After reading the introduction to Joe Moran’s book, “Interdisciplinarity” although interesting, I have come across many statements to which I don’t necessarily agree with. Early on, Moran mentions a statement believed by Aristotle that reads, “The theoretical subjects were the highest for of knowledge, and comprised theology, mathematics and physics, in descending order of importance…” He then went on to report that “…and the productive subjects, which were the lowest… included fine arts, poetics and engineering” in accordance with Aristotle. It was odd to me that the subjects included in the lowest category were labeled as “productive” when Aristotle clearly felt differently towards those subjects. Subjects such as math and science although important, depend on the arts and engineering as a vehicle for their notoriety and the ability to cause advances in the world in which we live. Fine arts enables societies to preserve, retain and advance it’s culture, and therefore I believe Aristotle was mistaken when he placed fine arts, poetics and engineering into the lowest point at his “hierarchy.”

Moran further emphasizes Aristotle’s desire to isolate the individual subjects from one another, another mistake in my opinion, to do so. Individually, subjects do little to develop and cause opportunities for change and reformation. In my own opinion, trying to isolate subjects from one another as opposed to allowing them to work cohesively together, is a rather ignorant and close minded way of going about situations. Later, Moran goes on to write what he called the “unity of difference,” a phrase I feel is crucial to development in all aspects of life academically, socially, and culturally.

In accordance with the necessity of unity between subjects, Moran continues with Italian thinker, Giambattista Vico, who claimed “that the ascendancy of science and mathematics had lead to the neglect of a broad education in favour of specialist knowledge..” a statement to which I fully agree. To paraphrase, Vico goes on to state that a student would be much better prepared to engage in scholarly conversation having a wider view of the subjects of academia. The views of Vico are held throughout the remainder of the introduction until the concluding paragraph where Moran writes, “If a university student today chose to sample a range of courses across the humanities and social sciences, they would probably be surprised at the amount of overlap between them, and the duplication of theories conceptual frameworks, terminologies and texts.” Belonging to a liberal arts college, I feel that the previous concluding statement is truthful and has been proven.

After reading Aristotle’s ideas as expressed through Moran, I can’t help but wonder what inspired Aristotle’s desire to separate subjects into a hierarchy, and why he decided to isolate them in the way he did. Unfortunately, I find that Aristotle’s close minded perspective carries on in today’s society. For example the look or the skeptical remarks that follow the phrase “I’m an English major.” I feel like Vico’s thoughts on the subjects are much more logical and up to par with our world today, however they are still underrated and out shined by Aristotle’s hierarchy.