Discontinued Major Review: Mathematics-Sociology and Philosophy-Mathematics
By Louis Chase
Welcome to Discontinued Major Review, a new column I’m writing to fill space! For the inaugural edition of the column, I’m choosing to feature not one but two discontinued Olde Reed majors, since they overlapped significantly. Today’s discontinued majors are the interdisciplinary programs in Mathematics-Sociology and Philosophy-Mathematics and come from the 1994-1995 Reed College academic catalog, which is archived in the library’s digital collections along with an impressive, but notably incomplete, array of other past catalogs and assorted Reed paraphernalia. I encourage readers to peruse the archives for themselves: https://rdc.reed.edu/c/reedhisttxt/home/
The catalog’s description of the Sociology-Mathematics program makes it abundantly clear that the major was centered in math, saying it is “[a] program in which the student…is expected to gain more proficiency and experience in mathematics than in sociology.” Perhaps foreshadowing the program’s eventual retirement, the description goes on to state that “[w]hen the mathematics student can satisfy an interest in sociology without entering interdisciplinary status, the mathematics-sociology major serves no useful purpose.” Students were also told that “the thesis is done primarily in mathematics.” Admission to the math-sociology major was by approval of a committee, presumably composed of math and sociology faculty.
The Mathematics-Sociology major required seven math courses and five sociology courses, with the Junior Qualifying Exam taken in both departments. While both departments have since restructured their curriculums and renumbered most of their courses, the math requirements included Calculus I and Calculus II (now condensed into Reed’s unique one-semester Calculus course), Introduction to Probability and Statistics (which was then cross-listed with sociology), Introduction to Analysis (which was then a yearlong course), Statistical Modeling and Data Analysis (which was also cross-listed), Complex Analysis (which retains the same title and course number thirty years later), and one other mathematics course of the student’s choice. The sociology requirements included Introduction to Sociology and any four additional courses offered by the department.
By the 1997-1998 academic year, the next year with a digitized catalog available, the Mathematics-Sociology major no longer existed. I rate Mathematics-Sociology as a 6/10 major on my completely arbitrary scale. While quantitative social science is an important and immensely interesting field, the Mathematics-Sociology major explicitly deprioritized sociology, and appears to have been mainly intended for people who would otherwise have majored in math to get an opportunity to do an interdisciplinary thesis grounded in quantitative methods. The course requirements were still distributed reasonably across the two fields, and the math coursework requirements focused primarily on content that was applicable to social scientific work, which saved the major from a worse rating. I would love to see an authentically interdisciplinary quantitative social science major at Reed, especially with the growth of the stats portion of the Math-Stats department and the increasing focus on quantitative methods in the social sciences.
The Philosophy-Mathematics program had no description in the 1994-1995 catalog, with its entry dedicated entirely to enumerating the requirements. The major required seven philosophy courses and seven mathematics courses. In the Math department, these were Calculus I, Calculus II, and Intro to Analysis, plus four more courses of the student’s choosing, with at least one each in algebra and analysis. In the Philosophy department, these were Logic, Metaphysics I, Epistemology I, Ethics I, and any four additional philosophy courses. Students were also encouraged to acquire reading knowledge of at least one foreign language. Admission to the major was by application to a committee. Students took the Junior Qualifying Exam in both departments, with the philosophy qual being “slightly modified” for interdisciplinary majors.
By the 1997-1998 academic year, the Philosophy-Mathematics major was no more. I rate Philosophy-Mathematics as a 7/10 major, which, again, is a rating that should not be taken remotely seriously. If the major had an actual description in the catalog to elucidate its goals, it would probably have received a stronger rating, but even so, the affinity between math and philosophy is clear and I’m glad Reed used to have a major for people who might have been interested in the intersections of the fields. The coursework requirements were distributed reasonably across math and philosophy, and students were presumably free to pursue the thesis focus of their choice.
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