Discussion of the ANU Motto and its meaning
Part 1 - Essay
The Australian National Universitys (ANU) guide word carries inherent profound roots and meaning. Since the institutions inception in 1946, the Latin style Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum has assumed a place within the universitys crest. This phrase has fascinating origins, tracing back to ancient Roman times. Although the ANU has persistent its translation to English to be first of all to go the personality of things, an array of differing distinct interpretations, and indeed, meanings, exist.
The provenance of ANUs motto can be traced to the poem `De Rerum Natura (III, 1072) or `On the Nature of Things, written by Lucretius, Roman poet, philosopher and scientist. This epical work was written to explain Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience, consisting of six books; the phrase Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum, translated by Cyril Bailey in 1946 to First to distinguish the nature of things, being taken from the third.
This book demonstrates that the alert and intellectual principles, are as much a expound of us as are our limbs and members, but like those limbs and members brook no distinct and independent existence, and that hence soul and system live and perish together (Ramsay, 1867, pp.829-30), effectively presenting the issues of the mind and body. At the universitys beginnings it was an institution predominantly focussing on question, being the countrys wholly full-time research university and founded around four initial research institutes, consisting of physics, medicine, social sciences and Pacific studies (Australian National University 2010). The phrase First to know the nature of things was likely chosen to represent the university to capture its aliveness and purpose. Whilst this was the situation when the ANU was first formed, numerous alternate meanings exist today.
The phrase First to know the nature of things...
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