Liberal education origin

At the same time, a distinction (and in some cases a perceived hierarchy) arose between basic science and applied science and technology. American higher education evolved as a place for original research and teaching in pure science (Stokes, 1997, 41). The separation between basic and applied science created in the minds of many in the liberal arts, a separation between science and engineering. Academe viewed the latter as applied and vocational, and hence determined that such fields had no place in a liberal arts institution. 

Born in the same year as Davy, Gay-Lussac was a product of the Revolutionary era. His father, a lawyer and public prosecutor, had hoped that reform would be possible under the monarchy. Though originally considered a fairly liberal stance, this hope came to be viewed as reactionary as the Revolution progressed. The father was eventually arrested and not released until the fall of Robespierre. The family fell on hard times but managed to educate Joseph Louis, the eldest of their five children. Just before he turned sixteen, about a year after they released his father from jail, he received a government grant to attend the ficole Polytechnique. 

It is important to acknowledge that bodies of abstract knowledge originating in the social sciences, humanities, or business management typically do not exist in a form ready for easy and uncontroversial incorporation into the heart of formal engineering education. Faculty from liberal arts disciplines can be inflexible themselves, especially when they seek to reproduce themselves in students rather than to adapt modes of knowledge and practical reasoning to student trajectories. 

For a very informative article on the naming of compounds, from which 1 have drawn liberally for this section, see V. Ringnes, Origin of the Names of Chemical Elements, Journal of Chemical Education, 66,731-738,1989. 

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