The Logos enables us to move across what we have come to call “subjects”, arts, disciplines, and sciences without losing our bearings. In other words, it, and it alone, allows for an actually integrated curriculum.
Every art, science, or artifact has its own logos that makes it what it is. This is, perhaps, easier to see in the sciences, since some of them actually end with a variation on logos, such as biology, cosmology, etc.
But it is true of each art too, because each art actually is something and is not other things. Painting is not swimming, no matter how many analogies and uses might apply.
So each art (way of making) and each science (domain of knowing) is, quite literally, defined by its own particular logos.
In addition, each art or science is bound to the other arts and sciences by its own logos in its relation to a higher logos.
Thus, for example, if we know the logos of a given science, such as chemistry, and I also know the logos of another science, such as biology, then I can figure out the relationship between them. In this case, not being very knowledgeable about each, I would suggest that the logos of biology is life (bios) and the logos of chemistry is matter. If I am right, then I can figure out how they are related to each other, and at least this much would come to my mind: biology depends on chemistry in that life can only be found in matter. At the same time, biology would seem to be in some sense more complex, if not more variable, than chemistry. But there, I’m guessing.
The arts also have their own logoi (plural of logos). Arithmetic is the art of perceiving the properties and behaviors of discrete numbers; geometry of continuous. These are related in that they both have to do with numbers and calculations, but geometry is different because it has to do with lines, shapes, etc.
Sciences are all related to each other because they all are ordered to knowing something. That is their common logos.
Arts are all related to each other because they are all ordered to making something, which is their common logos.
The liberal arts, in turn, are grouped together because they are all ordered to making knowledge and because it is understood that freedom/liberty depend on knowledge of the truth. The logos of the liberal arts, then, is that they are arts of freedom and knowledge.
An integrated curriculum, then, must be grounded on the liberal arts, out of which knowledge (science) can grow.
Nothing else can be properly integrated.
Since Christ is the Logos that orders all the other logoi, a Christian education that is not ordered this way is not realizing its potential. That doesn’t mean it isn’t Christian; only that it could be more Christian, giving Christ more glory than we do when we mix Christ up with other foundations.
Christ the Logos is the beginning and goal of orderly thought.
The great catch is that for this pattern to be put in place we must put truth above pragmatics.
