What of the liberal arts’ future at Apple? One possible clue to this question lies about an hour into this week’s keynote, where Tim Cook put up a “Life on iPad” video to show the myriad of things people have been doing with their iPads. Jobs credited Apple’s success to working at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, and I believe Cook is still building upon this vision. However, to understand how Job’s vision has been expanded under Cook’s leadership requires a brief historical account of the liberal arts.
The concept of the liberal arts stretches far back into antiquity; in the 5th century AD, Martianus Capella consolidated the notion as seven core subjects: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Later, in the medieval universities—which emerged in the twelfth century in europe—these core subjects were divided into the trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). This division reflected the study of, first, literacy, and second, numeracy. In modern schooling, this underlying emphasis is still present in the skills-orientated foundations of reading, reading and arithmetic (or the three Rs).
Liberal arts dominated Western education for almost a thousand years. Then, over the last century there was a tidal shift from the liberal arts toward the centrality of science, and also applied science. More recently, the fine and performing arts, and also, interdisciplinary and professional studies have entered the university. Our contemporary universities are comprehensive, having expanded upon, but still composed of, the liberal arts. Similarly, it seems that Apple is not diverting from its vision to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, but rather, like universities it’s simply expanding its vision to be at the intersection of technology and a comprehensive array of everyday human experiences.