Copy 2 of DOC - Caltechcampuspubs - California Institute of ...

One of the distinctive features of the California Institute is
its emphasis upon the humanistic side of the curriculum. In the
degree and genuineness of this emphasis the Institute has differentiated
itself from other American schools of science, most of
which accord little more than a gesture of recognition to the
liberal arts. As a rule, in schools of engineering, the professional
studies monopolize nearly all the available time and money,
leaving the humanities to take what is left, which usually turns
out to be very little.
This has been particularly unfortunate. It has recruited into
the engineering profession large numbers of young men with
inadequate cultural backgrounds, lacking in social sympathy, in
breadth of outlook, and in their acquaintance with those imponderable
forces which even engineers have to take into account.
It has crowded into the lower ranks of the engineering
vocation too many unimaginative routineers who get no farther
than the drafting-room. That should not be the case, for there
is no good reason why engineers should be more limited in their
intellectual versatility, or in the range of their human interests,
than men of any other profession. Many of them are not. On
the contrary, there are those who have shown, time and again,
that scientific erudition can be illuminated by humanism, and
technical skill vivified by imagination. It is to men of this type
that the world must continue to look for leadership in all branches
of science, and it is to the training of such men that the energies
of the California Institute are primarily directed.
Hence the Institute, from the very outset, has recognized the
desirability of making a place in its undergraduate curriculum
for a generous amount of instruction in the humanities. The
faculty, in thorough sympathy with this aim, has cooperated by
eliminating some of the more specialized technical subj ects commonly
included in undergraduate engineering courses. As a re-