Scott Buchanan

Scott Buchanan(1895 – 1968) was anAmerican philosopher,educator, and foundation consultant. He is best known as the founder, together withStringfellow Barr,of theGreat Booksprogram atSt. John's College,atAnnapolis, Maryland.^{[note 1]}

Buchanan's various projects and writings may be understood as an ambitious program of social and cultural reform based on the insight that many crucial problems arise from the uncritical use ofsymbolism.In this sense, his program was similar to and competed with a number of contemporary movements such asAlfred Korzybski's General Semantics,Otto Neurath's"Unity of Science" project, thesemioticsofCharles Morrisand the "orthological" projects ofCharles Kay Ogden.Buchanan collaborated with the latter effort for a number of years.^{[citation needed]}

Buchanan's own program, however, differed from these generallyempiricist,positivist,orpragmatistmovements by stressing what he saw as the need for reforms in the mathematical symbolism employed in modernscience.Buchanan's first book,Possibility(1927), stated that science is "the greatest body of uncriticized dogma we have today"^{[note 2]}and even likened science to the "Black Arts"^{[clarification needed]}^{[note 3]}.For the rest of his career, Buchanan pondered ways to mitigate the variety of threats to humanity that he perceived in the unmanaged and unsupervised growth of modern science and technology.^{[citation needed]}

Background

Scott Milross Buchanan was born on March 17, 1895, inSprague, Washingtonand raised inJeffersonville, Vermont.He received his undergraduate degree fromAmherst Collegein 1916, majoring in Greek and mathematics. After serving in the Navy during the final year ofWorld War I,he studied philosophy atBalliol College,Oxfordas aRhodes scholarbetween 1919 and 1921. He continued his studies in philosophy atHarvard Universityand received his doctorate in 1925. During his undergraduate years, Buchanan became personally close to Amherst's presidentAlexander Meiklejohnand was strongly influenced by Meiklejohn's ideas about educational reform.^{[citation needed]}

Career

This continuing interest led Buchanan in 1925 to accept a position as Assistant Director of thePeople's Institute,an affiliate of theCooper Unionin New York City that was dedicated toadult educationand other forms of cultural enrichment for the city's workers and immigrants. It was there that Buchanan metMortimer J. AdlerandRichard McKeon,and the three of them conceived an ambitious program for reviving American education and democracy through mass training in the traditionalliberal artsby means of theSocratic methodand theGreat Bookscurriculum.^[1]

Buchanan spent the next twenty years struggling to establish an institutional base for this radical vision. Buchanan's initial efforts at thePeople's Institutewere followed by his establishment of theGreat Books"Virginia Program" at theUniversity of Virginia,where Buchanan was a Professor of Philosophy between 1929 and 1936. He was then invited to theUniversity of Chicagoby its presidentRobert Maynard Hutchinsin order to help form a "Committee on Liberal Arts" in association with Buchanan's formerPeople's InstituteassociatesAdlerandMcKeon.However, this effort failed almost immediately due to philosophical differences and academic politics.^{[citation needed]}

Fortunately, another opportunity quickly arose in the form ofSt. John's CollegeinAnnapolis, Maryland,a venerable institution with a heritage that reaches back to the colonial period, but which by 1936 had nevertheless lost its accreditation and was in desperate need of reorganization. In 1937, the trustees invited Buchanan and his associateStringfellow Barrto make a fresh start. With Barr as president and Buchanan as dean, the two men reorganized the school that year around theGreat Books"New Program". This radical new curriculum quickly achieved national fame and survives today. It is the achievement for which Buchanan is primarily remembered.^{[citation needed]}

Buchanan left St. John's College in 1947 after a successful but disillusioning legal struggle with the U.S. Navy, which had been trying to seize the St. John's campus as part of a plan to enlarge the nearbyUnited States Naval Academy.After spending the next two years directingLiberal Arts, Inc.,a failed venture to create a Great Books-based college in Massachusetts, Buchanan's democratic vision for the revival of theliberal artsturned from the academic to the political arena. Except for a brief period in 1956 and 1957, when he was a visiting lecturer atPrinceton Universityand also served as chairman of the Religion and Philosophy Departments atFisk University,he held no more positions in academic institutions. In 1948 Buchanan worked actively in theProgressive Partypresidential campaign ofHenry Wallace,and for several years afterwards was consultant, trustee, and secretary of theFoundation for World Government.In 1957 Buchanan accepted an invitation byRobert Maynard Hutchinsto become a senior fellow atCenter for the Study of Democratic Institutions,a liberal political think tank inSanta Barbara, California.Buchanan remained at the Center for the rest of his career, and one of the projects to which he contributed was the Center's efforts to publicize the work ofJacques Ellulin the English-speaking world.^{[note 4]}

Work

Possibility(1927): As part of C. K. Ogden'sThe International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method,this work was published simultaneously in the same series withMortimer Adler's own first bookDialectic,and each book refers to the other.John DeweypraisedPossibilityas a "significant intellectual achievement".
Poetry and Mathematics(1929): Developed from materials for Buchanan's lectures at thePeople's Institute,this book was recognized byRichard McKeon,who had studied medieval philosophy underÉtienne Gilson,as a rediscovery of the medievaltriviumandquadrivium.This insight of McKeon's, wrote Buchanan in 1961, is what led to the "radical reform of teaching and learning in a small province of the modern academy" for which Buchanan is remembered today. The American philosopherMorris CohenpraisedPoetry and Mathematicsas "an admirable piece of work."
Symbolic Distance in Relation to Analogy and Fiction(1932): Appeared in London as part of Ogden's "Psyche Miniatures" series. Part of it had been published earlier inPsyche,the journal of Ogden'sOrthological Institute.Although Buchanan later claimed that this work was inspired by a year's study of the English logicianGeorge Boole,it does not mention Boole. Rather,Symbolic Distancewas obviously written in collaboration with Ogden's investigation of the linguistic theories ofJeremy Bentham,and Ogden citesSymbolic Distancein his own bookBentham's Theory of Fictions.This is the first of Buchanan's books to mention the medievaltriviumandquadrivium.
The Doctrine of Signatures: A Defence of Theory in Medicine(1938): Also (likePossibility) as part of Ogden'sInternational Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.A portion of the first chapter had appeared earlier in the 1934 issue ofPsyche,under the title "Introduction to Medieval Orthology".
Truth in the Sciences(1950): Completed under contract to theEncyclopædia Britannicafor a project that never materialized. The manuscript was published posthumously in book form by theUniversity of Virginiain 1972
Essay in Politics(1953): Stemming from his involvement with the 1948Wallacecampaign and later with theFoundation for World Government,Buchanan reflects on the problems of political representation and democracy that are posed by technology and industrialization. Buchanan continued to work on these ideas during his years at theCenter for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

Notes

^The same program is used at St. John's College's second campus inSanta Fe, New Mexicowhich was founded in 1964.
^Possibility,p. 184
^Possibility,p. 139
^"The Technological Societyhas had more influence in the United States than anywhere else. The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, which had hosted [a 1962 conference on technology and human affairs] and arranged the book’s translation, did much to promote early discussions of Ellul’s argument, especially under the leadership of Robert M. Hutchins and one of the Center’s consultants, Scott Buchanan — both prominent champions of liberal arts education. "^[2]

References

^ Adler, Mortimer J.(1977).Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography.Macmillan. pp. 58–59 (St. John's College), 87–88 (People's Institute), 92–93 (rift), 113–116 (1929 collaboration).ISBN 9780025004900.Retrieved12 January2018.
^Matlack, Samuel (2014),"Confronting the Technological Society",The New Atlantis(43), pp. 45–64

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