Academic Program
Laboratory
In the three-year laboratory program at St. Johns, students learn not only from reasoned discourse, but also from hands-on observation and analysis. Relying as much as possible on primary texts and replicating experiments whenever possible, students consider the fundamental questions of scientists throughout the ages, exploring the theories of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler to those of Newton and Einstein; following the revolutionary thought and crucial experiments of scientists such as William Harvey in the 18th century and Watson and Crick in the 20th century.
The college does not subscribe to the sharp separation of scientific studies from the humanities, as if they were distinct and autonomous domains of learning. The integrity of scientific pursuits stems from sources common to all intellectual life.
A laboratory section consists of 14 to 16 students working under the guidance of a tutor, with the help of more advanced students serving as assistants. Labs meet two times a week, with one longer session for experiments and one shorter session for discussion.
Freshman Laboratory: Biology, Chemistry
In freshman laboratory, students look at animals and plants, and at physical and chemical phenomena. They learn the arts of careful observation, dissection, measurement, and experimentation, as well as how to record what they observe in drawings, symbols, graphs, and mathematical expressions. The year is divided into what might be classified as biology, physics, and chemistry sequences, but the natural sciences are conceived as parts of a coherent whole. Students begin with the observation and understanding of plants and animals, reading texts such as Aristotle's Parts of Animals and On the Soul, and observing and dissecting animals. In a segment on measurement and equilibrium, students inquire into the foundations of a mathematical comprehension of nature, reading works by Archimedes, Pascal, Black, and Gay-Lussac. A study of the constitution of bodies begins with Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry and moves into a study of atomic theory by Dalton, Thomson, Gay-Lussac, Avogadro, Cannizzaro. and Mendeleev.
Junior Laboratory: Physics
Junior Laboratory combines reading and discussion with practical experiments: dynamics and optics in the fall, and waves and electricity in the spring. The texts range chronologically from Galileo to Maxwell. The main thread of the fall sequence is motion, its character and causes. Students and their tutors follow attempts to replace the Aristotelian efficient cause with concepts such as Descartes'quantity of motion, Leibniz's "living force," Newton's force, Mayer's causa, and Maxwell's treatment of work, kinetic and potential energy, and heat. Primary sources also works by Huygens, Taylor, Euler, Bernoulli, Faraday, and Maxwell.
Senior Laboratory: Biology, Genetics, Physics
The fall semester of Senior Laboratory continues the study of the constitution of matter begun in the Freshman Laboratory, proceeding further into atomic structure, and brings together four areas of study from the junior year: classical mechanics, optics, wave motion, and electromagnetism. As in the laboratories of the earlier years, students read, as far as possible, original accounts of experiments or interpretations of experiments, and perform, where possible, versions of the original experiments.
The readings deal with attempts to locate fundamental units of charge and matter, the notion of irreducible particles of energy, the proposal that light can be treated both as particle and wave, and the possibility that there are inherent limits to our understanding of the motion of "particles." Students discuss such topics as the nature of matter, time and space, the aims and status of mathematical descriptions of nature, and the possibility of certainty of knowledge. Readings in senior year include papers by Faraday, Thomson, Milliken, Rutherford, Einstein, and Heisenberg.