ABSTRACT
As chapter 2 showed, neither the impatient urging of the legislature nor the encouragement of some more enterprising Regents had succeeded in making the New York academies enthusiastic champions of practical or useful studies. Viewing themselves as defenders of a century-old tradition of the artes liberales, conservative trustees continued to look upon arithmetic and geometry as practical sciences not suited to enhance the prestige of their institutions. But the growth of industry and modern communications had moved the more-open-minded trustees to accept the quadrivial subjects and natural philosophy as studies worthy of a gentleman’s attention.1 This was even more true of the trustees of liberal arts colleges. At Yale College, for example, the books of Isaac Newton and of other members of the Royal Society had been purchased for the library in 1714.2 The presidency of Thomas Clap then brought a surge of interest in mathematics and natural philosophy, and the theses physicae defended at commencement during Clap’s years from 1740 to 1766 included propositions on mechanics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology.
