was to achieve an understanding of the
workings of the divine in earthly events. During the late nineteenth
century, however, scientists reduced the scope of their inquiries to
subjects that could be isolated, measured, and studied objectively. In
pursuit of "scientific truth," they were drawn away from the larger
"truths" that they had once sought. On a related path, social scientists
began to pursue the study of human society more scientifically,
attempting to generalize principles of behavior from empirically
observed events.
The second section describes the revolution that occurred in the
humanities, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when the study of
humanities was largely the study of Greek and Latin. By 1900, however,
the humanities were much more broadly construed, including such
previously unstudied subjects as literature, philosophy, history, and
art history. The "triumph of the humanities" represented a significant
change in attitudes about what constituted academic knowledge and,
therefore, what should be a part of the college curriculum.
The Sacred and the Secular University rewrites the history of higher
education in the United States. It will interest all readers who are
concerned about American universities and about how the content of a
"college education" has changed over the course of the last century.
"[Jon Roberts and James Turner's] thoroughly researched and carefully
argued presentations invite readers to revisit stereotypical
generalizations and to rethink the premises developed in the late
nineteenth century that underlie the modern university. At the least,
their arguments challenge crude versions of the secularization thesis as
applied to higher education."--From the foreword by William G. Bowen and
Harold T. Shapiro
