Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT

Abstract

The motto on seal of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mens et Manus--mind and hand--signals Institute's dedication to what MIT founder William Barton Rogers called the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture with industrial pursuits. Mind and Hand traces about science and education that have shaped MIT and defined its mission--from new science of Enlightenment era and ideals of representative democracy spurred by Industrial Revolution to new theories on nature and role of higher education in nineteenth-century America. MIT emerged in mid-century as an experiment in scientific and technical education, with its origins in tension between these old and new ideas.Mind and Hand was undertaken by Julius Stratton after his retirement from presidency of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his death; Philip N. Alexander, of MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, stepped in to complete project. The combined efforts of these three authors have given us what Julius Stratton envisioned--a coherent account of flow of ideas from which MIT emerged.

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