Artist David Arzouman values education in the arts alongside math and science:

So where is the education model that not only emphasizes balance, but also explores the parallels and connections across disciplines?

One example is the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy – a model that reaches back to Pythagoras. Consider its strengths. Arithmetic explains the relations between numbers. Geometry explains numbers in space; music, numbers in time; and astronomy, numbers in space and time. It was a vision of correspondences conducive to analogic thinking.

Our wiser cultural ancestors considered geometry more than an engineering tool and music more than mere entertainment. They were key, parallel studies, manifestations of numbers, which were therefore seen as embodying both quantity and quality, a clue to the complementary unity of science and art.

I studied electrical engineering at the University of Nevada.  I also enrolled in the university’s symphonic choir for a semester to sing Handel’s Messiah.  The students I sat with in the choir were so different from the ones I studied with in physics and calculus courses.  The experience enriched me and helped balance the heavy emphasis on math and science in an engineering curriculum.

A friend who majored in the classics once told me the ancient Greeks, who invented the Quadrivium, had all the knowledge they needed to start the Industrial Revolution, but they didn’t.  They had other aspirations.  When they are done well, arts like music help nurture those aspirations — peace, beauty and harmony.