Research-intensive universities have long struggled to reconcile the imperative of specialized learning with the need for a broader, more liberal education. Combining Two Cultures provides a comprehensive account of a degree program at a distinguished Canadian university, McMaster, aimed at accomplishing this synthesis. This innovative program has stood up well over more than two decades. It has a curriculum balanced between arts and sciences and is committed to developing broadly applicable intellectual skills, above all those that underlie scholarly inquiry into questions of importance to students and to the society they live in. It attempts to harmonize the excitement of exploring a broad range of fields with students' needs to meet the requirements for advanced study in professional and academic graduate disciplines. This book offers insights into the challenges of planning and establishing a program of this kind. Brief personal reflections from many of the program's graduates, firsthand observations from current students, and instructors' accounts of their experiences give a vivid sense of what the program has meant to its participants.

Laudato Si’ insists on a revolutionary human response to the public challenges of our time concerning the ecological crisis. The volume takes up the revolutionary spirit of Pope Francis and speaks to the economic, technological, political, educational, and religious changes needed to overcome the fragile relationships between humans and Earth. This volume identifies various systemic factors that have produced the anthropogenic ecological crisis that threatens the planet and uses the ethical vision of Laudato Si’ to promote practical responses that foster fundamental changes in humanity’s relationships with Earth and each other. The essays address not only the immediate behavioral changes needed in individual human lives, but also the deeper, societal changes required if human communities are to live sustainable lives within Earth’s integral ecology. Thus, this volume intentionally focuses on a plurality of cultural contexts and proposes solutions to problems encountered in a variety of global contexts. Accordingly, the contributors to this volume are scholars from a breadth of interdisciplinary and cultural backgrounds, each exploring an ethical theme from the encyclical and proposing systemic changes to address deeply entrenched injustices. Collectively, their essays examine the social, political, economic, gender, scientific, technological, educational, and spiritual challenges of our time as these relate to the ecological crisis.

Research-intensive universities have long struggled to reconcile the imperative of specialized learning with the need for a broader, more liberal education. Combining Two Cultures provides a comprehensive account of a degree program at a distinguished Canadian university, McMaster, aimed at accomplishing this synthesis. This innovative program has stood up well over more than two decades. It has a curriculum balanced between arts and sciences and is committed to developing broadly applicable intellectual skills, above all those that underlie scholarly inquiry into questions of importance to students and to the society they live in. It attempts to harmonize the excitement of exploring a broad range of fields with students' needs to meet the requirements for advanced study in professional and academic graduate disciplines. This book offers insights into the challenges of planning and establishing a program of this kind. Brief personal reflections from many of the program's graduates, firsthand observations from current students, and instructors' accounts of their experiences give a vivid sense of what the program has meant to its participants.