UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS REPORTER 352, 30 April 1993
© George MacDonald Ross, 1993
The University’s new logo omits the motto: et augebitur scientia — ‘and science will be increased.’ Is this because it no longer stands for our institution’s current aims and objectives? It all depends what the motto means.
One possible interpretation is: ‘and the Arts/Science ratio will be eroded in favour of Science.’ But this is Government, not University policy; and in this sense, it is hardly an appropriate motto.
In fact, what our founders intended was: ‘and knowledge will be increased.’ But the ‘and’ shows that the motto is part of a longer quotation which provides it with its context and meaning. The quotation (or rather, a quotation within a quotation) is from a passage in Bacon’s De augmentis scientiarum of 1623, where, in II.x, he prophesies that there will be a knowledge revolution as the result of the opening up of the world to exploration and travel. He writes as follows:
This outstanding success in navigation and world exploration holds out great hope of still further progress and increase in knowledge; especially since it seems to have been divinely ordained that these two would happen during the same period. Thus Daniel the prophet, speaking of the most recent period of history, predicted ‘Very many people will travel around, and knowledge will be increased,’ as if travel or world exploration, and a multiple increase in knowledge were predestined for the same era. And we see that to a large extent this prophecy has already been fulfilled, in that our period of history, when compared with the two previous turning-points or revolutions in learning (the Greek and the Roman), is hardly behind in culture, and certainly far ahead in certain respects.
Our founders were remarkably prescient in seeing that the University’s future contribution to the growth of knowledge would depend on the achievements of geographers, the fund for attending conferences abroad, and Erasmus mobility schemes.
However, it has to be remembered that Bacon, in addition to being ‘the father of modern science’ and a corrupt Lord Chancellor, was a millenarian. He believed that he was living through the ‘last days’ prophesied in the Bible, and that these would be followed by 1,000 years in which paradise would be regained.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that he got his timing wrong. It is now that we are living through the last days. So we had better go back to the quotation from Daniel, which is the original source of our University’s motto. (Note, however, that since the time of Bacon’s older contemporary, Pope Sixtus V, the Latin version of Daniel’s words has been stabilised as et multiplex erit scientia rather than et augebitur scientia — but the meaning is the same.)
Daniel starts chapter XII by apparently talking about the last judgment. As the King James version puts it:
There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament . . .
But then in verse 4, God says to Daniel:
Tu autem Daniel claude sermones, et signa librum usque ad tempus statutum: plurimi transibunt, et augebitur scientia.
Or in modern English:
Daniel, stop giving lectures, and set aside your book until the deadline. Large numbers will pass through, and learning will be enhanced.
Obviously Daniel is not really talking about the last judgment, but about a great assessment exercise. Those who are not awake to the performance criteria used by the assessors will be publicly shamed, and the shame will be eternal — they will have no chance to redeem themselves. But the ‘wise’ who have gone through the ‘time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation’ (a reference to resource centre funding, departmental planning, modularisation, central timetabling, appraisal, research selectivity, course review, quinquennial review, academic audit, teaching assessment, etc.) will be ‘found written in the book’ (the assessment documentation), and they will ‘shine as the brightness of the firmament’, i.e. be ranked as excellent. The divine advice in verse 4 is quite specific: quality will be enhanced despite the large numbers of students passing through the system — but this requires abandoning lectures, and neglecting research and publication. There is also a strong hint that everything will have to be recorded in writing for audit purposes.
This raises the question of whether the University should tie its aims and objectives, through that weasel word ‘and’, to the precise details of Daniel’s prophecy. I think not. Daniel clearly foresaw the potential of the Enterprise in Higher Education initiative for enabling departments to teach more students better by decentring the lecture as the main vehicle for enabling student learning. On the other hand, his monotheistic prejudices prevented him from foreseeing that there would be two Great Assessors in the Sky: the Research Assessor as well as the Teaching Assessor. If you don’t want to awake to the ‘shame and everlasting contempt’ of a teaching-only contract, you had better ignore Daniel’s advice to set aside your book until the deadline.
All the same, the expanded motto plurimi transibunt, et augebitur scientia — ‘vast numbers and more learning’ — is wholly appropriate to one of the University’s two main objectives. What a pity there isn’t room for this summary of the corporate plan in the corporate image.
‘Agricola Promontorius’