CARL GOMBRICH - BLOG

The text below is the public talk (lightly edited) which I gave at the Genoa Festival of Science in 2016. 20 minute read The title I was...

Below is the text of a short talk I gave at a conference on Liberal Arts organised by Benedictus on Friday 24 June 2016. * I’m not sure...

I think that most important decisions, realisations and insights in life are essentially irrational, or a least a-rational, processes. ...

Every summer my father, R F Gombrich, gives a course in Pali for anyone who is interested. Typically about 14-20 students come on the...

I’ve been blogging on the connection between studying at university and work recently. I think this is important because the overwhelming...

What is expertise? ‘Expert skill and knowledge in a particular field’. What is a field? That is much harder. Is this woman an expert in...

Most great scientific advances take place before there is evidence for them. Scientists follow their hunches, then collect data which...

One theme of this blog is the relative importance of specialising over staying broader in your education while at university –...

What is rigour in education? A rigorous education must be intellectually demanding. It must require students to present work which is...

There are many reasons to believe that a liberal and interdisciplinary education in arts and sciences is the best to prepare you for work...

‘The Knowledge Economy is the future of the world economy,’ professional services firm Deloitte announced in their report of February...

So, I get consulted a lot these days about what we’re doing at UCL, how come our students are able successfully to study such radical...

Greeks – generalists Romans – specialists (notable exceptions: Varro, Cicero and a few others) Scholastics – specialists Renaissance –...

Here is the talk I gave as one of the keynotes at the ‘Arts and Sciences for Global Leaders’ event at Hitotsubashi University in Japan in...

I first heard this phrase from Philip Sheldrake – though he told me it was from somewhere else originally. Basically it means writing...

Had a good ol’ chat with Tom Bennett on Twitter last night. In case you don’t know Tom (and neither do I, really) he’s a superb edu...

In some ways the concept of interdisciplinarity is easy: when doing research or when learning, follow the problem, not ‘the subject’....

I read Toby Young’s piece on ‘The Blob‘ over the weekend. Some of it I agreed with, some of it I didn’t. Here’s a few sections of what...

I tweeted out something about universities as places of formation. Oliver Quinlan said he liked the way it was expressed and asked if I...

An occasional paper given at The Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies (FIGS) within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at UCL November,...