Since its founding more than 200 years ago, the College of Charleston has committed itself to the ideals of liberal learning. This commitment assumes that undergraduate education best prepares students for careers in teaching, medicine, business, and other professions by enabling them to become self-aware, cultured, knowledgeable about many fields in addition to their own, and constantly inquisitive about new areas and ways of learning.

In its most fundamental sense, a liberal arts education involves the study of human nature, human value systems, the natural world, methods of inquiry including analysis and syntheses, and personal and societal change and development.

All individuals, institutions, and societies must continually reevaluate questions of meaning and purpose if they are to live full and responsible lives. Liberally educated women and men are the best prepared to undertake and to persist in this inquiry because:

they have mastered the basic intellectual skills: how to reason logically, how to think critically, how to communicate effectively, and how to perceive the widest implications of what they have learned.


(from the 1986-87, 1987-88 College of Charleston Undergraduate Bulletin)

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Chemistry as a Liberal Study

SCIENCE is the study of the physical world using the arts of questioning, investigating, hypothesizing, and communicating

The tools of science:

Mathematics is the language that provides clarity, objectivity, and understanding

Language arts provide powerful tools of communication to a literate society

Many contemporary issues find their basis and solution in science

Hence chemistry, the central science is the ultimate course of study in the liberal education of a student. From the sciences it touches upon or is heavily involved with

mathematics physics biology geology

meteorology astronomy environmental science material science

From the humanities and social sciences

English and communications history philosophy & religion sociology & psychology

government & political science economics geography

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY was the precursor of modern science. Originally tenets were thought to be true simply because they sounded true. Modern science arose thanks to the development of the scientific method.

CHEMISTRY is the study of matter, its composition, structure, properties, reactions, and energy changes. It has its origins in ALCHEMY (from the Egyptian word for the "art of transmutation"), an ancient philosophy. Alchemy's listed as its three aims to find: 1) The Philosopher' Stone - transmutation of base metals into gold 2) Panacea - remedy of all diseases 3) Elixir of Life - fountain of youth potion for immortality

Modern chemistry touches all facets of our lives from the clothes we wear to the food we eat, pharmaceuticals, a host of plastics, the gasoline in our automobiles, new materials for construction, and the development of microelectronics.

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Jim Deavor Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry College of Charleston

Deavor's CHEM 101 Home Page