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toWarD a unifieD fielD tHeory
something better comes along. We learned, through our experiences with assignments and labs, that what scientists do is impose constructs on what we call reality, constructs that serve until an exception is found, whereupon a new construct that survives experimentation will be adopted. Newton was all about imposing an elegant order on what we experience as a chaotic set of data, and his tenet that the physical laws are the same throughout the universe. The same tensions between “real- ity” and language that we were struggling with in English 1–2 inhered in the scientific world.
History 1–2 was of a piece with English 1–2 and Science 1–2. I believe that the underlying subject matter had to do with European his- tory and then the history of Japan, but I’m not sure of that, and my guess is that there were other parts of the world covered as well. What I am sure of is that history as such was not the real subject. The emphasis was far more on historiography than history, on what the historian did, and on how he or she might attack the chaos that was composed of the “facts” of the past and impose order on it, much as the scientist deals with data.
French 5 and Humanities 1–2 were more classical courses than were the others, but each held a challenge for me as well. French 5 was French 5 because I couldn’t do well enough—and was unable to do poorly enough—on the qualifying test that was administered during orienta- tion. That test was given to determine whether one could place out of the language requirement entirely (I didn’t have a prayer) or, as I hoped, to find my French so atrocious that I might have to start at a very low level by taking French 1 or 3, in which my limited ability with the language would nevertheless suffice to make the course easier. (I had no ear for and could not do well in French in high school; my ego told me that that was because languages were nonconceptual and that I was not stimulated by memorization. Now that I’ve done some traveling and have a French- speaking stepson, stepdaughter-in-law, and step-grandson, I wish that I had paid more attention. My discomfort with foreign languages would return, with significant results, when I took a course on Chaucer.)
My hopes to do poorly enough on the exam were frustrated. Crushed, I faced French 5 with a great deal of trepidation, especially
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