Mission Statement

 

The nineteenth century experienced a great transformation.  In Europe, French Revolution and Industrial Revolution brought forth the age of modernity.  The concept of modernity had been realized in the formation of civil society, and therein a new system of knowledge gradually emerged.  It was during this period that the discipline of Humanities (Philosophy, History and Literature) was firmly established as a basis of European higher education, and out of that, the discipline of Social Science (Law and Economics) separated itself and developed into an independent one.  In abreast with this trend, natural science became a discipline in higher education as Science, and its application opened up its own fields of study (Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine and Dental Science), and in order to promulgate the fruit of higher education to the general public, the discipline of Education as a field of research and learning gained the importance.  The current disciplinary institutions at universities in our age have developed based on this system of knowledge in the nineteenth century.

In the twenty-first century, this century-old system of knowledge came under fundamental examinations.  We shall found the Insitute for the Study of the Nineteenth Century Scholarship, taking it as our mission to thoroughly reexamine the knowledge system of the nineteenth century with a sincere conviction that we should investigate the origin of the system, i.e., its point of departure in order to make our approach more productive.  For this, we shall assign common research agendas among us: we will examine in what society and with what objectives the nineteenth-century system of knowledge had come into being and how it has developed into our present institution of higher education.

1. We shall conduct project researches based on the following themes in order to reexamine the knowledge system of the nineteenth-century from diversified perspectives:

 

1.	Foundational researches on society, culture, law, art, and higher learning in the nineteenth century.
2.	Researches on the research methods dominant in the discipline of Humanities, especially studies in Classics and Religion
3.	Researches on the educational methods dominant in the disciplines of Science and Liberal Arts
4.	Knowledge and higher learning in Europe, United States of America, Africa, Asia and Japan

 

2. Through the project researches based on the themes above, we shall examine the nineteenth-century knowledge system, and investigate how we have inherited the system from the past centuries, and based on the result of our researches, determine possible directions of higher learning in the twenty-first century.  We shall exercise organized efforts to enhance the quality of our project researches in order to make our voice heard and influential over general public.

3. There are no precedent cases in the world like our organization.  As the first one, we wish to directly contribute to the promotion of inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary researches by opening up a locus of academic exchange, and therein broadcasting our voices to share our research results.  We only wish our organization should be the one conscious of its possible contribution.

Feb. 1, 2007