The folks at Columbia asked me to provide a brief account of this new class I taught at Columbia College this year.
This is what I said, below. And this is the link to more about it.
Copernicus, Galileo and Columbus lived at the same time.
The new model of the solar system came from their work — as scientists, at universities.
The famous paper by Copernicus was published in 1543.
Columbus however had opened the age of the New World — 50 years earlier — 1492.
When I finished at the college in 1998 we learned how scientists work and make knowledge. Pretty much the agenda here since 1754.
We also learned a great line from the philosopher Karl Marx — “philosophers have only studied the world; the point however IS TO CHANGE IT. ”
So starting January 2016 — we teach that at the college too. It’s called: “Venturing to change the world”. Our first class in entrepreneurship. A class about ideas, process, and problems and frameworks. About Schumpeter and Emerson, Columbus, Alexander Hamilton, Martha Stewart and Ben Horowitz. It’s a class about the New World.
Of course this 50 person class maxed out immediately and has already collected a bunch of “it changed my life” reviews.
Stay tuned for more as we change the College to change the world.