Wald to Seek Heavier Load Of Nat Sci's

George Wald, professor of Biology, said last night he will recommend at tomorrow's Faculty meeting that students concentrating in non-scientific fields be required to take two full courses in the Natural Sciences.

Debate at the meeting will cover the basic outlines of the Doty Committee's report on General Education, including the controversial proposal for a bipartite division of courses into Sciences and Humanities.

That students in Humanities and Social Sciences now shy away from courses in Natural Sciences, Wald said, is "the one new idea" to emerge in the current discussion of General Education.

"It was the biggest idea behind the Doty Report, but it was concealed in order to gain more Faculty support," said Wald.

"Warped Report"

Wald charged that the Doty Committee "warped the entire report" by using that "strange division" as a means of getting non-science concentrators to take more science courses.

Richard T. Gill '43, Master of Leverett House and a member of the Doty Committee, agreed last night that "our peculiar treatment of sciences was designed to increase students' exposure to scientific methods."

The Doty Report, said Gill, reflected the belief that the study of "some of the quantitaive social sciences" provides much the same appreciation of scientific methods as the study of "hard natural science."

Wald's motion would amend an alternative to the Doty Report proposed last Thursday by 22 Faculty members, including Wald. Under the amendment, students could take any combination of departmenal and Gen courses. The Committee on General Education would expand its present offerings by providing several two-year sciences in the Natural Sciences.

The plan released Thursday would require non-science concentrators to choose at least one full course in science from a list of lower-level Gen Ed courses and introductory departmental courses "designated" by the Committee on General Education.

Students would be free to substitute any three departmental half courses for a full "designated" course.

This plan was labelled "a somewhat simplified and liberalized version" of Harvard's present Gen Ed program. Wald said his amendment will not pass as the Faculty goes too far down the road towards minimum requirements."