Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT

The motto on the seal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Mens
et Manus"--"mind and hand"--signals the 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 the ideas about science and
education that have shaped MIT and defined its mission--from the new science of the
Enlightenment era and the ideals of representative democracy spurred by the
Industrial Revolution to new theories on the 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 the tension between these
old and new ideas.Mind and Hand was undertaken by Julius Stratton after his
retirement from the presidency of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his
death; Philip N. Alexander, of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies,
stepped in to complete the project. The combined efforts of these three authors have
given us what Julius Stratton envisioned--"a coherent account of the flow of ideas"
from which MIT emerged.