Whatever Next?
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The Materials Gateway: www.mrs.org POSTERMINARIES
Whatever Next? Much has been made of the creation of Materials Science & Engineering as a legitimate academic discipline. Some discussions of the birth verge on the selfcongratulatory, while others almost seem to adopt a posture of shock. A particularly well-researched and mostly evenhanded history of the phenomenon can be found in Robert Cahn’s book, The Coming of Materials Science (Pergamon, 2001). Naturally, I am completely unswayed in my opinion of this book by the role that Professor Cahn ascribes to the Materials Research Society in the creation of the new discipline. Materials Science & Engineering did not appear unheralded upon university campuses. The title is now in the later stages of becoming the “industry standard,” within the United States at least, as the few remaining departments of Metallurgy, Ceramics, Mining, or whatever switch to the new moniker; but in every case, the change of name really only reflects a single event in an evolutionary continuum. My own baccalaureate degree (Bachelor of Metallurgy, no less!), though it was earned back in the mists of time, in a steel town like Sheffield, England, required almost as much study of ceramics, glasses, and polymers as it did of metals; so the seeds of Materials Science & Engineering were already sprouting widely as long ago as the early 1970s. As we celebrate (or bemoan) the coming of Materials Science & Engineering, it is as well to consider the evolution of some other disciplines on university campuses. Evolution does not stop, after all, just because we have reached a point that particularly pleases us. In the middle ages, a university gentleman (for ladies were not allowed) would be obliged to study the seven disciplines of the liberal arts, which are separated into two divisions. The lower division comprises grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and is known as the Trivium. The upper division comprises arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, which together form the Quadrivium. Those of you burdened with the remnants of a classical education will understand the etymology of the terms Trivium and Quadrivium, and possibly find it interesting to note that the modern word “trivial” derives from 688
Trivium. As far as I know, nobody uses “quadrivial” as an opposite for “trivial,” but those of you who would do so will be happy to know that another popular descriptor of learned work, “drivel,” does not derive from Quadrivium, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And the Oxford English Dictionary, itself, was created at the great university in the 19th century, long after the seven
Evolution does not stop . . . just because we have reached a point that particularly pleases us. disciplines of the liberal arts had been replaced by more specialized areas of study, and it was the lifelong project of Professor James Murray, who held a chair in Philology. You may repair to the OED if you need a definition of “philology,” or else read an interesting account of the Dictionary’s creation in The Professor a
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