To speak of ``the liberal arts'' is to speak of the unity of thought and the discourse of the disciplines. The modern college and university is divided into departments, majors, and extra-curricular clubs. Our interests, though multiple, are narrow and rarely converse with each other. This is not how it always was in the western world. A classical, medieval, and renaissance education sought to unify disparate modes of thought and sought for wisdom in the unification. The ideals of liberal arts colleges, such as Colby, are direct descendents of this older view of education. The place of mathematics in this vision is the subject of this course.